Homesteading and Hobby Farm/Ranch

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Aldarion

Aldarion

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We don't heat our chickens here in Oregon. My coop is not insulated, its just a standard wood frame with a single layer of plywood or siding. Granted we have really mild winters, it rarely freezes. But as I recall we didnt heat them in Maine either and it got cold as fuck there.

If I had the choice, though, I'd *definitely* light them in the winter. Sucks continuing to pay for feed when they shut down egg production with short winter days. I just hate digging trenches for power lines.
 
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LachiusTZ

LachiusTZ

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Any thoughts on prefab vs building one?

Leaning towards easy, since I just want it done sooner and it's a yard coop not a farm (back yard is maybe 3/4 acre?)
 
Aldarion

Aldarion

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I dunno, I don't do prefab stuff for anything, but that may be more of a stubborn mindset thing than a rational choice. Chicken coops are easy to build, its not like theres code requirements to follow or something.
 
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Gavinmad

Gavinmad

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If they're the same price I'd buy the prefab. Biggest reason to build it yourself would be to save money, and a good prefab will have some features that I wouldn't want to build myself, like a droppable floor and nesting boxes that stick out so grabbing eggs is ezpz.
 
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Aldarion

Aldarion

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So our pigs are up to about 70 lbs now, big enough that when they headbutt you you notice. fuckers grow fast.

As they got stronger they started fucking with our orchard. Since the trees are still young we keep a small round fence around each tree to keep out deer. When we fenced in the pasture, we decided to enclose the orchard, leaving the little deer fences in place. Things went fine til the pigs got big enough to tear up the little fences and start rooting around the trees.

Its a temporary problem while the trees are young. Still, had to be solved. So we went ahead and set up the electric fence yesterday, with a leg of the fence around the orchard to keep the pigs out. It was on the list anyway, this just moved it higher up the list.

after struggling with the little fuckers for days, manhandling them and trying to push them out of my way... listening to those little walking slabs of bacon squeal as the discovered the electric fence... that has to be the most satisfying farm task in memory.

electric fences are awesome.
 
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Aldarion

Aldarion

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BrutulTM

BrutulTM

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It depends on how badly they want in there. The acres/miles rating on those things is nonsense. Sort of like bubble pack walkie talkies that say you can talk for 35 miles but that means in outer space you could but on earth you will be lucky to get a mile of reception. What matters with the electric fence charger is the output energy in joules. That one is .15 joules which is about as weak as you can get. That said, since you're fencing them out and not in and they aren't super motivated to get to the trees anyway, it will probably work just fine. If they decide they want to go through it, they will though. My brother had his pigs fenced in with a .65J solar fencer and it worked for a few months but then they figured out that it wasn't that bad and just started walking through it whenever they felt like it. He replaced it with a 6J plug in charger and that has done the job. The really powerful solar chargers are quite expensive. The one we have started using for the cows is a 12J and it cost about $1200, so if you find you need more power and have the ability to use a plug in charger that's probably the way to go.

People do get by with the little solar ones in a lot of situations though. It is a deterrent, just depends on how bad your critters want to get through.
 
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Kiroy

Kiroy

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LachiusTZ said:
Any thoughts on prefab vs building one?

Leaning towards easy, since I just want it done sooner and it's a yard coop not a farm (back yard is maybe 3/4 acre?)
Click to expand...

I built mine and ended up over building it. In the end what I should have done is bought the appropriate sized storage shed and modified it for chickens, would have been infinitely less work for about the same price
 
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Aldarion

Aldarion

Egg Nazi
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BrutulTM said:
It depends on how badly they want in there. The acres/miles rating on those things is nonsense. Sort of like bubble pack walkie talkies that say you can talk for 35 miles but that means in outer space you could but on earth you will be lucky to get a mile of reception. What matters with the electric fence charger is the output energy in joules. That one is .15 joules which is about as weak as you can get. That said, since you're fencing them out and not in and they aren't super motivated to get to the trees anyway, it will probably work just fine. If they decide they want to go through it, they will though. My brother had his pigs fenced in with a .65J solar fencer and it worked for a few months but then they figured out that it wasn't that bad and just started walking through it whenever they felt like it. He replaced it with a 6J plug in charger and that has done the job. The really powerful solar chargers are quite expensive. The one we have started using for the cows is a 12J and it cost about $1200, so if you find you need more power and have the ability to use a plug in charger that's probably the way to go.

People do get by with the little solar ones in a lot of situations though. It is a deterrent, just depends on how bad your critters want to get through.
Click to expand...
Its funny, the squeals they let out when they hit it sound like quite a deterrent. But they are smart and stubborn, I don't doubt that with enough motivation they could power through it.

We've got the standard steel wire electric around the whole pasture, at about 6-8 inches off the ground, inside a woven wire fence. We've also got that silly polywire stuff around the orchard. All running off the same charger. So far all the fences seem to be acting as a deterrent but we will see how it goes.

What do people do about gates? I mean, we routed the wire underground with insulated wire in a PVC conduit, its not problem wiring past the gate. What I mean is, how to people prevent pigs from digging out under the gate? It hasnt happened yet but I bet it will. Only thing I can think of is bury a line of bricks or concrete blocks or something.
 
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BrutulTM

BrutulTM

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If you have woven wire behind your electric fence you will probably be fine. My brother's pigs got through by just charging through quick. Those solar chargers only shock like once a second so they could get through without even getting shocked once if they were lucky. I don't think they would have had the heart to dig underneath a woven wire fence while getting shocked over and over.

For gates we just use one of these. If you have a swinging gate you can just run your hot wire across in front of it. Put the handle on the side that isn't connected to the charger so it's not shorting your charger to ground and draining the battery while you have the gate open. Of course your fence from the gate on will be off while the gate is open.


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Goatface

Goatface

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any thoughts on these or better options?
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mostly for looking for something to wear to pull things like feral cats, snakes, small/med dogs out of hiding places.
 
Tmac

Tmac

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LachiusTZ said:
Any thoughts on prefab vs building one?

Leaning towards easy, since I just want it done sooner and it's a yard coop not a farm (back yard is maybe 3/4 acre?)
Click to expand...

Get or build one w wheels you can move around the yard. The coop doubles as a mobile fertilizer. My sisters husband built one and it works great.
 
Blazin

Blazin

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Soy Bean harvested. I'd give my left nut to have enough land to justify having my own combine. $500k machine, to you work 2-4 days a year . One of the few things that drives me to keep trying to make money is to have equipment I want even if it's not economical.
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BrutulTM

BrutulTM

Good, bad, I'm the guy with the gun.
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Blazin said:
Soy Bean harvested. I'd give my left nut to have enough land to justify having my own combine. $500k machine, to you work 2-4 days a year . One of the few things that drives me to keep trying to make money is to have equipment I want even if it's not economical.
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Somehow I missed this. $500k is the price of a brand new combine with a gigantic head which obviously wouldn't be appropriate for your place, but if you really want to combine you can do it way cheaper than that as long as you're willing to deal with old machinery. Hell I have a combine I would sell you for $7k (John Deere 7700 from the late 70s sometime with a 24' head). It hasn't been run since 2012 but it was fully functional when I parked it. If you came and got it running and arranged the trucking yourself I'd probably sell it for $5k. Obviously you're not going to come to Montana, but there's plenty of old machines sitting around if you want to make the effort to use them. Plenty of shit that is from the 50's or older is still in use all over the country. It's still not going to be economical, but it's a lot more realistic than buying new.
 
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