[Andy Carson]

I’ll share what I come up with for sure. It’s probably not going to be a big deal. I think I’m going to keep with the 55 gallon barrels for the most part, and just use a mixing table/bin/thing to hold a drum’s worth of mixed feed at a time and keep it dry. It’s probably just going to look like a big free-standing sink made of plywood with a lid. I’ll probably use a shovel to mix the grain and fashion a hole in the bottom so I can dump grain into a bucket. Not complicated… I haven’t had a problem with the barrels for long term storage so long as they are sealed, and they are an easy way to transport and store grain. I have found that there are big discounts on grain to be had if I am willing to transport it and have a way to store it for a year until harvest time again. I didn’t quite make it to wheat harvest time this year, as my chicken egg operation has expanded far faster than expected. Still, not way off… I think it’s a pretty slick way to get a keep a few tons of grain. Just a few technical issues to deal with.

[Andy Carson]

Hmmm… I do like to keep it simple. The grain was dry when put in the drums, but once I open them in the spring, i had condensation issues which led to sweating on the inside of the drums. I think the water dripped down the sides of the drum causing fungal spoilage on the bottom. Not a problem in the sealed drums that were exposed to teh same conditions (moist air couldn’t get in and/or fungus had no oxygen). I think you make a good point about the ventilation, Tim, and I think I will forgo any sort of active ventilation. I am still attracted to making an elevated plywood container once the seal is cracked, however. It avoids the sweating issue, and gives me a big open container where I can easily mix grain. Mixing isn’t very easy with the grain in the barrels. I have tried this some when adding in my sunflowers and other “add ins” to make my chicken feed. Hand tools are good for the top one foot or so, but don’t penetrate very deep. If the barrel is half empty or less, you can tip it over and roll it around, to good effect. This technique doesnt work very well if the barrel is full or close to full though, as what’s on bottom tends to stay on bottom.

[Andy Carson]

An update on this technique. Almost done with the wheat now. The barrels worked well for most of the year. I lost 20 lbs or so at the bottom of the last barrel to mold. The grain seems fine in the barrels when they are sealed up tight, but once the seal is cracked, you need to get through the grain fast or come up with some way to keep it ventilated and dry or you will likely end up with problems like those Tim described. From my one experiment, this doesn’t seem to be a problem in the winter (dry air and temps that inhibit mold growth), but starts to be a problem in the spring with the moist air and temperature fluctuations. I am thinking about building some sort of feed mixer where I can mix a whole 55 gallon drum with the other adds in I like to make my chicken feed and keep it free from mold until it’s fed out, which might take a couple months. I imagine wood construction will help with the condensation issue, and I am thinking about adding a fan of some sort that I can run periodically to keep the grain dry. Any thoughts on other features to add? Surely there were traditional techniques to store small amounts of grain without spoilage, but I am only familiar with the big structures…

[Andy Carson]

Thanks for sharing and it looks like you are doing a great job. Just out of curiousity, you are walking backwards because you are in a contest, right? Do you find yourself doing that a lot in the field too?

[Andy Carson]

Welcome KMichelle! I think we share many interests, I also have bees (just two hives), planted many fruit and nut trees last year, and have been doing alot of building and fencing along with my farming and poultry projects. I will be very interested to hear your plans and how things progress. This is a great group with alot of really helpful people. In many ways, this is more of a community than a “normal” messageboard.

[Andy Carson]

The “predator” that have been injuring my hens is my dog… I caught him mouthing a hen with his teeth at the base of the neck right where the injuries have been occuring. The hen was not really that terrified (although she did want get away) and my dog was not really torqued up (although he clearly thought this was fun). The hen was uninjured but roughed up when I inspected and my dog never picked her up of the ground. It looked like how he plays with my small dogs, mouthing on the back and base of the neck to get them to play. He was definately not try to kill the hen, as he’s a big dog and one bite or shake would kill the hen for sure. Still, I yelled at him alot. He immediately stopped and acted very submissive and “sorry.” He doesn’t need harsh treatment to learn a lesson, but his job is to be a guard when I’m not around and I can’t have him maiming chickens tryign to play with them!!! It’s very dissapointing to have him do this, but I am encouraged by hearing some people say that even “proper” livestock guardian dogs sometimes go through a phase where they kill a few chickens. My dog is one year and a month or two and he has never gone after chickens before. I got a shock collar so I can shock him if he tries to play with a hen. Yelling at him works fine, but I think he does this when I’m not around and he’s bored, so I can’t have him thinking that if I’m not there than this is OK. Hopefully this can be stopped with appropriate training and I have hope because he did not actually killing any chickens (rather injured them to the point I had to kill them) and is more interested in playing with them rather than killing/eating them. Any tips are greatly appreciated. I have been keeping the chickens in thier pen when I’m not home and letting them out when I can supervise, and haven’t lost any more hens.

