It is a wonderful product but needs to be packed before driven on or you get stuck !!
I got a better picture of the ruts last night. They are quite full of water after 2" of rain.
In this area the barns that are sitting empty are either older two-story barns or the farmer has retired. If you have an older barn and want to keep it up Gold'N'Plump will help you with some of the maintenance costs. Most times it is more cost effective to tear the old two-story barn down and build a new single story barn.
It also shouldn't rust or deteriorate like plywood or tin would because of the ammonia and moisture in the barn.
The barn would have been done weeks ago if they would have been here nonstop. There is a brooder barn they are working on as well. That barn takes priority over the broiler barns I guess. It makes sense but it's frustrating when they are only here a few days a week.
There is a power plant in Benson, MN that burns a mix of turkey litter and leftovers from sawmills. It seems like a damn shame to me though because the value of the turkey litter being used as fertilizer is so high and it's getting burned instead of used in the field. It's a neat idea though but they are trucking litter over 5 hours to get it to the power plant. Seems like an inefficient system to me.
They do get frozen. I put them on the floor to cool to give the freezer an easier time of itDo you freeze your bags of corn after they've cooled down? And also, I assume you feed the corn cobs to the cows as dessert?
We cooked up a few dozen ears and had them and some home grown hamburgers along with tomatoes and lettuce from the garden for supper. It was all quite tasty !!I hope you saved some of it to eat right off the cob.
Fresh Minnesota grown corn on the cob is one of those great summertime foods.
Here's a picture from last Saturday when we did another 40 dozen ears. I let the ladies do the cutting. I am quite accident prone.
The accountant in me wants a lot more info here. $50/head for allll of that labor...! I totally get loving the farm life, but wow, I didn't think the profit would be that slim.
Just curious, if you're willing to share, how does the rent contract work? Do you turn a profit all along - before the building is paid off?I own the barn and all the equipment in it. Gold'n'Plump supplies the chickens, feed, bedding and pays the utilities related to each flock. It is a contract barn so I provide the labor, site and building. It's not a bad deal really. Which is why I'm doing it I guess
What's the market rate on an lb of milk in your area?Most milk haulers require you to have 800lbs of milk to pick up before they will even stop. That's 10 cows at 80lbs per day each for those without basic math skills.
This barn and the equipment in it with the manure pit outside was near $1.3mil. The dairy went from an 80lb tank to just over 100lbs/day per cow within a year of putting the robots in. That is a 25% increase and is the kind of thing that makes the banker and the dairyman smile. Like this ->
Farming can be an expensive, but rewarding, addiction.
Heh, the markings on conduit are like clocking screwsI can imagine this might cause some of you to lose sleep tonight. It doesn't bother me that much to have "unclocked" screws but I must say that I am noticing it a lot more since someone pointed it out
The electrician that did this must be lazy or just plain ol' doesn't care. It literally takes zero time to hid the markings on conduit. Why not do it ?
Both should be done correctly!....Hey Mike, I love your thread. I can't believe it took me so long to get started on it. I'm all caught up now - with the exception of a few places I skimmed cuz all the photobucket pictures were missing. Thanks much for taking the time to make such detailed posts about the farm, it's interesting!
Yeah, I gotta get them fixed before PhotoBucket goes total AWOL and doesn't function at all !! Thanks for reading through it all !!
You mentioned a FT city job a few times and posted up security cameras and you seem to have a lot of solid wifi gear for a farmer (and did I see you have a massive rack/patch panel at home?) and you work on farm tech, security system installs, etc...what's your FT job, technically?
With the farm I brought online today I am over 150 cameras installed on 15 dairies, 1 recycling center and my place. I have a Homonco two post rack in the basement with my 48port Leviton Cat6 Extreme patch panel, Pair of Ubiquiti 24 port switches, Drobo 5N filled with 5xSeagate 4Tb NAS drives, CyberPower OR2200L, Brother MFC and a Unifi Security Gateway. I don't know what my job is defined as but I do a wide variety of things at work.
Officially I guess I am a "IT Service Technician" meaning that I "primarily" deal with things with circuit boards and networking stuff. I get on a dozen farms once a month to do a full functionality check of all the milking equipment to help prevent downtime as well as help maintain 135 Lely Milking Robots. I also drive the supply truck if one of the 7 drivers needs time off and get to play sales guy for a day or two, which I really enjoy.
The accountant in me wants a lot more info here. $50/head for allll of that labor...! I totally get loving the farm life, but wow, I didn't think the profit would be that slim.
Farming is like a shower in a really old house ... it's hot and cold, on and off, profitable and not. It can go from one to the other quickly if not careful.
When the market was on the uptick I was netting almost $400/steer but now am doing just a shade under $100/steer. I'll gladly share whatever you'd like to know, nothing is a secret and if it is I'll tell you where to go
When it is sub-zero, you basically just have to keep the cattle in the barn and give them a little more feed, right? I'm in Oregon, my neighbors never had to worry about truly cold weather lol. Their cows would still come out in the pasture in all seasons - they knew where the feed was, and went inside when they were hungry (or maybe cold, but definitely hungry).
All my cattle are inside all the time. That being said, "inside" has a max of three walls. The cattle are sheltered from the nasty cold wind and such but are out in the cold. They get fuzzier and are fine. I let them eat as much as they need. I like them to be out of feed about an hour before I do chores so there isn't any old feed laying on the ground from the previous day. The cameras in the barn have really helped me know when they run out !!
Just curious, if you're willing to share, how does the rent contract work? Do you turn a profit all along - before the building is paid off?
The initial contract is for 10 years, which is also the length of the loan.
The barn is profitable while I am paying for it. Without throwing numbers around it'll replace about 12hrs a week of income from my in town job which is good because it'll only take an average of 2hrs a day to do the chores. 2hrs a day X 7 days a week = 14hrs a week. Oh no, I'm looking to be less busy, not more !! I may need to go back to math school !!!
What's the market rate on an lb of milk in your area?
It varies but right now it's in the $17/hwt. Milk is sold by the hundred weight ....
Heh, the markings on conduit are like clocking screws
I can deal with screws being off-kilter but conduit bugs me !!!
(kidding)The disk is 32' wide and it had no problem turning short enough to go into the next pass. I don't know the exact turning radius but the wheels are less than 6" from each other when it is turning as short as it goes.So a box fan with a camera hanging off it?
Good thing I wasn't running that tractor, I would have probably chewed the hell out of the grass at the end, during the u-turns. And speaking of u-turns, that tractor does some pretty tight turns for such a big guy!
