I am betting that by now you have seen some version of the above meme. If you don’t have much first hand experience with Opossums and if you also like animals (which I do) you may have even bought it. How many facts are behind these wild claims?

Well not much and many of the claims are pure conjecture with no backing. While the meme above might have some small bits of truth many of the claims are far from proven and some are likely blown well out of proportion if not outright BS. Many people will argue about this as being scientifically proven, they are also city slickers with no experience and have not even read the study. The following study(hyperlink) is where many of these claims originated and those claims have since went well beyond anything that could be gleaned from this one study. Anyone knows one study doesn’t prove a thing usually, as many variables cannot be accounted for.

First before you think I want to eliminate a species let me say that I believe everything has its place, even the opossum. However facts are facts and one study doesn’t prove that the opossum is a tick fighting machine, and if you read the study it clearly states there could be many causes for their findings, and there could be problems with their data. One study is not enough to prove a thing, especially with so many variables.

I have ran a trap line and lived in the country most of my life. I have ran across many opossums, literally hundreds maybe even thousands and when I first saw this meme I knew something wasn’t right. Many of the opossums I have seen were harboring plenty of ticks. If the lowly opossum is this tick fighting super hero how was it failing to remove the ticks covering its body? Fair warning things are about to get graphic.

The following is one example of an opossum I have caught in a box trap. He was in the wrong area, they learned to open the metal trash cans I use to store chicken feed. Opossums in most of the Midwest are extremely overpopulated and yet there are still plenty of ticks. 

Another problem with the opossum overpopulation is that they love eggs and they are also not vegetarians as many people with no experience like to claim. They will kill young birds or anything smaller than themselves. They will also kill your chickens if they can get into the coop, another wild claim by people with no experience is that they are harmless. Anyone living in the country knows opossums are not harmless, they can and do cause problems.  One big problem is Opossums carry EPM which is deadly to horses. They also cause problems by preying on Young turkeys and quail as well as eating their eggs.

I have a big problem with people that think they know better than those on the ground spreading false information. People often fail to listen to those that actually know, and common sense is rarely applied to the internet. Again I am not saying we should eliminate the opossum, I don’t think that could be done even if you tried. I am however fine with eliminating them from the general farm yard, yet again that will not happen either, trust me I have tried, there are just to many. So let the city slickers keep their opossums, out here they are a menace. Let me present a more accurate meme:

Our search for a new homestead began in earnest in 2019. I wasn’t going to move to a place I have not seen in person. If you don’t consider winter our place in Missouri is paradise, I had no intention of moving somewhere questionable.  This decision involved more than just my family, my mother had moved to our sawmill property and we had put a mobile home where the duplex burned on that property. My mom wasn’t keen on moving to Alabama, but she didn’t want to stay in Missouri by herself either. My brother has become my partner in my parts business, he has worked with me for the past two years so he was coming as well. Scouting a property with so many important parties involved gets complicated. We didn’t want to leave anyone out so we needed a large vehicle to scout or a small convoy. For better or worse we decided to buy a motor home with the idea we could camp on a prospective property and go wherever we wanted without the worry of getting to far from a hotel. With so many traveling in our group it was also thought a bathroom tagging along with us would increase the speed of travel by eliminating bathroom stops.

I am a very frugal person and I don’t have an excess of money so enter a 1988 Airex 35′ motor home. We purchased it for $1,500 dollars. This motor home could sleep our entire family and hopefully be the perfect scout vehicle. While everything was suppose to work on the motor home that was far from the truth. Multiple water leaks, a water heater, heating system and sewer repairs later we had it as ready to go as we could seeing as how we wanted to make the trip right after Christmas so my wife wouldn’t have to miss work. One month isn’t much time to get something together.

While the idea behind the motor home was good if I had to do it again I would have taken a couple cars and stayed in hotels. The Airex got horrible gas mileage, the best it got in the entire trip was 8mpg and it averaged around 6mpg. It’s top comfortable speed was 65mph, it could go faster but it was really revving the engine going faster. Luckily it did have working cruise control. Some engineer really needs kicked somewhere as the Airex only had a 20 gallon gas tank, that’s right 20 gallons and it gets 6mpg. We had to stop every two hours or less to refuel. That and it’s low top speed made for a very slow trip. Another lesson learned was no matter how good a tire looks if you don’t know it’s age replace it before a long trip. The Airex has a dually axle with an additional air ride stinger axle on the rear. It rides on 8 tires, we replaced the steer tires before the trip for what we considered an abundance of caution as all the tires looked good. Of the remaining 6 old tires only two made it back to Missouri. Four blowouts, one of those blowouts ended up taking out our water line and sewer line, luckily that was on the trip home.

We scouted our prospective Alabama areas after Christmas 2018 and into the first week of 2019. We originally planned on settling in Covington county, but after talking with some county officials we reconsidered and chose Geneva county which was more advantageous anyway. Covington county reassesses the value of property every time it sells, that equates to the new property owners paying much more taxes than the older property owners, it isn’t a fair system and we chose to avoid it. Geneva county reassess everyone on a schedule, the new property owner will not be paying anymore than their neighbor that grew up there. Geneva county is also slightly warmer, the entire eastern half of the county is in zone 8b. It is also closer to the largest city in the area which is Dothan Alabama.

