New Mineral Feeders for the Cows and Getting Ready for Pigs.

more Maya Warren Lucy looks like you guys are enjoying the shade morning sheep yeah it's a beautiful day today hey guys I'm Evan and welcome to Country View Acres so today I got a bunch of little jobs to do and most of that's gonna deal around the animals the livestock and then we also have pigs coming in a couple days so we need to kind of get ready for that but first thing I'm going to do is start out here with steers and I need to do something about this water trough so this water trough slowly sunk in the ground and became unlevel so then it started pouring out getting the ground wet and of course the steers want to cool their feet off and they just want to stand in that and they have turned this into a muddy mess so I really want this area here to dry up so what I'm going to do is I'm going to dump the water trough and move it to the other end now it does seem a little counterproductive dumping all that water on the ground but I don't really have much of a choice we're going to put it at the other end of the pasture and we're going to feed it from a water hydrant that's in the white pole barn back there and then we're going to adjust this float on here because it auto fills and this float I've got it off right now I turned this off last night when I found it um but I had that set so that the water level was like right next to the edge and as long as it was on nice level ground it worked fine well obviously I should set the float so it's probably about three inches from the top and that would be probably a lot safer level not having to worry about spilling over so there is a cap down here at the bottom of this water trough where we can drain this out fairly quick There She Goes so I decided to use the truck to move this water trough don't mind me boys just coming by well see if I can do this without getting on muddy there we go foreign trouble with this wanting to drip and if it's full of water you can't get in here and tighten it so Now's the Time to make sure this is tight see as I tighten that it's actually wanting to loosen the other side which is attached to the tank this is going to require two wrenches you like my nice little cute set of channel locks well now I need something for the hose now hopefully that don't drip well this hose just reaches only got about an extra foot of length it's about perfect all right she's filling up that's probably going to take at least a half an hour maybe more move on to the next job well I finally got a mineral feeder for the steers and for the cows so this is one that sits on the ground and they open up and eat the mineral out of these are not cheap well everything to do with cattle is not cheap this was probably I think this was 275 dollars a piece for these I ended up getting two one for this pasture and one for the other side foreign thing I noticed the other day is this black flap on top when it is in the sun it gets so hot it burns you so we're gonna make sure these are in the shade so under this flap right here there is three different compartments where you can put three different sets of mineral and the steers and the cows they're curious creatures they could come up here and just start lifting that up and start looking for it my initial thought was that I probably needed to train them to it if they're not used to one of these and I thought about taking the flap off so that they could easily see it and get to it and put the mineral in there and then in a few days put the flap over the top of it but the nut on the top I have to have a very long socket wrench to go the whole depth of this thing to reach the back side of that bolt to get the flap off so that's proving not to be very easy so I'm gonna go ahead and find a wrench see if I can get the flap off of there this may not even need to be done I mean maybe maybe this is overkill maybe I'm going a little bit too far um because they'll probably eventually find it but uh I think I'm just going to go ahead and go take the flap out so that they find the mineral today and start getting some in their system start getting used to it I put two extensions together hopefully that's long enough so I've got two types of mineral to put in here and the first one is Redmond fine salt but this has the garlic added to it and ever since I watched farmer Tyler Ranch and he always used those garlic salt blocks I've been wanting to try that to see if it helps out with the Flies so we've got that to put in here and then the other one we have is a Redmond beef mineral mix now this is when you look at their website this says this is really strictly for beef cattle not dairy cattle not sheep not goats um this is strictly recommended for beef so I'm going to put both of these in here two different compartments I about guarantee they'll eat this one first because I think the garlic is going to seem weird to them because they're not used to garlic but we're gonna go ahead and put both of these in here and see how they eat it so I was able to find a Redmond dealer not too far away from here using their they got like an online Search tool to find their dealers and uh yeah there's only one about a half hour away from me it's just on the Indiana side of the river these do come with little cups if you want to mix it with feed got to remember take those out now for the regular salt with garlic now this one is recommended for all animals so I can