Chickens, Water, and Fence Line Cleanup Update.

hi there welcome to H Farm we're uh just heading out to do our evening chores and take you along um Nikki's got our eggs for the day oh yeah yeah and uh we figured that we would show you the um the CP it's a little all the gats are coming out now it's been so humid but um yeah we showing off our cpop cuz we're not like super happy with it it's not what we would do no it's not what we want to do but hey it was here it was here we're using it um and we got babies oh look at them perched up there that's too funny hi yeah got some baby bantom going on and then we got those two down there there's a bunch more eggs in here yeah I was just collecting yeah it I mean the nest box is nice I like that um it's not a terrible setup but we would do some things differently we would prefer to have no floor in our chicken Coupe and the reason for that is we like to do what's called the deep litter method um where we bring in some carbonous material we keep flipping it we don't have to clean it out all the time um the deep litter method works best if you've got no floor if you're in contact with the soil where moisture and insects can kind of migrate in and out we can take advantage of those natural breakdown processes so um one thing I would would do differently um but the coupe was here we decided to start using it and well what do you know a couple years later we're still using it so this is kind of a nice feature here and we got this access to the nest boxes from the back so pretty good all the eggs so I let her out I tried to so this is our Broody box um that Joe is showing you oh there's our other four um those are the real siiz chickens yeah fulls siiz chickens she went Broody I put her in there and she hatched out her baby she likes being in there so Jade actually went Broody and she's sitting on the eggs from her because I put her in there and she wasn't happy and she wasn't sitting on them for 3 days and I said screw it let's see what happens cuz they're all supposed to hatch out next week I have like eight eggs that are supposed to hatch out of real egg get some more full-sized chickens hopefully and fulls siiz chicken a lot better on the bantams than the big ones yeah so now I'm just like big ones give us eggs which we like yeah and well the bantams do too but they're like Quail size and how how do we have such a variety of colors with our eggs oh cuz um I'm into color yeah and um so we have a whole mixture it's different breeds that a different colored eggs so we got americanas that give us the kind of Easter egg uh blues and greens and we have a couple true blue whitings and a couple True Green whitings which are newer breed um from McMurray that they offer um his name is Whiting and he developed it but it's a like a jade is one of those um who I took a cuckoo Marin um which lay the the uh which ones um I think they do more of these guys these dark eggs and then I put in the CUO Marin do like a darker chocolatey egg well the French the French C Marin are the ones that are like super super dark but we're getting these These are from our marins um they're the darkest we have um but anyway so anyways Jade right here is an Easter Egger daddy and a cucko mar and Mama and we got um another it lays a different color so if you take Americana and any of the dark egg layers they will have babies and those females will lay a different shade of whatever it's supposed to be and so yeah that's how we got Jade and then um and then yeah I have another Whiting female so I have two of those um daughter and mom combo so we're taking a look here at our little mobile brooder box um we built this about 12 years ago and I do have an old blog that we don't really maintain anymore but it has uh plans for this this unit um I can post a link in the description for that um but it's pretty simple just a a sheet of of plywood some 2x tws some hardware cloth got a little door here where the chickens can come in and out um to lift it yeah show us the both sides open up um there's a little shelter area over here that thing go in and we can add some supplemental heat and this opens up for Access um it's worked really well this thing's actually about 12 years old uh we did have to replace a couple boards and uh reeal it this year we we seal it with a um mineral Oil and Beeswax paste that we make works pretty well so it's nice non-toxic uh treatment and uh we don't you know it's all untreated Lumber so but it lasts forever we found it's better to get them outside right away so they can start developing their immunity yeah yeah the day they come in the mail or you buy them at the we've got ours from Tractor Supply last year or even Mama's hatching out granted they're on they're on chips right now but um but I have them on the grass and I'm moving them every day so they get exposed to all the plantain and grasses and stuff so they learn to eat that if you just train them on on seed they're never going to understand that they cannot go out and forage and you I had chickens in the past that when me and Joe started un we