Unfortunately it rained on and off everyday on our scouting trip. The Airex ended up having some roof leaks which never showed until you had a large amount of rain. Besides a breakdown in Birmingham during rush hour and the flat tires the Airex worked pretty well. We had some problems with the leveling system which died at a rest area in Florida. The Airex had electric jacks on each corner controlled from the cab, that way when you camped on uneven ground you could level the rig. On one stop the jacks wouldn’t go back up and we had to run a hotwire and go to each jack and bring it back up so we could continue our trip.

One thing that can make someone who hates winter very happy is leaving home with weather in the teens and enjoying the 70+ degree days in Alabama. It got as warm as 77 degrees during our week stay in Alabama in early January! We went from wearing coats and long johns to swimming in the ocean at Panama city beach. The difference is amazing and really sold me and my family on giving this move a try. So it was official, we planned on moving, just not sure when or how.

While I thoroughly enjoy having enough property to play farmer I was willing to make major sacrifices to enjoy the warmer weather in the south. I initially figured we would have to trade for a much smaller property when we moved south. Northern Missouri’s population has been shrinking for decades, that means there are more houses than people so buying some acreage with a fixer upper house is a real possibility and it can be done affordably. While land prices in the south were about the same maybe a little higher anything with a house brought a premium. Houses were easily twice the price in Alabama vs Missouri. I also didn’t want to buy another house made of wood and not built by myself, I wanted to build a real house built correctly. So our plan was to buy bare acreage, or ideally acreage with a rough but livable house or mobile home so that all the necessities were already there.

I figured 20 acres was the minimum amount of land that my family needed. That would give enough acreage to have a small woods, pond, some row crops and enough grazing ground for a small herd of cattle. Of course just like anywhere the land you seek may not be for sale when your ready, so we decided to get a base at-least and wait for the proper piece to come up for sale. We even considered buying a building in town. I couldn’t live very long in a city but it would have been neat for a short time.

After our scouting trip I returned to Alabama many times. My wife decided to apply for a job in Dothan and ended up getting hired. She rented a room and moved to Alabama in March. We looked at several properties over the next several months, two we would have purchased but somebody else was quicker on the draw. Finally I ran an ad that we were looking for a place and we ended up purchasing an acre and a half with a mobile home, a well, septic and electric. My mom who wasn’t a fan of the move wanted her own place in Alabama so our plan was to make this place hers and we would live on the place in an rv or something until the right place came along.

We purchased this property for $18,000 without seeing the inside and only seeing the outside at night. Water and well would run about $10,000 so I figured we couldn’t go wrong. What I didn’t see coming was the most disgusting property I have ever seen someone live in. The lady we purchased it from seemed a little off, but whatever everyone is different. What I didn’t catch is that she was legitimately crazy. She and about 20 chickens and cats had been living in the trailer for several years. Yes, you read that right chickens were living in the house free range. I don’t think she ever threw anything away, the inside of the house was full of chicken and cat poop and the entire yard was covered in trash. The place looked relatively presentable on the outside at first as most of the trash was well hidden with bushes and plants.

Since my wife was already down there at her new job we decided to make it work and cleaned for weeks. We hauled several 20′ cattle trailer loads of trash to the landfill and did our best to clean the property. If I could do it again a lighter would have been a better choice. My wife lived in a tent in the yard for a couple weeks while working on the place. I spent a couple weeks down there working but had to return to Missouri as our kids were still in school and we still had a farm and business to run.

For those who have limited experience with hay I am going to relay my experiences with small square bales and large round bales. Each have their advantages, and I will go through how I see those advantages and draw backs.

I have fed square bales for five years. We started with just 20 acres and a Ford 8N. I didn’t have the money to buy a bigger tractor, so starting with square bales made sense. Per pound of hay you can also make more money selling square bales, but it does require more work. It is also much cheaper to get older square baling equipment and the HP requirements are lower versus round bales. So for a smaller herd square bales make perfect sense.

Our little herd grew to 50 head. I was literally feeding a truckload of hay a day last winter. So last winter we went round, and I will share my experience and the advantages I have found with each. I will start with a quick Pros and cons list:

Square Bale Pros

Requires Less Horsepower

Easy To Move With No Equipment

Sells For More Money Per Pound of Hay

Less Expensive To Get Started

Easy To Feed In Small Amounts

Best Fit For Small Operations

 

 

Square Bale Cons

Requires A Lot Of Labor

Need’s To Be Sheltered From Weather

Takes More Time To Feed

Not Weather Resistant Out Of The Baler

 

Round Bale Pros

Can Be Stored Outside With Minimal Losses

Better Suited To Larger Herds

Requires Very Little Physical Labor

Can Put Up A Lot Of Hay Quickly

 

Round Bale Cons

Requires More Horsepower

Requires Equipment To Move Bales

Sells For Less Per Pound

 

As you can see there are advantages to both ways of putting up hay. If you have a small homestead herd square bales probably make the most sense. If however you have a large herd, than round bales probably are your best bet. On our farm we will continue to put our best hay up in square bales as they make more money when sold. For the majority of my own feeding needs I will be using round bales. I will always keep some square bales for their ease of feeding up at the corral when I have an animal separated for whatever reason.

