Summer Project 1

[midhilldexters]

Living on clay and receiving ample rainfall and 160"+ of snow per year can make for some icky conditions. Over the last few years I have been working on a sacrifice area to feed during winters and get rid of the mud outside the barn area. I think this year alone I brought in over 100 tons of gravel, and I'm about finished, well it will always need a top up but the main part of the job is done. So here is a before and after pic.

I also put mats in front of the waterer, and may put mats around the bale feeder.

Carol K

[zephyrhillsusan]

Really cool and amazing! We have some gravel down in places, but it does make it hard to pick up hay and manure. What you've got there looks more manageable. And I love the idea of the mats! I'll be interested to see photos of how it works out for you this winter. Fantastic job!

[midhilldexters]

Thanks Susan, right now they just cross the area for water so poop patrol is not too bad. In the height of feeding time and winter I will probably rotate the bales in a square, moving the bale ring to one side and then most of the poop with end up on the old bale pile and I will be able to go in with a front end loader with a manure fork on it and clean up. Ha, sounds like a breeze but clean up after the snow melts is always a nightmare. It will look pretty ugly at the end of the season I'm sure. Two things though, they won't be on my pasture churning it up and I won't have any mud. Well that's the theory!

Carol K

[legendrockranch]

Oct 29, 2014 18:47:14 GMT -5 midhilldexters said:

Well that's the theory!
Carol K

Well keep us posted on how things work out for you. It looks real nice and clean now. I'm having a hard time with the use of mats though.

Barb

[emsshamrock]

Look very much like our sacrifice area in West Michigan! We also have that lovely clay ground... not.

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[zephyrhillsusan]

We've finally got a dedicated sacrifice area, nothing as prepared as yours though, Carol. I'll try to share about ours plans and ideas soon--and then we'll see how it actually works out in practice. But hey, it's a beginning. And we have Georgia clay--just as messy as Michigan clay, but redder.

[cddexter]

always a party pooper in every crowd.

I put down gravel around the barn to get rid of mud up to 2 feet deep (we get rain all winter and I was running around 65 head) and it worked fine for a while, BUT the manure has a lot of fibre in it and with the dead hay, gets ground into the gravel making an impermeable surface the water collects on and in, and it didn't take long before I had soup again. When I was doing quarantine, I took out almost a foot of old manure impregnated gravel and replaced it with fresh. Two years later I was back to soup again. And i was left with nice manure but full of rocks which no one wanted.

Next time I put down coarse gravel, then a thick layer of sand, and come spring took up both the manure, old hay, AND enough sand to get below the manure level. Makes for great soil. This requires a topping of fresh sand each fall, but it's worth it.

Thoughts from the tide pools of vanc is. cheers, c.

[lakeportfarms]

Make that two of us....Sorry Carol but I have to side with CD on this one. You'll be fine with this over the winter until the spring thaw, so if you wish to preserve the gravel you will need to wait until mid summer and really dry dry weather to try to scrape the manure and trampled hay off, or possibly you may be able to get in there just before the spring thaw and get it off without disturbing the gravel below. Don't even think about trying to do it in May or June, or you'll end up with gravel in the mix like CD says. You may be a little better off with fewer animals than either CD or we have, but they can still make a mess.

I give our herd free access to the entire pasture from the time we end rotation until the thaw begins. With the frozen ground and snow on top I still move the feeding areas around, and this puts the manure and wasted hay back into the soil where I want it to go, which are the less fertile areas of the property. However it can get a bit hard with the deep snow to move it around, 4 wheel drive on the tractor is a must and sometimes still not enough.

However having a sacrifice area for spring is very good for the rest of your pastures come summer. That is the bright side, but keep them in it only from the time they start to tear up the grass when it melts, until the grass has had a chance to really get growing.

[midhilldexters]

Hey Barb,
ok explain why the hard time with the mats??

