Crops I'm Growing to Feed My Animals

foreign good morning everybody it has been a crazy couple of days here on the farm and I want to tell you all about it but first let's say good morning to our large white Farm dog good morning guys hi hi how's it going Toby how's it going Abby Toby Doug's doing his customary marking of the fence post Abby Doug is her usual full of energy self and yes this morning everything kind of feels just right here on the farm I've been making a lot of progress over the past few days in particular you know one of the goals I had for this summer season was to actually start growing food for my birds inside the hoop coop you know the idea being that essentially in the winter months my ducks geese and chickens would live inside that structure because it's nice and warm and it's great for them for protection in the winter and then in the summer months though I would clean it out and put all sorts of food stuff inside of there and while I am happy to report that is pretty much fully planted right now and what I wanted to do is really show you guys what things are looking like inside of there because uh I'm pretty excited so yes come with me right this way we'll check things out all right here it is here's what things are looking like right now actually while I talk to you guys I'm gonna do this first and just get this going and despite the fact that regular viewers of our YouTube channel are familiar with this my name is Morgan Gold this Farm is called goldshaw farm and we raise Ducks Goose cattle trees pigs chickens and maybe a few other things in terms of our actual farming operations now this 100 foot by 20 foot hoop house structure that I'm in right now was something that I built last year with the help of my buddy Alfred my buddy and like I said it's meant to be winter housing for the birds and as far as the bedding goes typically what I'm doing is I'm putting straw down on the ground in the birds during the winter months are gonna poop in it but the straw ax is a carbonaceous diaper and captures and sequesters all that poop and eventually that combination of straw and poop breaks down and turns into wonderful wonderful compost and as I was designing the structure part of the design requirement was was to have a structure that had a large bay door that I could ultimately fit my tractor into because the other day I came in here with my tractor and I just cleaned this whole thing out ultimately over the course of about six months I had accumulated I don't know it was about six maybe eight inches of actual bedding but even that bedding probably got pressed down and some of it even broke down and turned into compost by the time that we were done so the stuff that I put in there say in October was clearly just broken down and nice good black soil and so with the mechanical help of that tractor it took me a about I don't know 45 minutes to an hour to clean it out but the crazy thing is if you actually look at it I have this gigantic mountain of compost so yes if you've ever wondered what does it look like when you compost the poop of about 22 geese 25 ducks and I don't know 20 chickens or so over the span of about six months this is what it looks like and so yes I've made this gigantic Mountain that is going to still sit here for probably another few more months I'm just going to let this keep breaking it down I'll probably continue to use my tractor to turn this over at some point later this summer but yes I'm very pleased with how this has turned into good usable compost but then the other really exciting Factor about all of this is I now have some cleared out growing space now the truth of the matter is I'm a little bit behind the eight ball here and how I'm building this because I should have had it planted maybe two or three weeks ago if I was going on my farm plan schedule that I made over the winter but because hatching season and laying season really dragged on and I want to do my best to maximize that time period I didn't rush to kick all the birds out and by Kick all the birds out I mean all of our adult ducks and geese are now living out here in the permaculture Orchard they are wandering this area full time at this point and it's pretty gratifying to see what they're doing out there I'll show you what's going on back there in a little bit but the fact of the matter is at this point inside the yard I'm standing in now there are no adult birds and I have no plans to let my adult birds back in here until I don't know probably late October November something like that it's also weather dependent like essentially I'm just waiting until winter hits and as these guys saw in a recent video even my large mobile egg laying Coop which is actually now up on the top of that Hill I mean can you guys see it way way up there side note would you look at Toby dog watching over his Birds he loves protecting those guys he can't get to that pasture from that Paddock but he can get to that pasture from this Paddock which is usually where he's spending his time you can see there's like a little doggy door well now with the egg Coop up on the top of the hill I thought I had all of my chickens out of here and I had only left my weird chickens