Homestead One Day

Tag: fail

Quail experiment…aka things the videos leave out…

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On January 14, 2023

In Animal Health, Livestock

I raised cortunix quail several years ago and impulsively bought a bunch of young chicks from a fellow vendor at a farmer’s market. So cute! So small!

I already had a brooder setup, using a watering trough plus cover plus light. Puppy pads were bedding because the first few days I like to make sure they don’t eat the bedding. Chick sized feeders, quail sized waterers (shallow and narrow so they can’t drown). They were quickly snuggled into their spot, shown the water and food, and seemed happy for a couple of days…

….and then they started dying off. Day 3-5 I lost almost half the group. No particular reason! I started asking around and apparently that’s the norm now? Seems they don’t transition to feed and once the yolk sac is gone, so are they. I do NOT remember that from all the babies I raised! I hatched out almost a hundred and didn’t lose that much…so it appears the lines are weaker now.

And the SMELL. OMG. I thought the ducks were bad as babies…but these were worse. Yes, it’s possible. Ducks smelled like wet feed, these smelled like rotting feed. And the FEATHER DUST…my allergies said no more. They were dustier than all the chickens and ducks combined. Below is a picture of the mess from two days…and not that many birds for the area. Ugh.

Found out the breeder I got mine from had lost a bunch due to power outages from a storm…half jokingly offered to sell back the ones I had left. They accepted and a day later…I’m done with quail. Experiment over.

Unless I can find a line that doesn’t have 40-50% chick mortality, and raise outside on wire bottoms, they are not worth it for me…chalk this one up to experience! A disappointing one…but last I checked they were happily being used as breeders so it worked out.

So all those videos claiming how easy quail are? They leave the hard stuff out. You’ve been warned!

Herbicide Carry Over

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On December 9, 2022

In Garden and growing

https://content.ces.ncsu.edu/herbicide-carryover

This is something I heard about a few years go and stsrted seeing crop up in forums more and more recently.

Imagine you carefully prepared your garden…brought in good soil (or were lucky enough to already have some)…added a few bags of manure…raked it all out …set up your planting areas…lovingly planted the seeds you spent hours researching…

Yipee! Baby plants! You dote over them. You take pictures and share them online for the world to see.

And then…at only a few inches tall your baby plants start to get curly leaves when they should be straight. Then they turn yellow! Next thing you know…they fall over and die.

What happened? Too much water? Not enough water? Wrong light? Someone dumped a bucket of straight urine on the whole thing? Blaming the cat? The dog? You know it wasn’t the goats or there’d be nothing left…

Turns out certain herbicides don’t just disappear after killing the undesirable plants in hay crops. And many of the plants for food happen to share the same family as the undesirable one. So, the chemical manages to pass through the cow, goat, horse, sheep, rabbit, etc digestive tract and stays in the manure.

Then when you hopped along and bought the store bagged manure…it was waiting. And destroyed your garden. Fun part? Everywhere you added manure will be useless this planting season and maybe a couple unless you want to grow hay in that spot.

And it’s not just store bought manure. Any manure can have this, even your own animals unless you don’t feed hay. The only way to know for sure the manure is clean is make your own hay for the ruminates…and that will take space and time. You can try to find manure from a ruminant raiser who feeds hay without herbicide in it, but it’s still a gamble.

I asked at a feed store if their hay had been grown with grazon… they had no idea and didn’t seem interested in finding out even after I explained why. As a small animal raising person, feed stores are my only way to get hay. This tells me how hard it would be to find “clean” hay unless you can store a semi trailer or more and go directly to a farmer.

The only way to slow this is to go the regulatory route and demand that anyone using these chemicals much clearly mark the bales so the end user knows its there…and then force commercial manure sellers to clearly label that their manure may have the chemicals in it and list the symptoms that will show if it is affecting plants.

Sugarcane growing experiment…total failure!

By

On August 24, 2022

In Garden and growing

Imagine a sweet smell. Sweeter. Keep going. Sickly sweet…now add in undertones of the bottom of a garbage can. Top it off with old aquarium water that needed changing a month ago….

Yea…that was what the sugarcane smelled like in 2 weeks. One tiny bud tried and gave up…root nodes swelled and then rotted…no matter how often I changed the water white scum was on it.

No pictures because once I picked up the containers on the final day I had to get them off the porch to save my nose. Fail!

What went wrong? Well, after looking at the cane that didn’t get planted I noticed it was covered in white mold! So it seems it came with the canes.

Also, looking back, I didn’t wipe the saw blade down with rubbing alcohol like I probably should have.

I will do this again…sugarcane is one of my wish list items. What will I do differently? I will scrub the canes with soap and water and then wipe them and the cutting implement with rubbing alcohol. I may also dip them in rooting hormone and use soil instead.

That’s why it was an experiment! Until next time…..

Tractor is down :(

By

On June 11, 2022

In equipment repair

Today’s project was pulling the last side of the big animal pen fence straight and moving the posts over. We used t posts which tend to get stuck in the ground, especially when the ground is wet.

Previous attempts at pulling the metal t posts out included wrestling them out by wiggling them in all directions (posts always end up bent) , using a pry bar to pry them up (not successful), and using an engine hoist to jack them out. The engine hoist works great but is too hard to wrestle through the mud once it rains so that was out.

So today we thought we’d try and get the tractor! We can loop a strap around the bucket hooks, loop around the t post, and then just lift with the bucket! Backs saved , posts straight, everyone’s happy!

I grab the keys and walk out to the tractor tent. Hop on, turn on the glow plugs, then start the engine. All good! I grab the lever and go to lift up the bucket….uh oh…bucket only moved an inch. Hrm…checked I was moving it right and yep. Settled an inch when I pulled it down but that was all…

I hopped off and went back to the backhoe controls to see if it was just the bucket. Tried to move the stabilizers andddddd…. nada. Zip. Zero. Zilch.

That can only mean one thing…hydraulic system is down. Looked underneath and finally saw where the back area is wet…so either I’ve blown a line or a seal. At least, I hope it’s that simple.

When I bought the tractor I had to buy a warranty since it was financed. I was told everything but the tow charge is included in it..so tomorrow I’ll be calling the dealer for a service call. I’m not looking forward to either the tow bill or the downtime! Hopefully it’ll be a quick and simple fix. I am filing this under “problems” category for sure!

And the t post removal? Back to wiggling and digging with the post hole digger around the posts. Saw a video on YouTube that said not to wiggle the posts side to side to avoid bending, wiggle them front to back only. Tried that and it 90 percent worked. The 10 percent was one post that was already bent so it didn’t seem to matter. Straightened it out by inserting one end into a pipe truck bumper and leaning on it until it was straight ish.

Thought the job was done after 2 hours but discovered pulling the last side pulled a corner post out six inches despite bracing. So we’ll have to figure out how to re brace the corner in a way that will not allow the goats to climb out. More fun!

Greens to lace…overnight

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On April 19, 2022

In Garden and growing

So much for my mustard greens! Overnight they were eaten to this. I suspect lubber grasshoppers as I squished several dozen a few days before finding this. Me 0 bugs 1. Need to bump up the plans for a screen house or covered rows it seems.

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