Tumbling into Turkey Time

The farm is marching on into its busy season very rapidly. Fencing is going up, slower then I would like, but there is progress every week. All of the remaining posts are in the ground and braces are built. It is basically a matter of running the remaining wire. That being said, it will likely take me and my super helper Jim a couple of weeks at the rate that we are able to work on the fence, but we are making good progress.

Last Batch of Turkeys Ranging

The weather here has been dry for over two weeks now and it has been great for our poultry. The last batch of chickens and the first batch of turkeys went to the locker a week ago.  The chicken weights are about a pound larger than they have been for some time. I moved the last/second batch of turkeys this year a week ago to range on the orchard. These turkeys are doing very well and get moved about once a week to a new paddock.

We have also teamed up with an Amish family from the Drakesville area to provide additional turkeys for our customers. Their turkeys are from the same source as mine, are raised in pasture pens, and have a similar ration to my ration with the addition of oats (but the same mineral base). We will try to get customers our birds first, but our supply of turkeys raised on this farm is very limited because of the bad weather back in August. 

We did our October deliveries last week to Ames, Des Moines, and Pella; and so now by the end of the week I'm so tired Janice is typing this while I dictate. I also made a trip to Drakesville to pick up some of the Amish birds on Tuesday; now I'm in the market for more freezers. They are very full right now and the new freezer will have to contend for space with some of the windows stored in the corner of the shop.

Planted Nine Fruit Trees

We've added nine trees to the orchard, they were a gift from my mother-in-law. I've been watering them frequently in this dry weather. There are 5 pears, 2 cherries, and 2 apples.

Burning off Brush Piles from Spring

I finally, finally burned off the brush piles from cuttings back in February and March. I burned 7 off today because it's supposed to rain tomorrow and this is the first time it's actually been dry enough to burn these piles. Some of them still have wet ground underneath them even though it's been about 3 weeks since our last rain. I left a couple piles behind for wildlife cover. 

Over the next couple of weeks Janice will be on a business trip for a few days so I'll be watching Hazel more, keeping up with fencing, and trying to market turkeys. I'll be trying to stay ahead of the curve going into fall, stay tuned to find out how well I do with that. 

Going the Distance

It has been about a month since we blogged about farm progress. I have been building fence with every free moment and have been getting a lot of help from Jim in Pella. We have finished fencing out the south waterway, and are now focusing on finishing the south side of the large north draw. The video is a quick pan of the south waterway. Jim and I should have the last of the posts sunk and all the remaining braces built by the end of this week. The goal is to start laying out wire this weekend and to be all done with fencing by the end of October. That is a very high hurdle.

Completed South Waterway Fencing

The chickens and turkeys are all coming along well. This weather has been fantastic. It has been dry for over two weeks now. The local weather station said back when we had 12 strait dry days that it had been over three years since such an event had occurred. Our locker date is next Friday, and I can honestly say that our chickens have not been this large in some time. They are doing great. The turkeys love to attack the cat litter scoop that I use to clean dropping out of the feeder. I took a video of them going after the scoop after one of them picked it up and carried it off.

Turkeys at Play

The sheep and cattle are now working their way onto the neighbor's land. I am renting the 10 acres of pasture to north of us from now until the end of April. It is a pretty rough piece of ground, but after two passes with the sheep and cattle, it should be looking much better.

Recently Rented Ground On the Horizon

I have been moving hay made on the pasture just north of our rented land. It was made by our neighbor to the south of us.  That will give us 19 bales to try to get through the winter with. I think that will carry us from February into mid-April. We will try to graze up until the end of January. That might be possible as long as we do not get a winter like last year.

Moving Hay with our Massey Ferguson 135

On top of all of this, I have an INCA Planning workshop, I will be planting 9 fruit trees, and I will be helping to do some flowering perennial transplant work at our church. Things are never quiet on the farm when we are going the distance. 

A Concern For Beginning Livestock Farmers, A Commodity Grain Bubble

Maybe you have noticed that the price of food at many grocery stores have gone up. These prices increases are linked to an increase in commodity grain prices. Commodity grain prices (Corn, Soybeans, Wheat, rice, etc.) are increasing for several reasons.

The first is climate change. A massive drought in Russia and wet conditions elsewhere are sending wheat prices soaring. As weather has become more volatile (more persistent droughts and more torrential rainfall), grain supplies have become less consistent and prices have become more volatile. Since grains can often be substituted for other grains, they all become volatile when one becomes volatile.

Demand for commodity grains has also increased as populations in developing counties have become more affluent and can spend more money on foods, like meats. 