in this spot for them to have a chance to kind of pick through and be protected by the fence but at the same time get a chance to explore well I will say that one of the things I noticed was there was still one chicken hanging out you still keep doing this why what's up with you girl yes the chicken who I've nicknamed runaway red over the years who then has become Captain Janeway she is now floating around and I decided because of her weird Broody habits that I was gonna put her in with the weird chickens who if you guys are wondering where the weird chickens are right now their weird chicken coop is right there I keep my weird chicken separate from my other chickens because they're much smaller and I'm always worried that the other chickens are going to beat them up when I first introduced Captain Janeway to the weird chickens she wanted nothing to do with those weird chickens but at this point she really has become a part of the flock and speaking of the part of the flock there's been some other changes too but that's going to be a conversation for a future video but with all the birds now removed it was time to get into the hoop coop and start planting you know like I said I was a little bit behind schedule but earlier this spring I started a whole bunch of seedlings inside our house most of those seedlings were intended for my wife Allison's kitchen Garden but I also planted a massive amount of pumpkins because one of the most important things that I want to plant for my animals are pumpkins you know pumpkins are a great feed for the birds like the Ducks geese and chickens all love them the seeds actually have a decent amount of protein the rest of the fruit is actually just good calories for them I also plan to feed my cattle a little bit of pumpkins this fall as a way to help them with a natural dewormer and in case you're wondering I'm not sure if the pigs are going to be around long enough for the pumpkins to be harvested we'll see but if they're still here on the farm they will get a taste now like I said I waited a little bit longer than I would have liked to and so some of these pumpkins are not looking great you know they were in their Little Seedling pots for a little bit too long and so some of them got a bit root bound I probably probably could have should have found a better way to get them out here sooner you know the thing is you only have so much time in the spring for various projects and priorities and how they slot and synchronize can sometimes force you to do things that are less than ideal so for example my single biggest priority here on the farm was actually getting my fence completed so I could get my cattle and chickens into the upper pasture when I was making my farm plans for this year that was priority number one without a doubt and so I made that the most important thing that I was working on the other thing that I had going on was duck and Goose laying season is a really big thing for us from a financial standpoint and so I didn't want to cut that too short because that would mean fewer goslings or that would mean fewer eggs that we're selling and so I waited as long as I could in here the downside to that was I probably started my seedlings a little bit too early and the lesson I have for next year is to wait a little bit longer because you know probably by mid-june is when I want to have this area cleared out out and so I just need to be thinking that I won't plant until mid-june now for most gardening activities here in Northern Vermont where we're zoned four that might seem a little bit late but because I have the beauty of this hoop coop it's going to keep things warmer longer and so I have this luxury of having a later growing season too so as you can see I do have things like these pumpkin seedlings oh Abby you're killing the puppies see like no oh puppy dog come on so yes they have things like these pumpkin seedlings that are looking a little peaky but they're bouncing back ever since I put them in here over I don't know I guess it was three days ago they seem like they're bouncing back and so food crop number one that I'm growing for my birds are those pumpkin seedlings and then the other thing you'll notice is you can see these little black lines that I turned on just a couple minutes ago that's how I'm watering them they're just basic drip hoses that I got at the discount store so far they're working pretty okay but I think I'm actually gonna switch it up pretty soon and eventually just put in a sprinkler system and have a couple of sprinklers going because it's going to be easier because that wasn't the only thing I planted here on the farm the other thing that I did was once I got my pumpkins in place and there's actually a few cabbages too that I had left over that didn't go into Allison's Garden but once I finished that I started to broadcast seed a whole bunch of Buckwheat if you guys aren't familiar buckwheat is often used as a cover crop it's like kind of like the grand I think technically though it's not like a cereal grain or a wheat or anything like that it's gluten free but it's got a decent amount of calories it's got a decent amount of protein to it it makes for a good fodder so I just started