had um we had one of those hoop coop um houses and in the winter we'd line it with straw bales and then tarp that over and that was our winter coup and then in the spring we'd pull it all back and we'd have big worms and they'd freak they'd just like run away from these big beautiful worms and I'm like you guys but I don't know I guess it was just because they weren't exposed to it well here's Rusty yeah that's rust yeah he turned out pretty cool um I got him from a friend of mine yeah we um we like having the open bottom and we can we can use the handles here to drag it around and move it um which we don't we're not doing right now cuz we had a Broody mom in there but when we've used this to rear chicks um it's nice to move it every day you get them off their manure and onto some fresh grass and we think their immunity develops a little better when they're out on open forage um and then when they're adults they also know how to eat better yeah teach them teaches them to forge right from the gate and rather than doing the whole Kitty pool with wood chips I I've just we've lost more birds doing that way than we have getting them out of the land quicker and moving them every day and the house stinks like it's so much yeah once they're on the grass they don't smell yeah it's a much more pleasant as long as we move them regularly it's a much more pleasant experience for us so yeah things uh it's worked out pretty well it's held up pretty well yeah the one thing I would say that I would change on this though is the those Handles in the front i' like them in the back because everybody when you're pulling all the chicks granted if the mom's you know if Mom's with who cares but um but if it's just chicks in there and you're trying to push it Forward they run the opposite direction right the chicks run away from you so if I would have put the handles on this side then we could see them when we're trying to move and you know as it is we we come over here by the handles and they all run in there where we can't see them and that makes it really difficult to move without running anybody over or having problems there so that that would have been a better design if I would have just flipped the handles to the uh to the enclosed end yeah next one yep hey dogs all right I got to get through here without shocking myself man I got some crabby girls yeah they're ready to move those cows are mooing hey Sonata what Liberty are you hungry buddy so Griffin got his cone off this morning let's see how he's doing how was those yours buddy looking a little raw you've been itching again oh yeah shouldn't have left his cone off what I shouldn't have left his cone off had him in the cone of shame all last couple days because he's been itching his ears so much we think of the bugs are getting so now he's all bloody again yeah they're opened up again they were healed up or scabbed up this morning pretty good and he wasn't itching so I left it off um we've been treating him with a combination of arnica and um oh boy I think everybody's hungry hun they are ready to [Laughter] move I guess I should have got the side by side in there well I'll go open up a fence that'll get their attention hi cheeks yeah hi girls pretty good we've been giving them maybe uh somewhere between a quter and a half acre every day we can take this crossfest down but I think we need to shorten this one on the side too so they don't get stuck in there they're so I don't know why I don't think the cows and the go figured out that I opened this up this morning I don't think so they're like freaking out come on guys it it is a smaller pack this is probably a little under a quarter acre so yeah we'll give him this we got a little bit of poo no there's some I saw the Sheep all come in here I never saw the cows or the goats come in come on guys and here they come again goats goats goats goats goats running come on cows hey cows here scoot over here comes the goats come on girls come on goats come on goats come on cows dad come over here come on girls did you guys even know this was here you could come in here and graze come on I don't think you found it oh look at how excited happy cows hi cheeks oh this a cheeky cheeks really was that wor that was not nice come on guys there the cows girl [Music] yeah come on guys so what we're going to do today we're going to bring the mineral and the dog feeder down we're going to open up this next Paddock are your babies up there Dash and then I guess we'll just back fence from here to here huh like go from this one here right across to there come on guys once once everybody gets in here come on come [Music] on come on babies come on babies come on babies all right I'm going to open this up okay come on guys sorry there goes popcorn Greg cuddles and her twins Fallon so Fallon slicked off a whole bunch except for that top part like he's in his summer coat on the bottom and yeah I don't know it just won't come off so I'm guessing he's got some woolly in there or something but look there's 10 she also has just her neck and her top I don't know usually