Hoop Coops Destroyed by Storm! It came out of nowhere...

hey everybody welcome back to living tradition's Homestead well it has been quite a week here on the homstead in fact a week ago today is where our story that we want to tell you guys starts we had no idea that we were going to get a really bad storm it was actually Labor Day we were all preparing in the house to have company over in the evening to have a cookout and out of nowhere the blackest blackest clouds were just moving in it seemed slow at first and then it just moved in with like such a gust yeah we were having about 60 to 70 M hour winds uh it just got crazy for really it didn't last very long I'd say 30 to 45 minutes is all that it lasted but when it was over you guys there was quite a bit of damage now during the storm it was one of those winds where you could actually see the dust and everything just go whipping by it was almost like like watching a hurricane the wind was so strong from inside the house you could see limbs of trees and sticks and branches and stuff just like flying off the trees and uh throughout the yard it was super crazy uh we didn't have any damage to the house or the barns or the work shop or anything but we did have some tragedies here in the orchard area right so the hoop coop that you can see behind us this is where one of the flocks of our breast chickens live uh this hoop coop was actually picked up and partially thrown on top of the fence behind it now luckily it missed the water spet that's right here behind it but you guys it was like inches from it yeah it was actually kind of crooked and kind of turned half on its side it looked kind of wonky right the frame kind of broke at the bottom it did and the hardware cloth got disconnected from the cattle panels in some areas but luckily this one was fixable you can see that we've put it back together pretty darn good actually it took us quite a while I had to use the tractor to pick it up off the fence and move it back in place and we had to kind of you know reattach all of the hardware cloth and reinforce the frame but all in all this one survived pretty well and because the storm came up throughout the day all of the chickens were out of the coupe uh so none of them got hurt during the storm right yeah no animals were injured at any time during the storm which was really I'd say actually pretty darn lucky we had quite a bit more damage over in wdv the area where we have our ducks and silkies and quail and the hoop coop over there for the silkies it was completely damaged now when we came out here to survey the damage we didn't bring our whole camera system and our mics and stuff but we did take footage with our phones and Sarah was able to get some footage right after the storm so the audio may not be great but we do have some footage from right after the storm well this is where the silky house is supposed to be the fluffy butt Hut and it is now all the way over there it literally got picked up and thrown across this fence luckily the fence doesn't look like it got that bad this is bent a little bit but the hoop cop is complet completely [Music] destroyed well you guys may have seen the video where I moved the quail to their new hoop cop and that luckily didn't move that was actually just this morning that we recorded that video so they been out here for only about 6 hours they're having quite a first day in their hoop coop you can see the duck hoop coop right next door luckily it doesn't look like it was damaged at all but it is moved quite a bit so we're going to have to try to move that back I think for tonight the silkies are going to have to sleep with the Ducks I don't have another plan that we can do that quickly so looks like the rest of my week might be making new hoop coops so as you could see the silky hoop cop was pretty much completely destroyed so I've spent the last several days rebuilding that hoop CP you can see it here behind me I'm not quite done we're actually going to finish that up today with you guys there were some parts that I was able to reuse but some parts that were just way too destroyed to even be able to reuse what's left to do yet really is the tarp over the hoop CP um and then actually we're going to talk with you guys about how we're going to be staking these to the ground for going forward so I did make this the same size that we had before but I did make some improvements to it over what was here before so let's take a walk around it real quick I'll show you that I'll kind of show you what I was able to save and Salvage off the old hoop CP and then we'll get started putting on that tarp so first and most importantly I was able to save the fluffy butt Hut sign which luckily wasn't damaged at all it's pretty amazing so I was able to save that but I was also able to save quite a bit of other stuff uh the door off the original hoop CP I was still able to save that I did have to replace the hinges because they were pretty well bent but I was able to save the door uh it did the door on the new one ended up being a little bit bigger because you're kind of at the mercy of of where these holes are on the who coops so the door on the new one ended the doorway ended up being a little bit bigger so I just attached a 2x6 here on the inside and that gives the door something to close up against and fills up that Gap so it's going to work out just fine uh I was able to save these uh angle braces here off the off the sides and then I was actually able to save the uprights and the angle braces on the back section and able just a able to put that right on so that actually worked out really well now on the old hoop CP I just had hardware cloth like this on the sides and on this one I decided to do it similar to what we just did over on the quail Coupe uh and so I ran uh galvanized metal roofing on the sides and the back and that will give them a lot more uh protection from predators so that's what's going to be underneath the tarp and uh the tarp that we're going to be using today is the same one