Tim
During the farm tour we gave last Saturday to 17 visitors, a little girl suggested to Liz that she might not be a "real" farmer because, as the girl said, "where's your barn?". It's true. We don't have a lot of the typical infrastructure that you see at "traditional" farms. We will build a storage facility/barn, but when it comes to fencing, all animals are kept in with portable electric fencing. For the cows, we use a single strand of braided wire; for the pigs, we use two strands. Of course, the electric fencing is only a psychological barrier, as it can't possibly physically contain them. Fortunately, they all train well and don't like messing with the fence.
One of the challenges of fencing this way is that you have to move the fence every day for the cows, always setting up a new paddock of fresh seasonal greens that the cows look forward to. We try to move at about 4:00 p.m. every day, when the grass is at its sweetest. For the most part, it's a relatively simple chore that Liz and I have mastered well, but occasionally there are problems. In the last two days, we've experienced this twice.
Trailer Loading
Monday was the day we had arranged to harvest our first grassfed cow. That meant on Sunday I had to load her up and take her down to the processor. Without a typical wooden chute and holding pen, this meant driving the trailer into the pasture and creating an opening at the electric fence. But with 23 other cows in there, the question was how to get the one I wanted onto the trailer. I'm pretty comfortable separating and driving the cows where I need them to go, but the chosen one didn't want to get on the trailer. And why should she? She's spent pretty much her entire life on the pasture and the trailer was strange to her. So I got a paper feed bag and rattled it, hoping she would like a sweet feed treat to board the trailer. Lots of cows came running, including her, but it didn't work. The grass was more interesting to her, and given that she didn't even know what sweet feed was, this was no surprise. One hour went by. Then two. Liz had the good idea of setting up a separate paddock, into which I drove this cow and her buddy. Then, I backed the trailer up to that paddock and waited. And waited. Three hours, then four. They kept grazing, even though they were deprived of water and I had put some water, which they could see, onto the trailer. Finally, I grabbed a handful of sweet feed and got her to eat some out of my hand. From there, I was able to walk onto the trailer and lead her, a somewhat dangerous situation to be in. At 10:45 p.m., I finished the job I had started at 5:00. Almost 6 hours to get her on board. True, I know we could have "driven" her on board, but using low stress techniques is crucial in our opinion if you're going to produce tender, flavorful beef. We got it done but it was a long day. The good news is that the butcher says she looks fantastic.
Fencing out the creek
Oh boy, did I mess up yesterday! We had to bring the cows back through the orchard, as our grass is growing so fast and is hip high in places. This means we had to fence out some trees, and zig zag the fence along the creek. Problem was, we didn't have enough step-in posts available, so I suggested to Liz that we not fence the back part, as it was a steep decline to the creek and the cows likely wouldn't go there. She agreed, but she knew better. We had this same situation a month earlier when I persuaded her to do the same, against her will, and, as she predicted, the cows promptly went down to the creek. But yesterday we did it again, and after Liz and I let them in, we walked over to the prior paddock to pick up the posts, etc. Walking back, we saw a cow, then two, out in an open field on the other side of the creek. What! I ran and looked, and sure enough, there several were down in the creek heading out. The instincts that cows have to graze while moving is strong. If they can find an opening, they're "programmed" to keep moving. Of course I ran over to start driving them back, but then all hell broke loose. They all got out and were heading all over. Liz grabbed some posts and we tried to drive them through a chute back, but they weren't going. They couldn't figure out what all the fuss was about! We spent well over an hour herding them back, but in the end, we made a separate paddock alongside the one we had originally put them in. We finally drove them all back in there, opened up access to the original paddock and gave them all that space. We went up to the house, took a shower, and then went out to do normal evening chores with the chickens and turkeys.
Lessons Learned
- I need to do a "dry run" with the next cow to be transported to get her comfortable with boarding the trailer
- Fence out the creek, fence out the creek
- Listen to Liz
Leave a Comment
Email
Print
Last year we spent a lot of time fixing the farm up so that it would be in the best condition possible for the animals. That meant mowing weeds to allow grasses to re-emerge, picking up TONS of rocks from the pasture and getting irrigation lines installed. Of course, this farm isn't just for the animals, it's for us to enjoy as well. To get access to our house, we had to build a 3,000' driveway. The first 1,000' or so is a long straightway with part sun and part shade. One of the first things I did last fall was to prep the soil and sow native southeastern wild flowers along the side of the drive. This area had overgrown in weeds before, and since I didn't kill the weeds (no use of chemicals on this farm), I just tilled it heavily in the fall, hand broadcast the seeds and hoped for the best. In early spring, we started
I have just a few minutes before having to go check on baby chicks and turkeys, refill water jugs, replenish feed trays, and check the heat lamps. You see, right about now, that's how we spend our days. We have so many babies on our farm and more on the way! Here's an inventory of what we are currently caring for (and this is just what is being brooded, never mind what's on pasture):
- 50 Narragansett turkeys
- 250 Poulet Rouge chicks
- 100 Bourbon Red turkeys
coming next week:
- 50 Bourbon Red turkeys
- 250 Grey chicks
Now, about the chickens...we had written a post a while back explaining that we did not want to raise the traditional Cornish/Rock as our meat chickens and that we were excited to have found the Golden Rangers. We have been pleased with these chickens and have enjoyed raising them, but unfortunately, the company we purchased the day-old-chicks from has gone out of business. We have already ordered and received 250 new broiler chicks though from another hatchery, and we feel that it was a blessing in disguise. We have been interested in the Label Rouge movement in France and wanted to
Comments Closed
I'm finally getting around to this post even though it is an event that happened over two weeks ago! We got our first batch of turkeys. We ordered our 50 Naraganset and 50 Bourbon Red turkeys months ago because these heritage breed pullets sell out quickly. The day before their expect arrival the hatchery called and said they only had the Naragansets and no Bourbon Reds for us. WHAT!!! We entered panic mode and couldn't believe they waited until the day before shipping to tell us this. Tim frantically 
Bourbon Reds just arrived!began calling other sources to find that most hatcheries are sold out. In the end, our 50 Naragansets arrived and we ordered 100 more Bourbon Reds from another hatchery that will be arriving this week - just enough time for them to grow before the holidays. Then another hatchery called to say they could get us 50 Bourbon Reds around this same time, so heck, we got them too! Our 100 turkeys have now grown into 200! (Sometimes Tim gets a little bit out of control!) Our thinking was that we never wanted to be in this situation again where we are dependant on someone else to provide our baby turkeys, so we will keep some of these to become permanent members of our farm and reproduce.
We have heard about how fragile turkey poults are and that the mortality rate is very high, so of course, I was nervous. Four arrived dead in the box, but a week went by and all others looked fantastic. I was just about breathing a sigh of relief, when I found two more passed away the morning of the 6th day. There was no apparent reason, but it reminded me of the reality of these little babies. Since then they are doing great! They have doubled in size and their wing feathers are growing very long. They have turned from
We looked at many designs for pastured poultry pens and finally settled on a hoop type structure made from a wooden frame and livestock panels. We liked these best because it gives the person room to enter the pen and move around a bit. We also felt that it gave the chickens more room and better air flow. It was a balancing act to make the pen large enough to give the chickens space, but light enough so that we could move it each day. Tim built a pen on wheels to make it easier for me to move. We put the 185 Golden Ranger chicks in one pen when they were 4 weeks old. By the end of that week, they had already outgrown it! These birds grow fast!! Good thing my parents were visiting and looking for ways to help. My dad copied Tim's design and built
Subscribe to Eat Local Georgia