to broadcast a whole bunch of Buckwheat as well as a little bit of leftover oats that I had and so the ground in there is just completely covered in buckwheat and oats it hasn't quite germinated yet but I've found that it usually takes about a week for that stuff to get going and so I'm just watering it regularly and getting it up and running once that stuff starts to sprout too I'm gonna let it grow all season and hopefully let it just keep growing and growing and growing and eventually what's gonna happen is I'm gonna send my birds back in here and I'm gonna have them go in and mow it down and they will trample the grasses those grasses will ultimately turn into draw which is basically going to be the foundational layer of bedding they're also going to have all those Buckwheat Groats which are like the little seed heads that sit on top and they'll eat those and so that'll be a feed as well and so I'm not even going to bother harvesting it I'm just gonna let the birds do that part for me and for the little patches of Oats the same thing goes as well so inside there like I said we've got pumpkins we've got the buckwheat we've got the oats and like I referenced earlier too I also threw a few extra cabbage plants that I had started for the garden that we didn't use and so there'll be cabbage in there but then the last thing and maybe weirdest thing that I did is you know whenever you start your own seedlings you're always buying seed packs and inevitably you'll have leftover sea and so I decided to just mix all those leftover seeds together and then I just started broadcast seeding them all over the place here now you might be wondering what do you actually call a method of gardening like that where you just take a bunch of random seeds and toss it around like that and a word chaos yes that is right I have decided to implement a small little patch of chaos Garden right around here this could turn into absolutely nothing it could turn into something pretty cool it's a mixture of lettuce seeds kale seeds beans Peas Just a whole bunch of stuff that I just tossed out there just to see what would happen and I don't know what will happen but over the course of the summer you guys will get to watch this whole experiment unfold I'm hoping to get some interesting random things germinating in there and again that just becomes more food for my animals but I don't know and only time will tell now you might be also noticing on the side here I've got just like these random hay bales scattered this is all left over hay from our winter that I was feeding my cattle but I had Surplus Bales I'm now letting them sit here to sort of dry out for a little bit I'm turning them as well and so essentially they're composting and breaking down too but I'm also starting to spread them out on the ground and basically make a cover what I don't want is the bare ground like you see here and eventually I want everything just covered in a pile of Mulch and then as things progress over the course of the summer eventually I'll start to broadcast seed it with something like a winter Rye again just adding more diversity of the plant life that we have here on the farm hey Piggly wigglys how's it going they probably want me to feed them would you look at this Toby dog would you guys look at this Toby dog I've been working on trying to get Abby to be less of an attention now Abby sit good girl you stay right there Toby gets his petting time eventually he'll get petting time too don't worry Abby but no Toby gets the love right now yes would you there is something hysterical to me about pig noises I just don't know what to say about it let's put out the weird chickens good morning weird chickens so yeah the weird chickens are staying in their weird chicken house I've got them inside this chicken tractor right now just for their own protection still working on their long-term housing plans and like I said there's going to be some changes with the weird chickens that I'll talk about in a future video foreign up the hill so yes the birds have been here in the permaculture Orchard I mean it's interesting you can see right here they've really hit a lot of this stuff pretty hard already I don't know why this keeps leaking at least let me just catch the water in there yeah my watering system is working well but one of the things that I'm realizing is I need to find a way to make this more mobile you know I experimented in building this thingy but it's kind of heavy and hard to move and so because I'm seeing just how much of an impact the birds make wherever I have their water and shelter where like right here you can see it's just really beaten down but then over there it's like almost completely untouched I realize I'm gonna need to come up with a way to make my watering system more mobile so that's definitely a future project here on the farm I don't have any like immediate plans for it just yet but stick with me and eventually you'll see something come of it Hey Ron Swanson you're enjoying that water don't mean to scare you I'm just moving the hose but I mean you can see like areas like this are just completely caked with duck poop and goose poop and yes there's a difference the Browner stuff is