that you just saw us use on a couple videos ago on the uh Quail hoop CP it's a super heavyduty 18 mil tarp uh we get them on Amazon they're not cheap but they work really well and so we're going to use that today on this one as well all right so this is the tarp that we're going to be using like I said the same tarp that we just used on the silky Coupe same one that I've used on the last few hoop coops that I built uh I do have this in our Amazon shop if you want to take a look at it uh now the tarp that we're using today is a 12 by 16t but this hoop CP is only 8T long so what we need to do is we need to unroll this and then we're going to kind of fold it over what I like to do is once we fold it I tape along the edge so that it stays folded while we're putting it over and it just makes it a little bit easier so when you're doing these hoop coops you have to remember that even though this hoop CP is 7 ft WI wide by 10 ft by 8 ft long you need a 16t tarp to make it over the top of the hoop coop whatever length the cattle panels were that you're starting with to make the Hoops that's the length of the tarp that you need so we need this tarp to be 8 ft by 16 ft so the first thing we're going to do is get this tarp folded to that size and then we'll bu able to throw over the top of the hoop coop so we need to turn right or is this oh no that's the 16t side so we need to turn it this [Music] way now this tarp is brown on one side and gray on the other we always like to have the gray side out so that's how we're going to do this so we're going to fold this at the size of the hoop coop so we laid this out next to the hoop coop and then we're just going to fold it so it's the size of the hoop coop I just wanted to show you again what I meant with the tape so I like to use this outdoor rated duct tape and what I'll do is first I'll just put a piece kind of here near the edge and I'll just tape it so let it's nice you don't have to go the whole length because this duct tape is expensive and really this once this is over the hoop coop the tape really isn't that important this is just to hold it in the right spot as you're putting it over the hoop coop so that the fold can be you know underneath the rest of the tarp it would be pretty hard to do this and keep it folded in exactly the right spot while you're pulling it over so we'll just put I don't know five or six pieces of this along the edge and that should be enough to hold it while we're putting this over and for the most part you never really want to cut a tarp because once you do that you're just asking for it to start to fray and it's going to be a lot weaker it's going to be a lot stronger if you just fold it over like this and really this front half of the uh hoop CP will just have a double layer tarp which hey that's okay gives them even Extra Protection careful not to snag it on anything do you want to go on the other side and I'll go on the inside oh we got it oo I'm snagging something over here we need to be [Music] careful so to attach the tarp to the uh baseboards what I like to use are what are called Fender washers which is just a washer with a real small hole in the center and then I use these inch and a half or I think these are inch and 58 deck screws and the two of those together just anchor those really well to the baseboards so that's what we're going to use it looks like seven on each side we'll start at the back and we'll work our way forward let me pull this more even along the bottom okay so on to the next part of today's project which is going to be anchoring the hoop CP to the ground and really we need to go and do this to all six of our hoop CPS now this is something we didn't think was ever going to be necessary we've been using these hoop coops now for the last four years our original two are four years old now and we we've never had a problem with them until this year so we just didn't ever think that this was going to be necessary we've had some huge winds and these things have never ever moved but we're getting more and more of these kind of popup storms that just come out of nowhere and just produce these super high winds and so I think going forward it's just going to be necessary whenever we build one to Anchor it right away so I've been looking at a lot of different ways to Anchor these and my original plan was to use like ground anchors which screw into the ground and really hold super tight in fact I ordered some on Amazon I ordered 24 of them enough to do our six hoop cops and part of the reason we waited a whole week to do finish this project up was because I was waiting for those to arrive but this morning I came out and I tried a couple of those off camera and you guys with our Rocky ground I just can't get them in the ground more than just probably about 6 in and that's not going to be enough to do what we need it to do so we've decided to do what we know Works around here which is to drive in tsts and so this is what we're going to do we're basically going to drive in tsts uh like one here and one at the back on each side it's not going to be necessarily the best looking way to do it uh but with our Rocky ground it's about the only thing that we can think of that will really work we're we're going to do the silky Coupe here first and then we'll move on to some of the [Applause] others all right now that our tsts are in it's time to actually start you know putting something on here to hold these to the ground now the one thing that I did buy that I was going to use with those ground staks that we still can use is this right here this is extra heavyduty paracord and originally I was going to use ratchet straps I was going to try to use ratchet straps but first of all ratchet straps that are 16 ft or longer we really need about 20 ft to go up and over and we need two per hoop coop so we need a dozen of them it just was way too expensive so that got me looking for Alternatives and I came across this paracord now normal paracord which I use for a lot of different things I always