Another alarming force driving up commodity prices is speculation. Since the crash in the markets in 2008 and the subsequent fall in oil prices, there has been a considerable amount of investment money sitting out the sidelines. This money has been looking for a place to go make money after sitting in "safe" places like treasury notes. With the upward trends in commodity prices speculative forces have been moving considerable funds in those directions applying further upward pressure on prices and generating a likely bubble in commodity grains. 

Inflated grain prices hurt livestock producers by increasing what they pay for feed and eliminating thin margins. The same is true for us beginning livestock farmers. As an example, I was paying $0.13 per pound of poultry feed a month ago and now it is up to $0.22 per pound, about a 40% increase in a month. 

I am worried about what the future might hold for us beginning livestock farmers. Many of us rely on quick turn around animals like poultry and hogs to cash flow our business. To lessen our reliance on purchased feed, we have been and will continue to expand our lamb business. Our lamb rely on no purchased grains and as such have a much more stable pricing and margin for us to rely on in the future. 

Cattle & Sheep out on Pasture, Low Input Agriculture at its Finest

Now it is time for our shameless plug. We have 4 lambs going to the locker in the middle of October and they will be ready for our November delivery runs. 

Whole Lamb: $235 (approx. 40-50 lbs of meat)

1/2 Lamb: $125 (approx. 20-25 lbs of meat)

Lamb Chops: $10 per pound

Leg Roast: $8.50 per pound (likely 4-5 pounds each)

Rack of Lamb: $12 per pound

Ground Lamb: $5.50 per pound

Stew/Kabob Meat: $6 per pound

Another One Bites the Dust

I have made some progress recently, getting the last batch of chickens outside, and getting the surviving older turkeys set-up for ranging, despite not having any free weekends in August to stay caught up with.

The Last Batch of Chickens for 2010

Older Turkeys Ranging and Resting in Portable Roost

Unfortunately, this morning I had to bury one of my best ewes. I just found her dead in the middle of the herd this morning with no visible cause of death. The number of dead animals on the farm this year has been disheartening. We have to my tally lost 4 ewes, 6 lambs, 26 layers to predators, a handful of broiler chickens, and over 200 turkeys. Losing the lambs hurts, but the loss of so many turkeys is really hard on morale and our bottom line. Normally, I have always enjoyed turkeys, but this year I just want to wash my hands of that side of the business. Turkeys usually have a high mortality rate of 10 to 20 percent, but this year it is close to 80 percent. I have been on some list serves and have found that many others have struggled with turkeys this year. The wet weather is the direct culprit of about 25% of the turkey deaths, with smothering making up most of the remaining 75% of losses. Since we are on pace to finish only 60 turkeys this year (we finished 125 last year), I have made arrangements for an additional batch of birds yet this year. I have 50 birds purchased and are currently being brooded on another farm before they come to me. This last batch will be ready in mid-December. Too late for Thanksgiving, but in time for Christmas. I am not looking forward to this batch of birds because they will represent numerous challenges to raise during the colder months. I am hoping that we do not get heavy snow on December 6th like in 2009 or I will be in real trouble.

Digging a Sheep Grave

Fencing has been making little progress, but I got back to it today for the first time in weeks. This weekend, I hope to make much more progress. I picked Hazel up from the babysitters this afternoon and we spent some time out on the pasture; she slept while I ran some fence wire. The fact that it is cool enough to take Hazel out to the pasture during the day is one of the things that I have been looking forward to this fall.

Hazel Accompanying Me Out To Pasture

Every Farmer Has the Pasture They Deserve

Well the Practical Farmers of Iowa Field Day or Pasture Walk is behind us. Terry Gompert was great and offered excellent feed back. This is a compilation of what Terry talked about and showed us as well as a few of my own thoughts.  First off, one of the fundamental things that I and many others struggle with is asking the right questions.  It is not a matter of, I wish I did not have this weed in my pasture, but a matter of why is it there? Is it really all that bad?

One of the fundamentals we discussed was about soil life. The plants above the earth, really are an expression of the soil life below ground, and the management applied to it. In Iowa and much of the Midwest, most of our soil is denuded of soil minerals (at least in the top 6 to 18 inches) and of soil life.

Many deep rooted plants (like many of our native prairie plants and many of our noxious pasture weeds) are deep rooted plants. They are able to cycle nutrients from the lower soil profiles to the surface where they can be put back into the soil. How are they put back into the soil? Either by having the animal eat them and pass them or by having them be knocked down by livestock and added to the littler layer above the soil. This litter layer has two zones that we observed. A primary surface layer, where litter looks like light colored dead vegetation and a second layer where it was not soil and not the light colored surface layer. It was interesting to see the definition between the second litter layer and the soil. Terry took the spade to the ground and cut out a chunk several times so we could see these layers.