everybody's sicked off by now last year anyhow so it's interesting we had green grass in April which never happens it's always last couple years it's been middle of May and then everyone was slipped off by June now we have grass in May and everyone's not slicked off and they've had their kids so I don't know well that made them happy yeah interesting observation oh there's some over there oh she's sniffing that Golden Rod not going for it though passed up the Yaro too little goats are going for the uh Birds foot tree foil right away good and the black ones over here yeah bird foot tree foil is antiparasitic so that's good yeah it's interesting to see what what they they go for first we got to get up some more bird boxes up here for the swallows yeah we got the one way up there on the telephone pole but other than that we can use some more yeah the Flies are pretty bad here this is our first time grazing the West Valley here in this way with sheep I'll say we had some cattle here and little bit of sheep action last year but this is our first time really going through a full rotation on it and yeah I don't know if it's weather or time of year but the fly load's been pretty bad this year well I think with all the rain too well and we've got more animals so bigger bigger manure load but that's part of the reason we need to Back Fence today get them let that part rest let the manure break down and yeah so everybody's in here I'm just going to back fence from that point down to there and they're going to be locked in here but before we do that we got to go get the dog food and the mineral so [Music] yeah this is what four days of this is why you need to move your animals cuz everyone's camped out here right they like the shade tree it's getting just more impact than the rest of everything else and and you start to see uh some bear patches start to form right it's slight but it's happening and uh we don't want that we want we want a covering of the earth so let's uh they're done up here it's time to let this rest it'll be well it could be 6 months to a year before we're back here honestly so we like to do a long rest period and fortunate to have enough acreage and a small enough FLIR to to be able to do that so well then it's definite like no parasites right yeah if you go golden Ru is what three months on four months yeah if if you really want to you know guard against uh Rec consuming the parasites from your last visit figure they start hatching after about 3 days and they'll pretty much die out if they don't find a host within four months so if we can be on a on a piece of ground for 3 days and then off it for 4 months that really helps prevent uh parasite infection so [Music] thing's not chasing us is it I mean the mineral feeders back that now you just got by the mineral oh jeez yeah okay I don't like this back um here hold this put your seat belt on why don't you just it right here cuz there's a dip right in front of us that I'm think is going to be pretty uncomfortable Gertie get off to thear Gertie you're not skateboard okay now the back wheel's going down oh boy I don't like this Valley all right there we go maybe we should just this is good I just want to get to where we can get to it and move it up well you know don't leave it in an awkward spot that we can't get to it right all right this can handle the hills just fine as long as we take them straight on and we're not getting [Music] sideways they're so excited they know we're moving their food they love it when we move their food get out yeah well the goats are distracted well hello oh you know what maybe they hear the other cows maybe the neighbor cows everybody in come to maybe they just want to move yeah like stean strawberry get in and check out some of this mineral so the mineral feeder does work as long as goats aren't sitting on top of it but looking at our head we're going to have to go pretty tall with our deck to make that idea reality can you get it strawberry come on there you go good girl hey Libby Liberty you got a lot of flies on you that doesn't seem too nice oh you're okay no no pets today no pets today okay water shut off try not to touch this fence okay this is a 70 gallon stock tank got our just a 58 hose feeding it and get that disconnected and loaded up and then we can haul it down into the valley we're going to have to run several hundred feet of Hose from our quick coupler down there to actually feed this so go start working on that hey Zep so I got our our water spigot here um I got to switch this over this is a 250 ft of Flexzilla hose it's no no brakes there's no connectors in there just a continuous hole was I was able to find a a big spool of it online and you know eventually I'd like to trench in and get some poly pipe with some quick couplers kind of out out on the land in various strategic locations which are still being determined but for now this gives me 250 ft of reach I can go from our quick coupler down there down to um where the cows are and I mapped it out and it was like 200 there was uh 230 ft I think so I should have at 20 extra feet