PS. I ended up with no less than 5 traps of various types baited with peanut butter, sardines, cat food, liver, and one with a live chick. Nothing was touched and even the peeping, moving, seemingly vulnerable chick failed to attract a predator. So, I think I don’t have other predators complicating this case. I have to think my dog has a lot to do with this, so at least he is doing something right…

[Andy Carson]

Yesterday I set up 3 live traps, one with liver, one with peanut butter, and a third with cat food. I have had the best luck with peanut butter, but wanted to make a wide sweep. No takers on any baits last night. All that attacks have come in the day (around 10 AM), though, which was one of the reasons I suspected a hawk. The first one looked like a hawk with the stab wounds in the back, but the last three have had primarily just neck wounds. Hard to imagine that it’s two different predators with the attacks in such close succession, but the first attack is now looking like the least typical of the series. At any rate, I took the peanut butter out of my biggest trap this trap this morning an put in a two week old chick in a wire cage at the back of the trap. I cannot believe any predator would be able to resist such as easy-looking prize that moves and peeps. I think the chick will have the wits scared out of it, but should remain unharmed. I put the trap in the exact area where the four attacks occured (which is in the middle of an open grassy area). Not where my instincts would have told me to put a trap, but as that’s where the attacks happened, it’s hard to pick somewhere else. We’ll see… It took a couple days of trying before I caught that raccoon before, so it might take a couple again. One of the things I notice when I get raccoons or possums is that the cat food in the barn disappears fast and there is no missing cat food lately. I did see a dead bird (I think a starling) washed in my oxen’s water trough, which I am pretty sure was due to a coon. The oxen are in a far field right now, though, and on the other side of my electric fence. This may mean nothing other than that there are coons close, but I already knew that.

[Andy Carson]

Personally, I futz with nearly every peice of equipment I have ever spent much time using. So, I am never very suprised or disappointed when something doesn’t work all that well. I think the seed metering system on the earthway is pretty good. The rest of the machine leave much to be desired, but the rest of the machine is fixable. I am still not sure if I going to modify the no till seeder to make an ox powered no-till seeder or modify the earthway to make it cover seed better. That is all the row crops I am planting, though, so I think these are winter projects. How successful I am at culvitating these sunflowers and how much weed pressure I get is likley going to inform which tool I use next year.

[Andy Carson]

Two more attacks in the last few days. That makes 4 total attacks. All in the exact same location and all with neck wounds in the exact same area on the right side of the neck at the base. All the hens lived through the attacks, but 3 of the 4 I put down afterwards. The attacks seem to be lessoning in severity. The first hen was really messed up, but alive. It looked like the predator tried really hard to kill it before it gave up. In contrast, the last attack produced a neck wound that was maybe two inches long and a hen that was seeming OK. I treated and let this one live. She seems to have recovered fine. It was really a half-assed attempt at killing, esp compared to the first attack. I think I have a smaller hawk who is learning that it can’t really take these big mature hens. I have been shutting all the chickens in a pen when I am not home lately, and I don’t lose any when they are in. I want ot let them range, though, so need to figure this one out. There are several really nice perching locations surrounding the “kill zone” (all hens have been attacked within feet of each other). I spent much of yesterday watching these perches for likely attackers, but saw nothing. I have noticed that my on the ground feeding of scatch grains does attract a lot of small birds (sparrows, blue jays, etc) and wonder if these might have attracted a small hawk. I haven’t seen any small dead birds, though… Perhaps the hawk flies off with these…

[Andy Carson]

Congrats Jen! she is very cute

[Andy Carson]

I just had a brain flash! I should rig up my planter and cultivator so that the person behind the oxen rides rather than walks. I have a hard time finding a volunteer to walk behind, but I am quite certain I can find one to help if they are riding (esp sitting) and just has to stear and/or say if something looks wrong. I should have thought of this before!

[Andy Carson]

I probably have about 3-4 acres of this all together, including some ground that reseeded itself with rye. Seems like alot for a hand scythe and ricks, but I have never done this before, so I don’t really know how much can be done with one person. I am game to try if this is in the realm of reality.

[Andy Carson]

No, I didn’t use for a few reasons.
1. The ground was worked up so fine that a hand planter could make a furrow just fine and residue wasn’t a problem.
2. The planter is still set up for a horse with me walking behind to keep an eye on things. I need to fiddle with the drive wheel to make it reliable enough that I don’t have to watch it closely, as I can’t see it as well from up near the team.
3. I am going to use geese and a wheel hoe to cultivate, so I don’t need much in the way of headlands. Hand planting lets me plant where the headlands would have been. I don’t have a second person to either direct the oxen or cultivate from behind. This makes cultivation challenging at my skill level. Directing the oxen fronm behind while I cultivate would be a cool trick, but my boys don’t know it and I need practice for this… It seems esp challenging because my body is busy working and I don’t get to use it for the body language that my boys respond to so well. This choice informs some of the choices related to how I lay out fields for row crops, and also made me chose to have one row crop rather than many.

In retrospect, it still would have sped things up substantially to use the planter in the middle of the field and to fill in the ends later by hand. At first pass, I thought: “Well, if I’m going to do some by hand, I might as well do it all.” It did get time consuming to rake the soil back over the furrows by hand, though. I probably should have switched over the planter, but rain was coming so I did what I could. Next year, the planter will be in service again.

[Andy Carson]

Thanks Tim, I had really meant to graze this off, but now I have WAY too much grass due to the intensive rotational grazing technique you had shared with me and I don’t think my oxen are going to get to the new pasture. I thought maybe I’ll get a pull behind motorized brushhog to pull behing the oxen, but thought maybe a crimper would do something similar. Sounds like not. I really ought to get more cattle as the ones I have only grazed off maybe 1/4-1/3 of the land I wanted them to get to and it’s freakin’ june! With daily paddock moving, they clean up all but a select few weeds, which I can easily whack by hand. If they aren’t getting to this new pasture area, though, I need to either get more cattle or come up with some way to deal with it. That was the purpose.

[Andy Carson]

I am curious about what a roller/crimper would do on ground that has been seeded for pasture, but has some weeds in it. I am guessing that weeds would recover poorly from being rolled/crimped and fast growing grasses (depending on timing) would recover well. If so, could this be used as a tool to encourage grass growth and discourage weeds? Probablt depends on the weeds, but I am trying to be really general. I saw a video of a roller/crimper on youtube that Tillers had made. It looks easy enough to rig one up. Does anyone know of roller-crimpers being used for this purpose?

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