The second litter layer was about an inch on much of our unburned and unplowed land. Terry said that is good, considering that much of Iowa has none or has a very thin second litter layer. Part of the reason Iowa has little litter layer is that tillage destroys litter and many of our traditional grazers like their pastures to look like a golf corse (the litter layer is not added to because the grass is never really allowed to grow to any real height). Terry said, that we should aim for this layer to be much larger, say 12 to 18 inches. This litter benefits the pasture by holding moisture, eliminating all most all runoff, by helping to keep the soil cool (soil life starts to dies around 80 degrees), and by serving as great material for many of our predominant cool-season pasture grasses to root into.

Leadplant a Deep Rooted Native Legume in Our Pasture

Soil life ranges from soil microbes, to the various dung beetles, up to badgers. Farmers in this state spend so much of their time killing this life and replacing it with expensive inputs. Anhydrous ammonia is a common nitrogen input that is applied in the fall or the spring by injecting it into the soil. It is used to boost corn (a very nitrogen demanding crop) yields. Anhydrous ammonia kills soil microbial life, the natural nitrogen fixers. You ever wonder why organic research that compares cropping systems on land that has had it soil life killed, makes organics looks do bad? Anhydrous ammonia was originally used to harden the ground so we could make quick landing strips, vegetation also happened to grow back very quickly and the soldiers noted it and took that back to their farms.

On our farm, the one thing we need to be careful of is wormers. All chemical wormers are toxic to dung beetles and we need everyone of those we can get. We did see a few dung beetles in some of our week to two week old cow patties. Dung beetles take dung and roll it into holes in the ground where they lay their eggs in them. Dung beetles are one of the best things you can have for spreading a manure patty around and getting it into the soil, short of another cow's foot.

I learned a few things about the plants on above the soil. I learned that a close graze encourages legume regrowth and that leaving more standing residue encourages grass regrowth. A diverse pasture is a healthy one. This is in contrast with my forages education that says 3 to 4 species is optimal and more then that is not really adding much (I am now unlearning what I leaned in school), but Terry says some of the best  pastures he has been in have over a hundred species in them. We are replicating a native ecosystem so we should have as much diversity as we can, especially amongst deep rooted plants. That will promote nutrient cycling, create more efficient layered forage canopies, and promote soil life and wildlife diversity.

I learned how to read a cow patties. The perfect shape is round with a divot in the center. You want it to be able to see the fiber in it and have a deep brownish-yellow color in the center. A greener center is a sign that the animals are getting to much protein and not enough roughage so graze them where they are at longer.

When looking at our farm specially, Terry said, "keep doing what you are doing and be observant." Terry liked that we move our livestock daily, that our chicken pens are like the ultimate pasture rejuvenators, and that we have very diverse pastures. He encouraged me to run my chickens in a mobile coop behind the cattle in rotations, something we would like to do, but are not yet there. I need to be careful that we are giving enough rest time between grazings to some of our less persistent pastures, because regrowth was coming back very very slowly on parts of the north side of the farm. Terry also told me not to worry about the annual weeds I was getting in some of my pastures and were all over in my 12.5 acre planting. We walked the field and many of my seedlings had gone to seed this ear. Terry said, "graze it next June or July so this years seed can get worked into the soil and the stand will be better established." Terry also though the cattle looked good and fleshy on our pastures. It is good to get some good feedback and to know that all the work is paying off. I love the expression Terry used so I wanted to repeat it here, "every farmer has the pasture they deserve."

Getting Ready & A Surprise

We are getting ready to co-host a Practical Farmers of Iowa grazing pasture walk with Terry Gompert. Terry is part of Nebraska Extension and is a holistic management expert. We are expecting around 30 to 40 fellow farmers to came and look over the farm tomorrow afternoon. Needless to say, we have been trying to spruce the place a bit. The yard is looking decent, despite the large swamps that exist in it, and some of things that have been lying around the yard have gotten picked up and put away. It is nice too, that the flood water has gone down and the roads are all open again. All that remains is a brown landscape around the river valley and a plethora of mosquitos.

The conditions within our chicken building are improving. The wet ground has receded a bit. I put tile in the north half of the building, but could not get the standing water to flow through the muck and into the tile so I dug some drainage channels that have allowed me to get much of the water out of the building. Since the tractor is living outside, because it is to wet to get the tractor into the building without getting it stuck, I have moved much of the chicken stuff into the area the tractor would normally be parked and out of the murky north end of the building.