I thought there would be a lot more waste when switching to round bales, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. My round bales are 4×5 bales that weigh around 650lbs. My baler uses twine without a net wrap option. I store all my round bales outside currently. They weathered well and the 4×5 size is perfect for feeding with my smaller tractors like the Ford 2000. Unfortunately they are a little too much for the Ford 8N.

The worst drawback that I have ran into is that the round baler requires at-least 50hp to make a decent bale. By contrast I

can easily run the square baler with a measly 20hp, probably less. We first tried running the round baler with the Ford 4000, but it couldn’t handle it well. We ended up purchasing a Ford 8000 that is overkill, but it was the cheapest tractor we could find at the time to get the job done.

Feeding a medium size herd of 50 Dexters with square bales was relatively labor intensive and time consuming. Switching to round bales and firing up a tractor and moving a round bale was much easier and quicker. They consume about 1.5 round bales a day, which is about 21 square bales by weight. However last winter we ran into the problem of needing a tractor to move the round bales in very cold weather, and my diesel tractors wouldn’t start. The 4000 which is gas was down, and the 8N couldn’t lift the bales. Luckily I had some square bales to feed during the week of cold weather. Which shows that it is always nice to have some square bales on hand.

 

Getting started with square bales was less expensive than round. However most Americans don’t have the fortitude to put up square bales, as it does take some sweat to get the job done. Running a small herd however I see no reason to use round bales, with ten head or less I wouldn’t even consider round bales. I would use square bales myself with a herd under 20, anything over that number and you are probably better off going with round bales.

This is an old post I never finished until now.

For this post I will be going over some of my experience with the crops I grew the last several years as well as ideas I have going forward. In 2014 we grew Cereal Rye, Smoke Signals Popcorn, Reid’s Field Corn, Buckwheat, Wheat and Austrian Winter Peas. In addition to these we grew more varieties in our garden.

The spring of 2014 I grazed one of my two small Cereal rye fields. The cattle loved it, they chose to nibble the rye to the ground instead of grazing in the taller grass field they had access to alongside the rye field. So the cattle declared the rye a winner. I let the cattle graze the rye to the ground, and recycle it into fertilizer. When they had finished their work I tilled it under to plant Smoke Signals Popcorn and Black Oil Sunflower.

I am very impressed with how tenacious cereal rye is, it can be planted very late, later than any other grain. I planted rye the middle of November at the sawmill and it made an okay stand. I also had the small field I harvested at the farm reseed itself and now have a volunteer stand I will harvest again. Since I don’t use any herbicides on the fields, the tenacious nature of rye works well by smothering the competition without the need for chemicals. I am also sure I could let the cattle graze the rye down and it would rebound and produce a harvest-able crop.

With all the benefits it provides the drawback to rye grain that I have found is the critters do not particularly like it. The chickens love wheat and oats, but rye isn’t something they eat much of. As a cover crop rye is great, and I plan on using it for that purpose as well as early and late season grazing for the cattle. I will still use it in my poultry ration, although at a small percentage of the total, probably 5-10% of the ration.

For me cereal rye is a winner and has some real value as a crop. If you are going from sod to row crop rye is a great option. It can out compete a lot of weeds. The downfalls however are it isn’t the most edible crop, and its yields are low compared to many other crops.

Now we move on to the abysmal failure for the second time, Black oil sunflowers. For the second time in a row birds have eaten my crop. I wanted to grown sunflowers as a chicken feed, and also as a potential source of bio-diesel fuel. However those dreams crashed hard into reality. I cannot grow sunflowers, I am just feeding the birds. I figured if there was an acre of sunflowers the birds couldn’t possibly eat it all, but yet again I was mistaken. The problem seems to come from uneven maturity. The sunflowers mature from the outside working to the middle of the flower. To combine the crop I have to wait for the seeds in the middle to dry, however the birds are fine with eating the outside layer and inwards towards then the middle as the crop ripens. It makes a nice smorgasbord for weeks.

Since I don’t want to end on a failure I will move on to Smoke Signals Popcorn. This corn has been a great producer through droughts, weeds and it seems whatever Missouri can throw

at it. It is a very robust variety if popcorn, and it tastes great as flour for cornbread as well. If your looking for a great tasting variety of popcorn smoke signals is one to consider. However it has not popped well for us, but until I get a moisture tester I am not giving it a fair shake.

Our family has tested over thirty varieties of popcorn to pick the best for us, and the clear winner is South American Yellow, also called Dynamite. We will begin to grow this variety as well in the future.

Another winner this year was Buckwheat. It grew well and matured very quickly. If your looking for a quick crop or a cover crop this is one to consider. Our buckwheat crop went in without a hitch and had no problems. (the buckwheat even reseeded itself for 2015). Buckwheat however has the same draw back as cereal rye, the critters just don’t care for it.

 

 

 

This was formerly on my Dexter Cattle page, but I am cleaning my website and making it easier to navigate and understand. So I have moved it to a post for those who are curious.