actually the duck poop the green stuff which is you know now most of their diet is grass is the goose poop I gotta buy a couple more of these they're super handy they're really expensive for just a special piece of plastic but what's so great about them is you can just like hot swap your different hoses and now the water trough for the girls is filling up so you can't fault it I'm just writing myself a note to order a couple more right now I have lots of random thoughts that happen to me while I'm working here on the farm and so I'm always like jotting them down on my phone having good note-taking tools is like inevitably important if you're gonna run a farm ah would you look at those geese chowing down on that grass I love seeing that and then I also love seeing happy Ducks going for a swim foreign like a duck quacking far off in the distance I see Toby wandering around right there right there and I bet you he disrupted her nest I've noticed a couple of my ducks have started to vanish and they're probably leaving nests somewhere around the permaculture Orchard so for example right now you can see generic duck who's right there she's that black and white Cayuga duck she's one of our older cayugas here comes that cranky duck you're missing out on the party with everybody else there girl now I'm gonna go put out the feed for the birds right now watch everybody's gonna follow me in like just this massive amazing line it's pretty incredible to see yeah I keep moving their food dishes and food placement so that they keep moving around different parts of the pasture they have this feed thin stash right here to make it easy to give them their food and start the daily Feeding Frenzy yeah you can definitely see that the Ducks are the ones that hit it hard like you have a couple of pieces [Music] at this point I'm finding that I'm feeding them about half of what I would feed them in the winter months [Laughter] looking like the mulberry trees are starting to come out finally you know it's funny the mulberries seem to be the latest of my trees that like always seem to get their leaves later than everybody else these mulberries are doing great I mean this tree right here is I don't know maybe about 12 feet now it's coming along I had like two trees that had mulberries last year in the permaculture Orchard I bet you get a bunch more this year I think the real question here is will the wild birds eat these mulberries before I get to good morning Bonnie good morning Belinda how are you boo so yes my heifers are doing good they're right here in this corner they still seem like they miss their moms a little bit but it's a little bit less so Bonnie McMurray would you like some Belinda Carlisle is way more sociable than Bonnie McMurray your mom is my most sociable cow I don't know how you're really sociable there you go Belinda good girl don't knock over the camera girls as you guys can see here I finally caved and got a float valve and so the way this works is the water hydrant that I was just filling up the duck water with I just swapped hoses and that hose runs all the way down to that spigot down at the bottom of the hill but now what happens is when water gets drunk like Mr Toby dog's drinking water here right now like it has like a little thing in here that as the water level decreases it will open and close the valve that'll feed the hose and so I doubt Toby's gonna drink enough to turn it on but let's see the girls are like what are you doing you know as Toby dog stays up here more and more one of the things he's learning is the duck water is kind of gross the cow water tastes pretty darn good all right so he didn't turn it on but here let me show you do a demonstration for you here foreign that's the water shooting back in as the level goes under it I don't keep water running to it at all times but I have a similar float valve now installed with the adult cows and so what happens is when I turn on my whole watering system both this trough and that trough will completely full up and so I'll do it like maybe once or twice a day I actually like using these smaller troughs versus the bigger ones that I used to use last year because I find that with these girls they always want more fresh water because there's only two of them but then with the other herd what I find is it's easier to move it on a daily basis and so yeah it's just a better infrastructure for daily grazing now Belinda if you would only let me brush you I could get the stray hair that's all at the bottom of you just one day Belinda just watch you're gonna be letting me milk you I bet so now the girls do have neighbors I see one not good sign oh boy that's not good at all so Joey Ramone who's actually Bonnie and Belinda's brother he's our steer and he seems like he's loose in the pasture right now Macho Man is still where he should be he's a very good well-behaved boy I think we're gonna have to deal with this foreign I mean I'm looking I'm looking I'm looking I don't see him anywhere the cows are over there so my guess is he's probably over there all right Abby hey ho let's go we gotta find Joey Ramone it's very hard to actually pedal and do the camera and carry a bucket of treats I'm just gonna take a