of Hose uh I hope that's true cuz we're going to need to get another one if that's if this doesn't reach and uh yeah kind of a beast to Lug around but um it's a good option to have Beats carrying buckets so here we go so I got this red hose it's just a way to connect to this poly pipe here and when I'm not using it I do keep a cap on the end and I think that's really important um what's going to happen if I don't is spiders are going to go in there and they're going to spin some silk and stuff or Brie or other insects can get in there and then that's going to be in my pipe which is buried 2 ft underground for you know 150 ft that way and I don't really feel like dealing with getting this thing clogged so I always make sure to put the cap on and to make it easier I drilled a hole in it and just put some uh paracord on the screw that I hang the hose on and just keep that handy you know so don't have to deal with clogged line and it's always ready to go and I'll put that on after I winterize at 2 yeah so I got that connected and I can go ahead and turn it on right away I can energize this line there's probably some air trapped in there but we'll get that out when we use our quick coupler we've got these um it's a plon quick coupler so this is the mail end um that goes into the into the fitting and I got a little hose adapter on it and yeah you can't hook a hose directly to these they are n P threads you need this uh 3/4 MTP to 3/4 hose fitting and then we can hook it to our regular garden hose and get water down there and life will be good o Nikki's going to carry this big heavy hose full of water for me yep after hiking up that hill yeah I didn't bring a a jug I was so cool today I didn't didn't even occur to me so this existing concrete pad was here so we put our our other end of our water pipe right here where we can take advantage of this nice flat surface to put a stock tank on we did manage to get this hose wrestled up and coiled up into the back of the thing I I think I need to build a a nice reel system where we can haul it around on a trailer and just spool out what we need but for now this is working and uh what we did is we took this 6-in PVC pipe with a cap and buried that and then our our PL and quick couplers right down there and again you keep the keep the lid closed so you don't get spiders and crap in there um what happens is when we sit that male when we insert that male uh end into that hole it clicks into place and water starts flowing it's just a spring-loaded valve so pretty cool no nothing to turn on we've already we got water pressure we just got to get our hose laid out going to do yeah I'll do that and then uh put the end on and get it connected and we'll have water down there so here's hoping the hose reaches it uh it worked when I mapped it out but reality is uh sometimes different it'll be fine well we made it just like we planned about 20 ft to spare so one thing is really nice about using Google Earth Google Earth Pro the desktop version we use has a mapping function where we can draw draw a line or draw an area and figure out how big something is or how long something is so it allowed us to know that this would be enough hose make it all the way down into that Valley and water our animals so all it's left to do is to hook up our her quick coupler which is sitting right here you see there's a little spring hook on the end that we got to get over the lip on that thing so it's a little little tricky but here we go how' you do that pushed really hard oh I couldn't do it it's it takes some practice and I'd like to get this is a little spring I should put some pea gravel in the bottom so that that uh fitting is just a little more stable and it be make it easier to push it down but yeah that's it we'll uh that tank should be filling up go do you go take a look feel the difference um yeah it feels I mean it feels like it's charged let's go make sure it's flowing so it's a little tricky cuz we had to go under a few fences here um all the way down through the valley here and hooked up to our our stock tank but you know we got to come down and check it you can't just plug that in and walk away but good news it's filling up we also want to stick around till it's full and make sure it stops and then we've got our blue tank over there and that one doesn't have water pipe to it but now we can just take our buckets fill that one up um this stock Tank's nice I like having the float valve and just you know 70 gallons of water on hand but um it's a little tall for the Lambs and some of the goats so we like having this shorter tank we also like having multiple water sources with all these animals that might not always be getting along or sharing too well um give everybody an opportunity to come get some water yeah they'll have this pretty well flattened by tomorrow and then we'll give them that top section then we'll work our way down the next strip over here oh I love watching these swallows just just skim in the tops of the herd you know as the animals move they kick up insects and these swallows swoop in and