use this with the dairy cows with the beef cows with the sheep and with the goats so that's the good thing wow I just got a whiff of that I can I mean I can smell it like a foot away that is some there's some strong garlic to that wow [Applause] by looking at it you really can't tell the difference between the two but oh my goodness that is that is crazy how strong the garlic scent isn't that go ahead just put the small flaps back on leave it like that and then we'll store we'll store this big flap for now all right water's done filling up so we are about three inches from the top on this side that backside over there is probably five inches down it's obviously not perfectly level but less chance overflowing now so this mineral feeder is made to Anchor to the ground it's got three holes in it for you to drive spikes into the ground and hold it in place that way the steers can't move it so I might have to go back to the workshop we're going to make a few anchors for these well I came in here to make sure that this hose that wasn't leaking because I put a repair thing on here but this is what I did fine leaking look at that it's leaking right out of the hydrant so this nut right here is like will tighten up the the packing to seal this off so we're going to try tightening that up see if that'll fix this leak all right the problem is I'm turning the whole water hydrant the whole thing is spinning so I'm probably going to get a pipe wrench to back this up because I don't want to spin that or else down in the ground it's trying to spin the fitting down there too and it'll break something it's tightening at all I think I'm it's just rounding over this the flats and that's a good Craftsman three-quarter inch and is not turning that brass packing nut so so I am to the point where I just need to tighten it so probably don't care if I destroy it a little bit at this point in time finally like broke free I think it was all the paint okay that's probably like a half a turn see if she leaks well you can see it's not leaking anymore yes that brass nut has seen better days but at least we don't have a water leak that would have been I had been probably hundreds of gallons a day leaking out of that that would have cost quite a bit of money then when I have to tear this all apart to fix it so at least we got it somewhat repaired I'm gonna go ahead and make some anchors out of this uh I think it's half inch rebar so now I'm just going to weld a fender washer to the top of the rebar and they're all going to look something like this so now I just gotta set up the same thing for the sheep and the cows here there ain't nothing in it yet Maya hold on [Applause] so this is just the regular salt with the garlic added you gonna try it and this one was good for all species animals so should be good in here with the cows and sheeps and the goats what do you think of that Maya hmm both of you tried it out didn't you I'm kind of surprised to be honest with you I thought it'd take a little while you're gonna have garlic breath now well apparently the milk cows approve I couldn't get the steers to get up this one's to lay in the shade so this Redmond salt I believe it's mined in Utah it's naturally occurring has a bunch of natural minerals mixed in with the salt and Maya still wants to lick the bag so besides the the mineral salt the other thing I know people use in these is going to be the dried kelp or the the dried seaweed they will put that in there and that has a bunch of I believe it's a bunch of micronutrients in it that can supplement the cattle as well but I'm not sure what else you can use in these loose mineral feeders like this so there's three pockets in there so it'd be interesting to see if there's something else we could come up with for the other two pockets because right it now we've just got the regular garlic salt in there so be interesting if you guys use something else besides seaweed or the the mineral salt it'd be interesting to know what you guys put in there for for cattle or sheep no no don't mess with my camera it's not food it's not covered in salt so now that they know that the salt is in there I'm going to go ahead and put the flap back on top of it because the flap keeps the rain out but it also keeps it from accidentally pooping in it keeps the goats and the sheep from climbing in it you girls are smart no don't they're licking my camera stop it stop it oh come on come on Maya this is not food get the cow kisses off the camera now you got to just flip the flap up if you want to get in it okay see put your head in there hi Lucy how are you oh sure you'll get close to me and won't let me get close to you well you give them a little bit more time and I'm sure they'll be opening that up on their own and and getting as much salt as they want so they definitely are liking it but I don't think the boys have even found it yet and I don't even think you guys have made it to the other side of the pasture to the water trough even you guys just been lounging around all day so these steers ended up breaking our feed trough so it is going uphill so it's taller on this side shorter on that side short enough that they were able to step inside and punch a hole straight through it so oh well now some now a lot of their feed ends up going down the hole so I see another project in the future probably end up having to build a new feed trough this time I may end up making it out of metal so I may