Carol K

[midhilldexters]

CD and Hans,
yes certainly see your point. Our "gravel" is called crushed bank run, it has a high percentage of sand for drainage. The top part from the barn door to the T post has been down about 3 years, in the winter we scoop whatever poop we see at the barn door but in Spring we scrape with the tractor bucket. It works fine, this year it had a top up of gravel when the lower part was added. This morning woke up and those pesky sheep were all over it, lol not going to be picking their poop out of it! I think the benefits will outweigh the disadvantages. I no longer have to drive over pasture to put hay out. It would leave tracks a foot deep, they fill with rain, never recover and the long term damage to the pasture and fixing it is more of an issue. I will take pics in Spring though.

Carol K

[midhilldexters]

Emily, I feel your pain, mud sucks. I'm stll feeding out on my pasture, but in an area I will be reseeding next year with Orchard Grass, so I'm not bothered too much that they are churning up that area! Hope it dries up for you.

Carol K

[cddexter]

Hi CK:

around here, we call it crushed pit run, same thing. Whatever comes out of the gravel pit face, run through the crusher to a 2 or 3" minus (big stuff gets broken up to less than the 2 or 3", small stuff goes right on through). Because of the fractured rock, it packs better than just straight pit run. However, it will (trust me on this one) pack down and become impervious., and saturated with fibrous manure and dead hay, you'll be scraping off at least 2-3 inches of gravel along with whatever still sits on top. If you have a use for the stuff elsewhere on the farm, you'll be okay, but you can't use it for gardens (too much rock), and you can't use it for gateways (too much fibre).. Now that I've rained on your parade, , let us know your thoughts--about 3 years from now.

cheers, other c.

[Dahdo]

One year of mud here in western Oregon was enough for me! I put in a 65'x65' gravel pad behind our barn three years ago and it has worked very well. We dug off the turf and upper few inches of soil, laid down road cloth, then put in 8 inches of compacted 3/4 minus, and finally topped it with 3 inches of compacted 1/4 minus. The pad is sloped, so even though it may get coated with slime, it drains away from the barn to a catchment outside the sacrifice area. I scrap it off every week or so with the tractor. I pick up some 1/4 minus and will be adding more to the pad next year, but it doesn't degrade the quality of the manure for spreading on my pastures.

Carol, I think you'll be real happy with your pad if you can put down some compacted 1/4 minus or coarse sand next spring.
Dave

[lakeportfarms]

Dave, the difference between your conditions, and what Carol along with Emily, myself, and others face in cold climates with a lot of snow, is our freeze thaw cycle. That gravel and frost line will be cement hard 3' (and often more) down in the coldest months, but with freezing comes expansion and the breaking up of the compaction of the soil and gravel on top. When the thaw comes, not only do we have a lot of snow melt in a short time, but the top layer thaws, and the subsoil layer a foot or two down is still frozen and provides a barrier for the water so it can't drain well. So now the top layer is saturated with water that can't drain and when the gravel, etc. is disturbed by heavy foot traffic and tractor traffic, it mixes in with the hay and manure that are then trampled in with no way of separating it. It doesn't take long to have a mushy gravel mess during the wet months.

It is usually about two or three weeks in early April that the most damage is done and the mud is the worst, like axle deep on the tractor mud. During that period of time I put as many of the cows as I can in temporary pens that are paved/concrete surfaces. With our herd size now I can't get them all there, so the remainder are put on fenced lanes that I use to drive on in the summer months. When they go on the adjacent pasture in mid May I till the lanes and plant an annual rye that they can graze later in the summer.

Hans

[cddexter]

Hans, I spent 6 years in Manitoba and Saskatchewan (think North Dakota), and 12 in Ontario, just across the lake from you, and had a 100A farm there. so I know whereof you speak. If one uses sand, yes it gets churned up, but it's still effective and the sand works well with the organics. More expensive to replace sand every year, but a benefit is the extra volume of material that's then usable anywhere, and definitely resaleable. c.