Have them watch the series ‘Deadwood’. The pig pen is used to dispose of a LOT of bodies…
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lol They will eat everything but the teeth.
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Brick Top uses them in Snatch, too. He even breaks down how many bodies you can feed into the system…
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A practical small scale system could be prototyped at DMS, then each member of the build team and any member in general who was interested, could set one up at their home.
Something similar to this, for growing salad, etc.
Let me know and I’ll join you. I have some good AP links and they are by no means the best or authoritative but they do inspire me to learn more about it and put it on my to-do list. I’ll put them together and post them some time.
BTW, Sunday I got a call from the Sheriff in Mt. Vernon. “Your cows are out.” Tree fell down over some fence. Drives me crazy. I’m not making any money on them and they are just trouble because I can’t be out there all the time. It doesn’t take much to keep an agricultural appraisal on the land and just cutting some hay if sufficient. I think I may sell them all.
Problem is that when you let pasture land just grow back, nasty stuff grows back - weeds, all kinds of thorny stuff like honey locust. My favorite part of my property is that which has not been cleared. I would like to know how to get pasture land back to some sort of natural habitat that is extremely low or no maintenance.
Too much equipment, diesel, chemicals, time and work to keep pasture land suitable for grazing.
Maybe plant some native trees and keep out the nasty stuf,f like locust, for a while and just ignore the weeds and briars. If the trees can survive then things may come back after a while but I’m just guessing that might work.
A huge reason we got away from cattle is the costs. For a 6 month old Angus it was around 600-900 dollars. For the same for a sheep is around 50-100 dollars. Price per lb you can get more for the lamb meat especially with the various ethnic groups here in the Dallas area and if one dies for whatever reason, you are not out as much money as cattle. For your place, when you are talking about all of the weeds,etc… you need some goats. Then process them and either throw some native grass seeds out there or see what that does. Pain to keep in unless your fencing is fort knox but amazing to get rid of weeds, poison ivy,etc… And advice for your honey locusts, burn themmmmmm. Those are some nasty trees. And for your AG exemption, have your thought about timber. You don’t have to process the timber but if you have enough you can claim that. My parents have that one their land out in Goldthwaite. That terrain is not good for anything but goats so they have it timber exempt.
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I’m fighting mesquites over in Jones County. I have some Reclaim and surfactant, but the feed store was out of Sendero. I’ll mix up the reclaim and the surfactant with some oil and go to town on mesquites hopefully this weekend.
I’d like to learn more about farming and especially how to start and drive my new-to-me Case 2594 tractor.
Wow, you are way out there near Abilene. If you were closer, I could have shown you how to start and drive your Case.
What’s not to know? This all seems pretty self-explanatory…
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Thanks, Brad. Great ideas. Here are some thoughts.
Timber - yes - those trees are way easier to keep in than the cows.
Goats - good idea - in fact, we have lots of what the locals call ‘goat weed’. It’s just a fast growing weed that takes over. Might be worth the extra fencing not to have to mow and do weed control. My wife is from Australia and knows sheep farming well.
The locust still drive me crazy. I have a 15’ bat wing Rhino mower that will chew up lots of them but they just come back from the roots and must also be from seeds that get dropped somehow. I realize that if you keep mowing you will eventually kill them off but they are so nasty - thorns on the thorns that will puncture anything. I guess getting the big ones down then mowing will help but they seem to come out of nowhere. Goats would help as well.
Our goats would NOT eat “goat weed” in any meaningful way (except enough to ruin the flavor of their milk, if you cared about that).
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Hmmm - what is the ‘goats per acre’ needed for effective mowing? I would have to figure out if I was just opening a bigger can o’ worms.
Do they need winter feed? Ongoing special attention of any sort like worming, meds, special feeds? Then there is the issues of how to manage breeding. Separate ram paddocks? Keeping track of pedigrees to prevent inbreeding, etc?
Might love it if I could just turn them loose and not do much management except for keeping them contained but I imagine that’s not the case.
That would depend on your region, how many acres, forage (Crude protein percentage) on land and breed of goat. Yes, normally they would need some hay in the winter but you can find the crappiest weediest hay and they will love it. Just stay away from hay with thistle. My wife is a Veterinarian Tech (think Nurse +xray tech + dentist,etc… but for animals) and they get a lot of calls for spikes in mouths from thistles and whatnot.
Worming is easy, there is a bag wormer (pellets) out there that we use. I cannot remember the name but would know the bag once I saw it. No special feeds. And breeding management is up to you. If you let them just breed (hands off approach) then you will have to make sure you sell off the babies before they come into rut or you will get what is called line breeding, aka incest. Some people do this,we only do this with the chickens, no other animals. Too many birth defects,etc… This goes along with breeds. That depends on what you want. Best meat breed is Boer. They are hardy and great meat. Best for milk if you want to go that route (and you don’t have to milk them) is Nubian.
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Brad, We could do a small version of this at DMS. Cool stuff!
There is line breeding and it is not the same as inbreeding
When doing only outcrossing, genetic defects will not show up,
Finde in you are only breeding for production and you intend to sell
almost all you produce. If you want to develop a genetic line with the traits you want
then you will likely want to look at some line breeding, as you will also start to force genetic
problems out to where they can be eliminated, In breeding does that
a lot quicker, but you will get more problems showing up,
but then you can eliminate those sires and dams from your line
And I have never heard a breeder call it incest,
if you really want some, keep an eye on Craigslist. There’s a post no longer accessible for free ones (presumably because you are not allowed to list “livestock” or “pets” or any other animal on CL freebies section). I’m betting they’ll get re-posted some other way…
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Most, not all, non farm people don’t understand line breeding so that is why I said incest.