There is no Tractor only Chickens

I have resolved to never have have this problem again with this building as I am making plans to tear it down next spring. From one of my old poultry production books from the 1940's, I have adapted plans for a 30x20 dedicated poultry building. The new building will have a concrete floor, and will have a 20x20 space for laying hens and a 10x20 space for sperate brooders. I want to insulate the building, have washable walls, and large doors so I can take a small skid loader into the building to clean it out. Janice won't let me have a skid loader to begin on the foundation until my fencing project is done; she is a smart woman. She is also working on a materials list for the building so we can use Craiglist to buy needed parts and try to keep the overall cost down to around $2500.  I hope to have the foundation pored before winter so we can work on framing over the winter. The building will allow us to have clean brooders to keep illness down, and raise the laying flock to 150 birds. The bump in laying hens translates into between six and seven thousand dollars in egg sales a year.

New Chicken Building Floor Plan

Turkeys are doing alright. I pushed the last batch outside, because an illness had set in amongst the inside birds and I wanted to get them away from it. We lost several birds due to smothering outside. I think we are currently looking at finishing around 75 birds, down from last years 120 birds. I am seriously considering moving away from the giant white turkeys and using only bronze turkeys. If we do that, we will raise our turkey price from $3.50 per pound to around $3.90 per pound. This will be something that we will survey our customers about at the end of the production year.
                                                                                                      

Second Turkey Batch out on Pasture

Our last batch of chickens have been the complete opposite of the turkeys. They came, they took off well and all 175 of them are still here. They are still inside, but will likely be moving outside next weekend, weather permitting.

Lastly, our surprise. Last night, I went out to the pasture and I came upon a new heifer calf. We had a cow that was purchased exposed, but just never calved. I presumed that she had not been bred, because I expected the calf back in July and had given up on it. I am still trying to figure out how I am going to breed the other two cows that are still nursing. I have a sire selected and can purchase straws of his semen, but I have little experience with artificial insemination so am not fully sure how to precede. Well that is it for now, but let me know if you have any questions, comments, or thoughts.

New Heifer Calf, With No Stripe

New Calf close up

Islands in the Stream

Since the last post, the generally crappy summer weather has finally caught up with us. Since the spike our rain gauge sits on washed out from under it, we don't have an accurate reading of our recent rainfall. According to the local television station, we have had around 10 inches (25.4 cm) of rain in less then a week. That just wreaks havoc on things. My home town, Ames has had large parts of the town under water and the drinking water knocked out. The old skunk river that I grew up in Ames near, is the same river that I can see from my pasture, except we are down stream. The water in Ames has subsided, but it is still rising here.

Looking Southwest From The Highest Point On the Farm

Looking Northwest From The Highest Point On the Farm

In these pictures from our land, the river is usually back in the very distant tree line on the horizon. If the river crests higher then 2008, it is possible that some will reach our land, but it will nor do any damage. For use the flooding means a much longer drive into Pella as five area bridges across the skunk river are under water or unaccessible. 

The real damage was done on Sunday night and into Monday morning when the first batch of turkeys, which was already struggling a bit this year got hammered by wind and rain. The winds opened up their pen and the rains doused them. When I got to them, I swore they were all dead, but they were in a deep hypothermic shock. Janice and I moved them into the bed of the pick-up and drove them into the garage and suspended heat lamps from the ceiling. When the Sun came out, I drove them out to the pasture where they could heat up before putting them into a new pen. Long story short, 49 turkeys did not survive, but we were able to salvage 27 birds. We still have our second batch of turkeys inside, so we will not go without turkey. We had tried to expand turkey production this year, but we will now be hovering around last years numbers of 120 to 130 turkeys. Turkeys also represent our largest profit margin so the loss stings our bottom line a bit. 

Trying to Save Turkeys

The water has not spared our chicken building either. Unlike 2008, our water table is so much higher and we have just lost the whole eastern half of the building to nasty mud and water. I have moved feeders and the nesting boxes to keep the birds on dry land. Our building is not a great poultry building and this recent endeavor is the last straw. I am working on plans to build a new building next year. We will be planning the build later this fall and into the winter. In a perfect world, we could pour the building pad this fall, but I am not going to hold my breath. 

It is not been all bad, Hazel has been a gem to be with during the day. When ever I have felt beat-up by the weather, her smile has brought be back to task. 

Hazel's First PFI Field Day

We have also brought the yard back from the jungle that it was. The fencing on the south draw has all of its corners built so now it is just a matter of hanging the wire. We still have more work to do on the larger central draw. The biggest boon was the visit to our farm by Temple Grandin. She is great expert in livestock handling. We had dinner with her and several friends. Temple thought our livestock looked good and she gave me some advise on our future livestock handling facility project. There have been more downs then ups recently, but we will make it though. 

A Visit From Temple Grandin