My Starting Point

The year before I got my cattle I had bought the equipment to bale square bales. I originally had tried to get someone else to bale my property on shares with no luck. I decided if people were too lazy to make some money I would do it myself.

Eight hundred bales later I paid off all my additional equipment that first year and was a semi-experienced baler. The next year I started to pickup small fields and bale them on shares. My plan was to run as many cattle as possible on my land and having all their feed come from off farm is essentially an increase in the size of my property.

I sold the excess hay and kept what I would need for my own cattle. I was in a good position to buy and having just went full time self employed I was ready to add cattle. I don’t know of a better investment than cattle, only land compares. Worst case scenario cattle will keep you fed that’s something gold or silver might not be able to do.

Even though I had decided on Dexter cattle my first three cattle were an oddball assortment. A Jersey steer, an Angus heifer and a Holstein heifer. They were my teachers and I learned a lot.

For my limited land there was no question that the best method for me would be an intensive rotational grazing system. I wanted to raise my cattle as naturally as possible on a grass diet. I wanted milk and good quality meat with as few expenses as possible.

My Setup

I have tried three different electric fence posts before deciding the Sunguard II step in fiberglass fence post with built in clips was the best for me. The runner up was the black poly fence posts. I like the Sunguard posts because of the clip design. The black poly posts seem to be weaker and the clip design is a pain. After taking down a big paddock my finger tips would be sore from pulling the clips back to remove the wire from the posts. I could just pull the wire out, but it likes to catch the small stainless wires when I do that. The Sungaurd posts also have two clips on each spot, one on the front and another on the back. In case one clip is broken you have a backup.

One drawback to the step in posts is dry weather. When you go through a dry spell the ground can be so hard you cannot use the step in posts, and for that reason I keep some metal rebar posts that can be hammered into hard ground. It is a slower process than the step in post, but if you need to go to another paddock and the ground is hard it is an option.

I use a Parmak Magnum 12v fence charger and have a backup just in case. There are fancier fence chargers out there but this one does just fine and has never let me down.

I originally thought that solid aluminum wire would be the most durable choice for electric fence wire. With some experience I have changed my mind about that. The aluminum wire is able to carry more electricity but fails in many ways when used in a rotating paddock system. It is harder to roll up, it likes to kink and it will often break when you undo the kink. It is also harder to splice then the other styles. I have since decided the fiberglass line with stainless wire strands works better for me. Now I just need to decide which is the best variety and brand of that wire.

For water I cut a 55 gallon drum in half and put a valve in it to automatically fill it. I put a spigot towards the bottom so I can just drain it to move when I switch to another paddock. I run 1/4 Poly hose to the valve. If I had more cattle this wouldn’t supply enough water, but I am not there yet. I originally had the spigot on the outside, but the cattle would step on it, so I moved it to the inside of the tank. I cut a piece of pipe in half and screwed it around the float valve as a shield to prevent the cattle from hurting the valve. (I now use a 275 gallon IBC tote to transport water and several 300 gallon tanks in my setup as well as built in water drinks on the farm)

Youtube Video of My Cattle Waterer

My entire life I have disliked winter. I find fall very depressing as many things start to die. I have often thought about moving south, especially during the winter. Well most of my family was on board this year and with nobody to tell me no the search began. Missouri is a hard to beat state when it comes to freedom, and one by one almost every southern state was eliminated due to stupid laws, leaving Alabama as the best state for us.

My requirements were a lower population, the freedom to run my business and farm without the heavy hand of government or excessive red tape. I required a state with enough rainfall to need no irrigation and somewhere the water doesn’t become solid, USDA zone 8A or warmer. I refuse to ask permission to use my land and build my own house. I want to run my business and farm without needless red tape and heavy handed bureaucrats. During my search I found out about a business inventory tax that almost every deep south state has with two exceptions, Alabama and Florida. Florida may have won except for their extreme land use restrictions. I could not find one county in Florida that didn’t require excessive permits to build on your own land. Many required a permit just to put a roof on your house. These are restrictions I refuse to live under, so Alabama here we come!

Alabama is very comparable to Missouri. While the population density of our chosen area is twice that of our current location and the taxes are higher as well, I am willing to pay a bit more for a land without winter. The areas we have chosen have comparable qualities to our current area but are much warmer, USDA Zone 8B. Freezing is rare and very short lived when it does happen.

How does our chosen area of Alabama stack up against our home in Missouri? Well we will gain a much warmer climate, a little more rainfall and access to some bigger cities that will be much closer that is good and bad. Alabama doesn’t have the onerous safety inspection to license a vehicle and the property tax rate is likely similar or a little more. There are some strange laws I have uncovered in Alabama but nothing too extreme.

We will be moving at the end of this year hopefully. My wife will move down first, followed by the kids so they can start school down there next year and not have to start a new school in the middle of the school year. I will be selling our properties and equipment up here and will join my family when that is complete. Missouri has treated us very well, and I will greatly miss the state, but warmer weather is an attraction I cannot resist.

Since we will be moving almost 900 miles away my goal is to bring as little as possible with us. I have already sold most of my chickens and quail, and will begin selling tractors after I get this years hay crop in. We have amassed a nice amount of real estate and will begin selling it until only the main farm remains. I never intended to move from here so I have accumulated a relatively large amount of machinery and equipment.