grab them starting to sprinkle again yeah service Berry it's a native Wisconsin tree um goes well with the uh hickories or even a walnut Guild and uh oh look at that Griffin's drinking with his cone on that's nice to see I I figured he was cuz he hasn't wasn't thirsty when I came out this morning to take it off him but uh it's good to see that he's figured that out it's a little tricky and see Gertie supervising making sure dad's all good doing his thing oh there's he there was a zoom there we go fill this one up and I think we're one more fence to make hot we're done with chores um couple days ago we had a didn't get time last week but this week so we we did buy a Shear cuz we didn't have any idea how to find one nobody's coming out and nobody yeah nobody's yeah exactly no one's coming out to Shear one mama so we got her sheared it's not pretty but we didn't cut her she was really good she uh she stood very well she tried to lay down a couple of times ouch that was a rose um but yeah I mean we just did the traditional Barrel cut which is just around the middle I didn't even get her backend but I was worried she was going to be too cold last winter but she had put on enough weight and she's maintaining and uh yeah she's looking good and look at those goats go this is our our original flock this is the pig the Fain ears the fainters good job Richard oh and this is cool Richard ended up how do I do that stick thing he has all this like that's the last of his winter coat but he was all blonde remember so now he shed that all off and he's back to being all brown which is really crazy so there we go float valves up tank has stopped running it's not overflowing that's really important if we walk away and don't check that and it's stuck or something this will be running all night and flooding this area and wasting a bunch of water so good thing to see you know Tank's not perfectly level but it's good enough for our purposes and we got a couple backup Waters and our blue tub over there so we're good to go chores are done for this evening I had a comment on one on our last video asking for an update and well I don't have much of an update we uh didn't get a lot farther cutting than uh that video we just had other chores we had to get to and ran out of time and it was really hot and since then it's been very wet we had a lot of rain and uh I got my arm arms just scratched all to heck doing that so gave it a little rest healing up the arms and we got you you know still got 100 150 ft to clean up here and then uh get our high tensil going put in some new posts and insulators and get this this wire tightened up and working but the meantime we had to get our animals moved so we went ahead and put in a a temporary uh fence perimeter just so we could utilize this Valley and and keep the keep the herd moving so um yeah this Paddock here they they're just coming up the hill towards me right here and then the one over there you can see has been grazed already we're doing a little different tree protection now for these these hickories we do want to make sure these trees stay intact so I think this is working pretty well we just do uh a little diamond right we got our corner it's a regular step in another Corner brace set up so we just do a little four poost diamond and when we're stringing up this Paddock division we just come down and we go right around that tree in a little loop-de-loop so we don't need an extra reel and then keep going so kind of got um you know this fence is tight is uh connected over there and then the next one over that way is connected on the other side so we can just doing a big s-shape pattern down and then come back up the hill and uh where I'm standing right here this will be tomorrow's Paddock and you can see that's uh where they're at right now we can get a better view here is where we just moved them to hi there it is the next day uh we got a little more done and I hadn't finished editing the video so I figured I'd i' show you what's going on I did get my uh my sleeve things a farmer's friend sleeves they they pretty cool got these little silicone grippy things and they just kind of slide up and I know I think it helped helped uh keep keep uh my scratches down uh let me show you what we got going on today so we did our move this morning you can see I don't if you can see the llama and some of the sheep at the top of the hill down there and we've got our next few strips here we need to figure we needed to figure out how to fence off this big it's about 4 Acres over on this side and um yeah we decided to just skip doing the rest of this fence line and we jumped ahead so I started over here where this fence ends and then our goal was to just cut a path you know kind of like this where we got a line set up we can set up a temporary perimeter here in front of this hensil fence and I thought we were going to do that all the way through the woods but uh once we got down here it uh we found an old high tensil fence that's actually in better shape than I would have imagined and I'd say that's about 500 ft long and we just