have a big spool of it around usually has a breaking strength of about 550 lb but this parac cord that I found on Amazon actually has a breaking strength of 1,000 lbs which I think is going to be plenty for what we're doing here in fact when I went to Walmart to price uh ratchet straps most of the ratchet straps had breaking points of less than 1,000 lb so this is actually stronger than most of the ratchet straps that they sold at Walmart at least for the kind of light and medium duty ones so this is what we're going to use um I think what we're going to do is we're just going to try to tie it as tight as we can around the toost in between two of these Nubs and then throw it over to the other side and then tie it as tight as we can on that side as well and I think that that will be plenty all we're really trying to do with this is hold these To The Ground by doing this hopefully these will never fly up in the air in the first place so it's not like this is really it's not like you're trying to dangle the hoop cop from this cord you're really just trying to prevent it from Ever Lifting Up in the first place so I think this is going to work out just fine so we're going to do this one here and see how that works and then we've got the quail hoop cop and the duck hoop cop in here yet to do and then you guys I want to give you an update on how the quail are doing in their new outdoor cage and Sarah has an exciting update for you on our dairy cows as well all right so like I said all we're going to try to do is tie this as tight as we can around the toost nice thing about this paracord is it doesn't really have a lot of give to it so it pretty much stays how you put it I really do think that's going to be strong enough enough you I'll try to check them occasionally and make sure nothing has come loose all right toss this over I really think that's going to be good good I think that it's going to be enough to just keep it on the ground in the first place and like I said if if we get a wind that can rip these toost out of the ground then we've got a bigger problem you know we probably going to have a lot of damage around the whole Homestead so I think this is going to work let's get these other ones done quickly so we can move on to those updates for you guys [Music] okay [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] well all three hoop coops here in wdv are now anchored to the ground the other three hoop coops that we have we're not going to do today well we are going to make sure that those are done before we are expecting any more bad weather we're getting a couple sprinkles this afternoon but it's not supposed to be anything bad it's not supposed to last long all right let's move on to an update on the quail so it has been one week today since we moved the quail to this new outdoor what I'm calling an Aviary it's a hoop coop up on a platform so that they can live on Solid ground with shavings instead of living in wire cages so uh I'm first of all I got to tell you guys now I know we're only a week in but as of right now I am very pleasantly surprised with how it's going the quail first of all seem happy if there's a way to tell if a quail is Happy there's been no fighting that I've seen at all and I've spent some time out here watching them I haven't seen any fighting at all um the eggs have not been terrible to find they're not laying in the little baskets that I put in there for them but they are spending a lot of time in those just having fun playing in the hay that I put in there um mostly they're laying either in those little v-shaped shelters that I built for them well let's go inside so for the most part what I was starting to say outside for the most part what they're doing is they're laying underneath these little hiding spots that I made for them so all I do every morning is I come in here first of all I just look around and I look for any that are just laying out in the open which honestly for the most part I have only found a few that are just out in the open then I tip each one of these over and as you can see like under this one there's two eggs already today I'm going to leave those there I'll get them I always collect quail eggs in the morning cuz I'm not exactly sure they kind of lay all throughout the day so I just collect them in the morning it's fine in the winter I'll probably need to collect in the evening so they don't freeze over night but right now this is fine so all I do is I come and I tip each one of these over I grab any that I can see and then I kind of fluff the bedding up underneath them and sometimes there's a couple buried under there so right now we have 25 Quail in here 25 females and some of them are really young so they're just starting to lay I'm getting about 18 eggs a day 12 to 18 eggs a day um which I think is great and I think that's going to ramp up as all of these younger female I'll start laying so I'm very happy with that I'm also happy to report that for the most part I mean now it's been a week but the bedding is staying much cleaner and drier than I thought it would um I think we're going to get at least 2 to 3 weeks out of the bedding before I need to replace it so that's good uh I do have these Waters and I have them in one of these pans so if there is any water that spills it stays in these pans and same with their feed so you guys it's going really well I'm really really happy um I think the quailes seem happy and that's really what we want is Happy animals here on our Homestead well you guys it's been a long time since we have been over here by any of the cows but specifically the dairy cows and we do have some really great announcements or things to share with you guys bye babe uh the first one is we've had some questions even though we did talk about it in a previous video we had some questions about whether or not our dairy cows ever got breed uh and yes both of them did now we had a hard time getting Rose bread through Ai and we tried a very long time probably longer than we should have but we