This brings me to my cattle; I will likely not have a place to move them to in Alabama for a couple years or maybe longer. I would hate to start over. I have already culled my herd down due to the drought last year, and will be culling it further to the very best individuals. At one point I had 50 cows, I plan on culling down to 10-20 cows. I am looking for someone to keep this core herd for me, and in return they will get the calves born that year- with the exception of one that I select to keep for every year you care for the herd in entirety.

I am looking for someone that has the land and ability to watch over a small herd of Dexter cattle. This herd will number 10-20 cows and a bull. I would be willing to cull down to 10 cows for the right individual if they don’t have the ability to take care of a larger herd. These will all be purebred Dexter, but not all registered. The registered Dexters are registered through the ADCA. My bull Clive is also ADCA registered and is homozygous polled, all calves will be polled as well as the entire adult herd. The Dexters I have left are very good stock, maybe not perfect, but I have culled them to meet my needs specifically.

When I get my new place setup, I will come and retrieve my core herd and you get to keep your calves or the proceeds

earned by selling your calves. If I pickup the herd in the middle of a year the calf crop will be prorated and figured for the entire year’s calf crop.  For example, if you keep the herd until the end of June, you will get 50% of the calf crop for that year, as you cared for them 50% of the time that year. That includes both the calves born while you cared for the herd and those born that year after I have retrieved the herd. If you keep the herd until mid march or 20% of the year you will get 20% of the calf crop as you cared for them that percentage of the entire year. We will take turns picking which calf we want to keep. 

So if you have 10+ acres and are located between Macon, Missouri and SE Alabama I have an offer for your consideration. In exchange for caring for my herd of Dexters, you will get to keep the calves every complete year, minus the one I keep. You can sell them or keep them your choice. I will get my choice of one calf every year that will either remain with the herd or be sold. You must be able to care for this herd for up to four years while I setup my new place. The ideal candidate will be as close to SE Alabama as possible. Will have the facilities and land necessary to care for the herd. They will have the know how or ability to learn how to care for the herd, I will help someone with this as well and if I can find someone close to SE Alabama I may lend a hand when needed. I will always be just a phone call away to answer questions.

We have found a herd keeper and are no longer looking.

Making Your Own Hay, Originally Part of The Dexter Cattle Page. I have moved this section of that page to a blog post to make my core site less bulky and more to the point.

I think you should be as independent as possible, and one way of saving money and being more independent is providing for your own cattle feed needs. I have heard many people say there is no way baling your own hay is affordable or cost effective when you have a small operation, and they are often the same people who say there is no money in cattle. I am here to say it is just as important for a small operation to make its own feed as a large one.

Making hay is a simple operation, but can be daunting if you have never done so before. Currently we put up a couple thousand square bales and several hundred round bales every year. Our current hay equipment consists of a New Holland Haybine purchased for $750, a wheel rake purchased for $150, a Vicon round baler purchased for $850, and a New Holland 310 square baler purchased for $1500. The main tractors we use are a Ford 2000 purchased for $3500 and a Ford 8000 purchased for $3000. While all this equipment isn’t cheap for the most part we got a good deal. Most people have more wrapped up in a single tractor than I have in my entire fleet. The advantage of going this route is your equipment can often be paid for in one season. All my hay equipment was purchased with cash, it’s paid for and was paid for from day one. I worked many years with even older equipment to get here, all without borrowing money. It may be a slower way to build up, but you gain a lot of experience, and really respect a nice piece of equipment when you get it.

This article will focus on the equipment for the most part, and not the actual act of making hay. I may do another article on that in the future. I want to give examples of how making your own hay will save and even make you money, even for a small operation. We started our operation on 20 acres.

First never buy anything new when it comes to most things in life. I buy new undergarments and a few other things, but otherwise I let somebody else lose their money to depreciation. When it comes to equipment, land and other big purchases buy used and not abused. Used is fine and will save a small fortune. You will never be profitable buying new equipment running a small operation.

I currently have 40+ head of cattle, by no means a big operation. By baling my own hay I control the quality and gain some independence. A tractor, mower, rake and baler is all you need to get started.

Now we will look at price. I paid $1500 for my first useful tractor, a Ford 8N. I can find 8N’s and similar tractors for less or you can spend more if you have the money. Live PTO is really nice, but I managed to put up thousands of bales with that 8N that didn’t have live PTO. I started with a Ford 501 sickle mower and anything similar is a great way to start, although I will say a haybine or disk/drum mower is great.   I paid $250 for the Ford 501 sickle mower and you can find similar ones for around $400. My rake is a 5 wheel rake and it needed several wheels when I bought it. I spent $150 for the rake and had to put several wheels on it at an additional cost of $300. A deal like that is hard to come by but older rakes can be had for around $700. My baler is a Ford 530 that I got for $450 which was a great deal. To find a similar baler in rougher but working shape would run around $1000.

You can always spend more money for equipment. I recommend spending some free time every couple days checking for deals and saving some money. Don’t be afraid to travel if you are going to save money by doing so. I pulled both of my balers home from the Lake of the Ozarks. That is a long 150 mile trip, especially when the return trip pulling a baler is limited to about 35mph.