go down to the place where I buy my metal and have them bend a piece of sheet metal and then weld up the sides and some legs and make my own feed trough we'll have to see but I think that is a choice rather than buying one I may just try to fabricate my own that we can mount here along the fence line so the next thing on my list is to clean up the pig pen it is completely overgrown so you can see the hog Hooch right there we've got weeds growing up it is very tall some of these weeds are very tall these are taller than I am right there now I'm not going to clean out the whole pig pen I probably want to mow around the perimeter where the fence goes and I just want to get this knocked down here in front because this is where we feed and water the pigs the rest of it I'm just going to leave because the pigs will root through it and they'll clean it up themselves [Applause] [Music] well the lawnmower won't actually fit in here between the feeders and the hog Hooch so I'll have to do this with a weed eater but I can still go around and get all the fence line clear [Music] all right well now I just need to close up the back of their pen with a hog panel and apparently it's turned into a trellis oh for all these Vines oops I hooked the post there we go all right we got the pigs training pin all closed back in this is where the pigs will grow out for several weeks and we're going to train them on electric fence in here and then once they're big enough and trained up then they're going to get a roam all of this back here because we're going to put up like a three wire electric fence and it'll go all the way around here through the woods back there and they'll have they'll have you know an acre acre and a half or something that they'll be able to roam around here in the woods and that's the way we typically have been raising the pigs the last few years and this year we're going to get four we're going to get one more than last year so it'll be the most We've Ever Raised so we're thinking about making the the electric perimeter fence we're thinking about expanding that a little bit more give them a little bit more room and give them more areas to clean out for us as well so if you don't if you've been watching the channel you know that they they cleared out this area back here you can't tell it but they uncovered all the junk and trash that was left here by previous owners and we were able to get that all picked up and put in dumpsters and the pigs just really helped us out they rooted up that area and kind of pulled up all the trash where it was easy for us to pick to to pick it up so I think all I need to do now is I just need to get the water trough bleached out I don't even know if we have any bleach but it's gonna definitely need cleaned out and get the water it's like a water tank with little drinkers on it for the pigs and I need to get that cleaned out and then I think we're pretty much ready for pigs well the steers have finally moved from this end of the pasture to the other end so I'm gonna go find out whether they've checked out these minerals or not because I'd like to get them covered up as well I don't want them pooping in their minerals either so let's go out there see what they think they may have just walked to this end because that one over there just walked up to the mineral feeder I watched him sniff it a little bit and now I can tell he was licking the minerals so they may have just got over here for the first time I think the first one was eating the garlic one that's definitely the one that attracts their nose yep that one's eating the garlic one too all right now he's going to go for the beef mineral [Laughter] strong buddy like you don't like the taste in your mouth so the last deer came over and he started smelling it and he's tried the garlic salt probably four or five times now and he keeps going back for more so seems like it's a it's a success this steer right here was the only one that acted like he didn't quite like the garlic I figured it'd be an acquired taste and I'm really actually surprised that four out of five kept going back for more this is the only one that didn't so now that all three steers have eight from the mineral feeder I'll probably come back out here in just a second and I'll put that rubber flap over the top and prevent them from accidentally pooping or peeing inside of that and ruin and all that salt but at least we are ready for pigs in two days and um I think I'm gonna spend the rest of the day when it cools down this evening I'm probably going to work out in the garden and hoping to get that finished up this weekend as well and uh finally I'll feel like maybe I'm caught up around here I felt like I've been so far behind but I think all of the big projects you know get in the stairs getting the cows getting the hay baled and now finally hopefully tomorrow evening or sometime this weekend we'll get the garden all finished up and planted and then I'll finally feel like I'm caught up around here but I think that's going to be it for this video guys so thanks for watching I'll see you in the next one foreign

Channel: Country View Acres

Views: 67,291

Keywords: Homestead, farm, farmstead, hobby farm, self sufficient, homesteading, rural life, country life, farm life, mineral feeder, Redmond, Garlic Salt, mineral salt, cattle, cows

Id: VZLscKGzoeg

Length: 21min 43sec (1303 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 08 2023