finished clearing the whole thing and I broke the trimmer we are dog tired now uh yeah yeah did I'm whacking this thing a little too hard and with a too dull of a blade and busted the handle off but cost of doing business so I need to bring this back what you want to bring this back yeah I'm just going to get some footage of what we did and then I'll be right up uh did you get the water bottle yeah okay cool I think that's everything you get the eye shades no yeah yeah I got the safety glasses and the hearing protection all right so yeah kind of go down into this wooded area and this is I mean this is all overgrown with ro roses and prickly ash so area we really want to get the goats in um we come back here there's a a corner just an old cattle panel gate here and we we've actually got another I don't know probably about another 500 ft there's about 10 acres of Woods back behind us that we're not even going to try to get into um it's uh you know if I can get this side of the fence cleaned up and and active as pasture that'll be a huge win and then then I'll start thinking about maybe doing something over there but for now we're just calling that zone five it's a nice place to hike um just too many thorns that's all but yeah we got this high tensil fence it's a six wire it was already existing um needs a little little bit of work missing some Staples and some insulators but we got the the bottom two wires and then the the 30-in wire here all insulated already so we'll be able to make those three hot which is going to be enough to keep our animals in and so we uh yeah we went to town here uh just cutting back some of these roses were 10 ft high on this thing and I was really glad I had my gloves and my safety glasses on and these uh sleeve thingies and jeans today no short shorts and uh I'm also glad the temperatures come down a bit it's a little cooler than it was so not too bad and yeah we had to cut a few logs off here there's a rotten one down there that was on the wire and uh big big Maple Branch up here I had to get out the big bar and uh work on that but H come be here someday and pick up this firewood but at least for now it's off the fence and I don't know see if the other half of this thing falls down someday but uh yeah you see a little rotted out in the middle but uh some Maple it'll burn just going to be a trick or two to cart the rest of it uh cut it up and cart it out of here so yeah then we can go down this way another little log here we had to cut off the wire and yeah we're going to have I mean we're pretty far back in the woods there's actually a big Valley that's come up between us and the pasture now so we'll have to cut a trail that way and be able to subdivide this we cut a couple Trails down through there next but this is going to save us so much time just the fact that I don't have to put up this this uh temporary fencing here and I can make a few strands of this hot and carry power all the way back here and uh yeah just that much less step- in post and polybraid to use and fence to set up and take down again so yeah gets pretty steep back in here and again I still got to come back through and some Staples and get everything tightened up and make sure it's all all the ins ators are where we need them but uh this is one I cut off on the other side and let's get that off the wire whoops yeah yeah and then we got a an old but functional Corner down here um this side here that cuts across the Ravine there H yeah I'm not even going to try to make that hot we're going to find a different path and just use polybraid to to cover this side of it cuz this is some gnarly topography and you know something this uh Gully here isn't going to work too well but yeah this is actually the Ravine that forms out of the West Valley that we've been grazing and then there's a little like Peninsula over here if you can see on the other side there's another Ravine and that actually comes off the the other Valley the uh East Valley and then we have the pond up there and the dam for the pond the Overflow for the dam comes down this East Ravine and right up here is this cool little spot in the woods where the two Creeks converge and flow off uh off our property down to Camp Creek and then from there it's going to feed the the kapoo uh River um part of that Watershed so pretty cool makes me feel good to know that we're having a health the ecosystem that's going to deliver clean water Downstream you know all the way through the kapoo down to the uh Wisconsin River down to the Mississippi River and out into the uh Gulf of Mexico so just want to be a positive contribution to that whole Watershed so if you like what we're doing here give us a thumbs up uh hit that subscribe button we'll keep making videos as long as you keep watching them uh we do really do appreciate your support so thanks for watching and uh we'll see you on next one [Music]

Channel: Wholeview Farm

Views: 2,754

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Id: -sg20GL6W9s

Length: 41min 40sec (2500 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 21 2024