couple of these in my pocket because this is how I'm gonna entice them let's see if we can't bring our boy back here and just for the record this is why it's so important to have a good perimeter fence the reason you guys don't see me panicking about this situation is because I know eventually I'm gonna find him he's somewhere in this pasture how are my chickens doing huh I gotta move you guys to a fresh Paddock pretty soon I know that's for sure you can see their manure starting to build up I'll probably move them tonight I'm just waiting on I don't know what I'm waiting on I should move them tonight you can actually see a couple of them are starting to go for their molt like this gal right here she's molting I'm pretty sure Carmen is molting yeah you can see it she's starting to molt as well let's grab some eggs somebody's starting to poop in here I gotta clean this and come get this later when I have the ATV it's very hard to carry a basket of eggs and keep them all intact when you're riding a bike along a pasture I think I've identified the location of our boy can you see him he's actually right over by the cows just outside their fence to the farm bike excuse me Mr Joey Ramone what you doing over here huh are you trying to visit with your mom and your aunties you left your buddy Randy all alone I don't think he appreciates that see if I can give him a gentle nudge back in the direction where I want him come on Joe I don't want to think I'm trying to headbutt him though that could be very dangerous for me all right let's try to do this on foot in case you're wondering my kickstand broke off I gotta fix it I know I know come on I got what you need come on buddy come with me we got a little bit of a walk but let's go come on all right he's coming with me but I think this is going to take a little time a few minutes later a little longer than a few minutes later look at those geese come on Joey let's keep going come on Joey follow along one eternity later well this job is not for those who are impatient let me just tell you I don't know it just took me gosh 25 minutes or so to get him across the pasture but now he's back with his buddy and they're doing good getting to eat the remnants of the Alfalfa snacks I'm pretty sure actually the reason he snuck out was he probably stopped to go visit his sisters and that was the Temptation and then once he was free he started to just explore in roam I don't know this is a less than ideal circumstance I really wanted both of these guys to be able to get some fresh grass because we have so much fresh grass right now but hopefully he doesn't keep escaping it's really going to be only a week or two before I can mix these guys in if I really needed to and so I don't know let's see how this holds up I might put up a second line of rope just to try to discourage that type of activity Abby and sometimes you are helpful and sometimes you were not so you get a mixed grade today I'm still working on training Abby for up here in the pasture I also have this technology tool which I'll talk about definitely in a future video but just not ready yet that I'm working with to try to make sure she doesn't go where she shouldn't I'll just leave it at that but it's actually proven to be a bit trickier than I expected it to be which is probably also a good answer for any folks who just watch that whole sequence and saying oh you should get a border collie or an Australian Shepherd or some sort of herding dog and the reality is I could but then that's a whole nother animal I have to plan for that's a whole bunch of other training I have to go for I just don't necessarily want to tackle that project yet that's not to say never but I don't want to just jump right into it I think so often people will see things with farms and homesteads and say oh you just got to get this thing and then just do it but usually with any other tool or animal you add to the farm there's always a learning curve there's always maintenance work there's always management work particularly with the animals that you've got to take into consideration before you take that step and so I know I'm gonna see uh you should just get a and then insert your favorite type of herding dog into the comments but one thing that doing this over a couple of years has taught me is it's never just you know whenever you take a step like that there's usually about a dozen other needs steps actions and activities that you have to take beyond that there is a hole in the bucket dear Liza dear Liza and speaking of buckets I don't want you to Gorge yourself get the bloat as you can see here I've been keeping up with my fly trapping and it's actually been pretty darn effective I'm gonna change this fly paper probably later today but this was really only one week's worth of flies the cattle are looking really good I think the secret really is rapid movement chickens trapping if you keep doing those things and you stay on top of it you stay on top of your fly problem hey guess come come on [Music] I love this part morning girls how are you doing give us this day our daily slot yes the girls are going crazy for their food they are getting bigger and bigger I don't know if you guys can tell