Okay, lets figure you look for the deals and buy an okay WD 45 tractor for $1200, which is the going price in my area. You buy a Ford 501 mower for $500. An old John Deere ground driven rake for $800 and an New Holland 68 hay baler for $1300. These are actual prices I have seen in the past month in my area for usable equipment, and that’s not considering the cash offer I would have done cutting the price considerably.

So our total is $3,800 for everything needed to bale your own hay. That is less than the price of one modern piece of equipment. Now lets see how long it will take to pay off the equipment. In my area the average price for a square bale is $4. So we would need 950 bales to break even on the equipment not counting fuel, twine and other things you will need when working. In my area you can get that much hay from less than 20 acres, if you ask around you can bale other property and have all the hay you need. You can see how I paid off all my equipment in the first year, not counting my time and sweat.

If you look around you will probably notice a lot of people own land with nice fields and do nothing with them. I have picked up as many fields as I want in my area by offering to pay for the hay off these fields. I could easily find enough of these fields to bale for free or low cost in my area to feed all my cattle. That can easily save hundreds of dollars or thousands for those with larger herds. Isn’t that worth your time?

Something else to consider is that in Missouri you can get permits to bale hay from state highway right of ways for free. Many other states have this option as well. This is a good source of hay for those living in Missouri or other states that have these permits. Check my blog where I did a post about this for a more in depth look at this great source of hay.

You might also check the Free Book section for some cattle books.

 Sometimes when you are farming you learn your lessons the hard way. This year it worked that way for me. Late last summer it was exceptionally dry here, instead of getting a second cutting for more winter hay I ended up grazing my fields. I still ended up feeding hay earlier in the year than normal. It was also an exceptionally dry winter.

I ended up not having enough hay to make it through last winter, and unfortunately I wasn’t the only one. I ended up having to travel long distances and pay a premium to get enough hay to make it to this spring. I thought I was out of the woods, as this spring we got some rains and the grass started growing great. I got my first cutting finished weeks ahead of time, mostly because it wasn’t as wet as it usually is here. I also picked up an additional 20 acres of hay ground, so the forecast looked good, even if it was a little dry.

I however didn’t expect a major drought, something on par with 2012. This time however I had a herd of 50 cattle. It is common operation for me to have a stockpile of hay. I usually have a couple thousand square bales in reserve just for a bad situation like this. However I fed those square bales in the 2016-2017 winter in anticipation of switching to round bales. I had planned on putting up a stockpile of reserve round bales on the second cutting in 2017, but ended up having to graze that ground instead.

So lesson #1, always, always have a reserve of hay if you want to run cattle. It can be the difference between breaking even in a hard year and loosing the farm. I am not in that kind of danger as I have other sources of income, but it can definitely put the hurt to your finances.

Since I started haying in 2011 I have always had more hay than I can use myself. I have been picking up additional hay fields and put up a pretty good amount of hay every year. I have been selling this additional hay and using the profit to build my small farm. I started out with one tractor, a Ford 8N and a sickle bar mower, baling with a Ford 530 square baler. In seven years I have moved up to a mower conditioner, a small fleet of tractors and a Ford 8000 with a round baler and a New Holland 310 Square baler. I have some regular customers who buy hay every year, and this spring I filled their barns and even sold some hay to new customers.

So that leads me to lesson #2, take care of yourself before others. I wouldn’t be in any danger if I had kept the hay I put up this spring. I have plenty of land to support my herd, I am not overstocked. I sold my surplus, which ended up not being a surplus after all.

I realized my mistake pretty soon as the rains quickly dwindled and I started feeding hay in July for the first time ever. I still have some grass but I don’t want to graze it into the ground, I am leaving it and hoping the rains will return and it will quickly rebound.

So what does a conventional cattleman do in this situation? Herd reduction, take the worst of your herd to the sale barn. That is exactly what I did, I picked the worst of my herd and loaded them into my trailer and went to the sale barn. Reducing my herd means I don’t have to feed as much hay. Amazingly this drought is in a bubble, the severe drought is in a limited area of Northern Missouri, areas close to me actually have wetter conditions than normal. So the price for cattle has not plummeted too bad. Only one problem, I am not a conventional cattleman, I raise Dexters. Watching conventional cattle go through I was pretty sure I could get $1.50 a lb for my cattle, however the weird cattle deduction was much worse, I ended up getting around $.80 a pound.

That leads me to lesson #3, if you are not a conventional farmer you cannot think like one. In the average year I make more money with Dexter cattle than I would with Angus or Herefords, but my price is the loss of some of the conventional easy to use markets.

So I must reduce my herd some more, there is a good chance we will get some rain late this summer and my fields will rebound, but I am not going to take that chance. I will sell some more cattle and reduce my herd to 30 head or less. So if you are looking for some inexpensive Dexter Cattle or grass fed beef, now is your chance, if you have the grass I have the cattle. All Cattle For Sale Currently

Originally this article was posted on the Chicken Page. While cleaning up my site I decided to make the chicken page more about the chickens we have for sale at LFF. I figured there would still be some interest in the general materials list for the Ultimate PVC Chicken tractor so I saved it and just have a link to this post on the Chicken Page Now.