really wanted her to be bred to Jersey stock um it didn't happen and it didn't happen and then back in November we decided you know what we're just going to put her in with our registered Herford bull because we were also so disappointed about what what had been going on with her and AI we never had babe aied and so when we put Rose in with text our bull we decided to just put babe in with him as well and long story short she got bread as well you may notice that Rose is not here uh babe is there and actually we have our yearling beef heers here and our steer but Rose is not here uh not too long ago a family uh from our church approached us about possibly buying one of our dairy cows and so we made the decision that number one our family doesn't need two cows in milk and soon enough we would have two cows in milk and so we wanted to bless them with a dairy cow and thought that Rose would be the best one uh to go to them because she already knows the process the family that bought bought her from us is first time dairy cow owners and we thought that we could help them along and we thought that Rose would be a perfect match for them because she is so good on the milking stand uh she can either be um machine milked or hand milked I did actually do both with her and we just think that she's going to be a great family cow for them so that means that we have babe and only babe for our deir needs here on the homee said she is due to calav in November and so we are anxiously awaiting that time and I've been starting to work with her a little bit trying to get her used to coming up to the milking Barn I'm hoping to get her up on the milking stanion pretty soon so she knows where to go and what she's supposed to do and that she gets comfortable with that process before she calves now along with babe over on this side of the driveway you may notice all of these other beef Cows as well they're actually heers these are our heers that were born last summer the beginning of last summer and we've got four of them over here these are the daughters of our bull Tex so we've separated them out right now because Tex is in with all of the cows breeding them and we didn't want these guys to get bred back to their father even though some farmers will do that um we didn't want to do that so we decided to move them away and wait until next summer to breed them Tex is almost done with his job for the year which is trying to get all of our grown cows pregnant um I think he's doing a very good job I've seen him doing his job and he looks like he's getting it done so uh once Tex is finished with the girls this year we're actually going to be selling him um we didn't really want to because he has really been a fantastic bull for us and he's young he's got a lot of life left in him but because we're saving back his daughters from last year and we were actually lucky enough to get four more heers out of him this year uh that we're going to be saving as permanent members here on the farm uh we just can't keep Tex any longer we need to get a new bull next spring so let's walk over I'll show you what Tex looks like and we'll talk a little more over there so on this this is the other side of our driveway here this is where we have our M our main herd where we have all of cows and the Cals that were born this year and then you can see Tex right there Tex is a registered Herford Bull and he is a fantastic bull he like I said he's just been really great for us good U good natured has never been aggressive he is a ped Herford so he doesn't have horns and none of his calves will have horns so that's good now every year that we've had Tex he's gotten every one of our cows pregnant and we've had some fantastic calves out of him so we are going to be selling him when we get rid of uh when we get done with him this year which will probably be sometime in October so if anybody is interested looking for a register Herford bull he will be going up for sale at the end of this month at the end of October or sometime in October you can send us an email and we'll be happy to send you information about [Music] him yes we hear you looks like everybody's excited normally when we're standing by a gate like this it's because we're going to come over here and move them and let them go to another pasture so they think that's what's happening even though it's not that's why they're all standing here well you guys that's what's going on on the homestead today uh you know when like I said earlier when you're living this homesteading or farming lifestyle you never know what's going to happen we had big plans for this week already to do another project that we're not ready to show you now and instead we had to be rebuilding hoop coops but you know you can't get up upset about that kind of stuff weather comes and you just got to deal with it as it comes and and move on so exciting I'm excited about the quail I'm glad that I got to share with you guys that that's working out well I'll continue to give you updates if if it either keeps going well or starts going bad I'll tell you either way and I'm excited now that you guys know when babe is going to C that'll be sometime in mid to late November so I'm really excited to show you guys her calf and you know put her through the milking process she's a heer she's never been milked so we need to get her up on the stand uh get her used to all of that so that's exciting new things coming also right you guys if you're enjoying our videos we would sure love it if you would subscribe to our Channel and remember that the best way you can help us here on the homestead is just to share our videos on your social media until next time thank you so much for stopping by our Homestead take care and God bless God bless

Channel: Living Traditions Homestead

Views: 96,583

Keywords: Living Traditions Homestead, Missouri, Ozark's, homesteading, Ozarks, self-sufficient, homesteaders, unjobbing

Id: 9X9xGyIajw0

Length: 29min 55sec (1795 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 13 2023