but you look at how they were say I don't know a month ago versus now it's pretty impressive how quickly they've grown I'm gonna eat my boots please excuse me back off personal space talking to you Phil leotardo you know the one thing I will say is my goal was to have them eating 90 of like waste food and I think I'm a bit below that I'd say it's I'd have to look at the exact numbers but I'm gonna guess it's somewhere around 70 percent of their food is coming from waste so like old vegetables uh food scraps uh the Brewers grains which is probably the biggest part of their diet I'm working on coming up with some additional supplies of food but yeah that's like one thing that I'm like oh gosh I wish I could do it a little bit better is keep feeding them more waste product you know I got a new surprise for you too yeah I think you're gonna be hanging out in this spot all summer long so yesterday I just finished planting out this space what this is going to be is my catnip bed garden and I don't know maybe catnip bed garden is kind of redundant catnip bed or catnip Garden but it can't be a bed garden I guess it could be a garden bed please please please Abby stay out of it please no Toby you too please stay out of it so yes last night I broadcast a whole bunch of catnip seed into here it's supposed to rain later today really not a big deal that the dogs are in it right now but I got to figure out a longer term solution but I'm hoping to sprout a whole bunch of catnip right in this area my goal is twofold right so as you can see Molly murder mittens is playing with that grass but I bet she'd much rather play with some catnip and then part two is I might make it a new Farm product and I mean like who wouldn't want Pablo Escobar or Molly murder mittens branded catnip right by the way I don't get credit for that idea my sister I think was the one who first came up with it or first suggested it to me and it got my gears going but yeah basically right here you'll see some catnip growing I'm sure the cats will be hanging out here and then yeah come fall I'll Harvest it probably dry it in the Big Barn then put it on sale I don't know maybe in the winterish months when I have more time to handle that sort of stuff it would be like why isn't there dogniff I wish there was dog nip foreign s are on our farm are thriving we have actually three age groups of goslings now all living together the youngest ones are about I don't know eight days old now your oldest ones are a little bit shy of four weeks I want to say they're like yeah three and a half weeks or so you know it's funny the other day I actually mixed all my Boston groups together I took the ones that were just recently hatched they've been living inside for a couple of days just to get a little bit of strength and once they got that strength put them in with everybody else and they're doing spectacular you know so far this year and I'm gonna keep knocking on wood here I only lost one Gosling it was actually the Gosling that I did in the assisted hatch with at the end of the video where I talked about all my weight loss stuff that little one sadly died everybody else is doing great including the four other ones that we did assisted hatches those four extra ones actually stayed inside a little bit longer as you guys have seen in previous videos but now they're out there with everybody else everybody's thriving everybody's doing good still a little bit too cold at night from me to want to actually pull the oldest of the gaslings out and start putting them in a chicken tractor I don't know what I'm going to do I've got another class of goslings that actually just hit inside and so they'll probably be fully hatched in about a day or two and then once they hatch I'll probably keep them inside for another two or three days and then bring them outside I'm liking this system that I'm developing where you can have multiple age groups living together it's just giving them just a little bit something extra that first couple of days so they don't get squashed or trampled but once they come up of size I'm finding that they can mix in with pretty much any age of Gosling and very soon in a future video you guys will probably see four age groups of goslings all between a week and 10 days apart living together I think it's going to be very cool to see now one thing though that's worth recognizing is I have been growing this oat grass for them for the last couple of weeks I figured today would be a good day to let them have at it the oat seed that's here is actually the same seed that I sowed in there and so picture this stuff just growing much much higher that's what ultimately my birds are going to discover in the fall hey little ones I got a surprise for you I mean as you can see so this is the oat grass I think this stuff is actually amaranth but all this is stuff that they can eat and so let's let them get on some greens huh

Channel: Gold Shaw Farm

Views: 77,183

Keywords: gold shaw farm, duck farm, goose farm, vermont farm, feeding all my animals, feeding my pets, all my animals, feeding all my pets, meet my animals

Id: tYYW2O6DcvY

Length: 28min 41sec (1721 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 24 2023