 

The frame is 2″ conduit, I recommend conduit instead of plumbing PVC pipe as the conduit is treated to resist UV degradation.

10x 10′ 2″ sticks of conduit

 

 

11x 2″ Three ways

 

 

4x 2″ Three way corner, special order

 

 

6x Four way, special order, or 8x depending on your design

 

 

 

4x 2″ Elbows

 

The hoops and doors are made from 1/2″ conduit.

11x 10′ 1/2″ sticks of conduit

 

 

20x 1/2″ elbows

 

 

3x 1/2″ three ways

 

 

5x 1/2″ four way crosses

 

 

2 sheets of 4×8 siding or preferably heavy plastic for the doors
3 sheets of 4×8 heavy vinyl
1 8′ corrugated plastic window

I also used three handles, 13 hinges, 9 hook and eyes, 10 eyes and 6 carabiner clips. The front pull rope is used baling twine that I braided into rope. I also used baling twine to tie all the car clips to the cage so they don’t get lost. The chicken wire is held to the main frame with nylon wire holders and we use self tapping screws to mount those to the PVC framework. The vinyl sheets are screwed to the PVC with self tapping screws. We use zip ties to hold the chicken wire to the hoops. I used a heavy pipe that I welded wheel lugs to the end for the axle. I used a larger piece of roofing so that there was an overhang on the edges. I think that is everything, I may be off slightly but it will be close.

Where one section of chicken wire meets another we use hog rings to join the sections(We now use J- Hooks). We did this because if a large dog attacks the cage and manages to break a hoop the dog will still have to get through the chicken wire. We did this after a Great Dane attacked our tractor one time and broke two hoops. He was able to enter the cage between the sections of chicken wire and we lost 9 chickens.

 

To get the special fittings you will probably have to order them from the Internet. Below is a list of suppliers, I bought mine from the first link, they are the manufacturer and you have to order four boxes, but it is the cheapest source.

Snap Clamp Supplier Special PVC Fittings

List Of Suppliers from PVCPlans.com

Greenhouse Megastore

Building the tractor is straightforward. The conduit that we buy comes with one end belled to fit over another piece, we cut the bell off. In our area Menards has the best price on PVC and fittings. The sticks of PVC are 10′ long. The main frame is made of 2″ PVC. The width is half a stick (5′). The open run is one stick long (10′). The coop is 5′ wide and 4′ long. We made it 4′ long in order to get the best use of materials that come in 4’x8′ sheets.

The hoops are made of 1/2″ PVC. We cut the 1/2″ sticks in half. At the top of the run we connect the 1/2″ sticks to crosses so we can run a backbone of 1/2″ down the top of the hoops for strength and to keep the hoops evenly spaced. We use a paddle bit to drill holes into the 2″ main frame to slide the 1/2″ hoops into. The 1/2″ PVC has to be bent carefully into place as they take a lot of stress being bent into hoops. The chicken wire going over the top of the hoops prevents the ends of the hoops from coming out of the 2″ frame.

The food bowl shelf is made of 1/2″ PVC and chicken wire. The shelf is connected to the main frame on one edge, the other inner edge has pipe running up from it to connect to the hoops to suspend the shelf. A hole is drilled to slide wire through the end and over through the hoop to hold the shelf up. We then wrap the fence wire over the shelf area.

The coop has a frame of 2″ PVC. The vinyl exterior siding is screwed to the 2″ PVC frame using self taping screws. Inside the coop there are a couple of PVC pipe perches that help the chickens get up to the nest boxes along the sides and give them a place to roost. The run is attached to the coop with wire holders and self tapping screws. The top backbone of the run goes into the top perch that is built into the frame of the coop. We drilled a hole through both pieces of pipe and put a wire through them, that way the top backbone pipe cannot be pulled away from the coop.

 

 

 

 

When making a doorway like the front door or the feed doors we make a triangle from unused pieces of vinyl sheeting to place in the corners of the door frames. This prevents the door from swinging into the run and makes everything stronger.

The few improvements I will be making on the new tractor for this year will be:

1: The side doors will open like barn doors instead of dropping down. This will facilitate cleaning the nest boxes as everything can be scraped right out the back of the nest bucket. This was actually how we planned it originally, but we took a shortcut.

 

2: It will have bigger tires. The one down side to this coop is its weight. On solid ground it is easy to move around, but if its muddy or on rough ground the going gets tough.

 

I am going to discuss how Ebay can change the way you live your life. It may sound like a stretch but I am serious. So many people fail to salvage the value of unused items in their life and especially their farm. There is another way, let me show you how to make money, maybe even build a business. I have been an avid user of Ebay for well over decade. I became an Ebay Powerseller when that meant something and became a Top Rated seller when that program first started. I have literally made my living on the online flea market world of Ebay.

I am going to hopefully give you a taste of living your life in a different way. One of my goals in life is to encourage more freedom and independence by encouraging small farms and homesteads. That is the main point of this website along with telling my story. You may think Ebay doesn’t fit that model well, but you would be surprised at how well the two go together. Ebay is a major market accessible by anyone with an internet connection.

 

Here is a little of my backstory. I moved back to Missouri in 2002. I came here with my two little brothers and moved into a house that had basically been abandoned for a couple decades. My parents and probably myself have varying degrees of pack rat syndrome.  The Bevier property we moved to was once my families home in the early 80’s, everything not valuable enough to make the move to Kansas stayed behind. It was an Ebay perfect storm, I needed cash, there was stuff, I made it happen on an old computer and a dial up internet connection.

I sold all kinds of things most people discard in their lives. Old radio tubes check, zinc canning jar lids check, old magazines check. You get the idea, almost anything is worth money if you sell it in the right way. It gets a little better than selling old items though, it can transform how you actually think and live your life.

If I lived my life like the average American when something broke I would just toss it. I cannot do that, I have a very strong aversion to waste. This set me down the path to reclaiming the value of Items that others feel have no value. For example; this fall I washed out one of those cheap styrofoam incubators and left it outside to dry. Well those geeseholes found it and chewed up the Styrofoam body. The item is shot right? Not really it still has a good heating element ($10) a thermostat ($10) two windows ($5×2) and a cord ($2). As you can see many items are worth as much or sometimes more dead than alive. Ebay gives you the power to reclaim that otherwise lost value. I had originally purchased that incubator used for $15 and used it for several years.

This works with anything of value with removable pieces. Many people still repair items, sometimes people get sentimental or are just frugal. They need these used parts. This of course works both ways, I will often hold on to an item I like until I can find the part to repair it. Many old items are much better built than new items. Repairing an item with used or cheap parts off Ebay or other sources like Craigslist can save you a literal small fortune. I am not rich enough to buy what I currently have in perfect working order at market prices, I wait for the deal and repair as needed.

Why not recoup the remaining value of items you no longer need, use or just don’t want. When that microwave dies do like I did and think outside the box. That microwave will likely have good parts remaining. Most microwaves have a fan, a light, a motor for the turntable, control panel, motherboard, wiring, and many other pieces that are worth money.

I even surprised myself a couple years ago when my microwave died by selling the remaining good components for more than I purchased the replacement microwave for.

You can go from loosing everything when an appliance or even an automobile dies to making money. Yes it is very possible, I am living proof. I have made money when my car dies and my microwave stops working. This isn’t a secret, you now have the knowledge, use it. I really think this makes for a better life and you can even look at the bigger picture, this does make a better world. Why use up a resource that was already used to create an item again, Reuse is the second best of the three R’s that were ingrained in us 90’s kids.

Taking it to a New Level

Remember that I stated I make a living off Ebay? Well I still do and Ebay has been one of my financial legs since becoming a free self employed man in 2012. I really became self employed a long time before 2012, but I had a hold out part time job to make sure I was stable. I also wanted to be vested in the retirement plan offered to employees of the State of Missouri.

Still think online sales have nothing to do with being independent and living in the sticks. Let me show you what works for me. As you probably already know I live in NE Missouri. If you want a less densely populated area you have to go to the deserts in the west, or places very cold. Everything East of the Mississippi has a higher population density on average. I grew up here and in Kansas. I often forget what others call the sticks is where I grew up.

Guess what? I still get mail delivered to my house everyday but Sunday. Even UPS and Fedex deliver here. I am also right on the edge of cell service. These things give me the same services as those city slickers without the bad neighbors and other problems. Yes my internet is slower, and more expensive, but it works(most of the time). My mailman knows me by name, knows the schedule and provides excellent service. For all intensive purposes I can easily compete with someone from Chicago or even New York City. These services level the playing field, and let the obviously better rural location shine. Even before cell service extended to my location I still worked using satellite internet. I have a tall antenna to get dependable cellular signal currently.

I have some severe advantages over my city dwelling competition. Yes they have the cheap unbelievable fast internet. They however have to live in their crowded spaces with the lack of freedom. If I want to throw a junk car in the back 40 I can. If I want to keep chickens in the front yard and cattle in the back I have that option. The cost of living in rural areas is also substantially lower. You can have these freedoms now easier than ever before even with the price of land going up.

It isn’t just limited to Ebay, there are many other online marketplaces, Ebay is just one of the best. Craigslist is also great, it however has some limitations when you live in a rural area many miles from the local Craigslist city. Amazon has some advantages as well, but doesn’t work as well for selling used parts and odd items. I actually make more money on Amazon than Ebay, but it all started for me on Ebay.

The busiest time for my online sales is winter, the busiest time for my farming is the summer. I can work online during a rainstorm, or snowstorm comfortably. The match is great, and it gives me the freedom to make a good living without leaving the farm.

In 2015 I added an office to my backyard to handle my online business. I used a 16’x24′ rent to own shop. The reason I went this route is for speed and a tax advantage for the rent to own building. My office moved from a dedicated building at the sawmill to the master bedroom of our small house on the farm when we moved here. It was nice to get that bedroom back and have a better and bigger dedicated area to work out of again. I will be adding a mini warehouse addition this year. Again, this is where the rural advantage comes in, I don’t need any permission to build or put anything on land I own here. No inspections, no permission, it is called freedom. Try that in most cities.

I hope I have encouraged you to at-least consider this as an option. It has worked very well for me and my family.