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Post by Deleted on Jan 16, 2014 15:56:18 GMT -5
Donna, I didn't make any suggestion about keeping three herds. There are actually 4 different homozygous color types, if you differentiate between true red and wild red. There is no harm in mixing cows together, nor in mixing bulls together. You could keep two herds: One with all cows and one with all bulls. Hi Genebo. Yes we would like to separate the reds so you are right, there is four colour types. And yes, we do actually run two herds as we do have the 'cow herd' and the 'bull herd'. But i never thought of it as running two herds . We do not want to physically run three or four separate herds, only have them separated on paper. So good record keeping will be essential to ensure we stay on the chosen path which for now, doesn't seem hard to do as each Dexter and their contribution is in my every waking moment White boarding the mind's thoughts help the what-ifs. OH had the paddock plan accommodate the using of up to 6 bulls in a breeding season but this year we only used two bulls and our whiteboard indicates we may never use 6 bulls in a single season but if we are able to take colour into consideration with conformation, that will change with what you have suggested with homozygenous colour outcomes.................which had me up until 11 pm last night working out on the board. I think each season will have us deciding on the BD1 aspect after conformation as it is too hard to roll into future scenarios at the moment, the whiteboard isn't big enough we certainly do not want to lose our dwarfs in the process. Your suggestions and advice have been invaluable. I'm feeling a little more confident in heading down the path (and made a few changes). After each year's calf drop and the receiving of test results, the whiteboard will always receive a good workout as we plan for the next step. Now I have to learn patience for this yearly process - darn it cows having a 9 month gestation period 8 weeks would be so much easier *LOL*
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Post by Deleted on Jan 16, 2014 16:08:09 GMT -5
And Donna. .. As I'm sure you've covered this. .. gifting shares NOW to your adult children each year into a limited partnership (or some other such venture - there are many ways to skin that cat) will assure your kids can carry on and not be forced to deal with exorbitant taxes that could potentially prevent them from carrying on. We have friends who just sold their B & B that they built from the ground up into a 5 start resort. Sold it to a well known chain because they realized it had gotten too valuable to leave their middle aged son. They basically were forced to sell their son's inheritance and legacy... a son who runs the place btw. For those who farm and hope to have their dream carried on I suggest seeking legal advice from a young age. Wow funny you should say that. The kids raised this issue last year and 'made' us action this aspect. We thought it was as easy as leaving a Will but no, it wasn't. The kids came with us to ensure they had each of their concerns covered instead of having to deal with possible issues after we are no longer here. It was a feel-good, very proud parent moment for me. Their level of maturity amazed me
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zephyrhillsusan
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Caught Dexteritis in Dec. 2009. Member of this forum since Oct. 2013.
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Post by zephyrhillsusan on Jan 16, 2014 16:22:09 GMT -5
SO wonderful that your kids are so engaged and thinking ahead!
Your whiteboard sounds like a great place to plan. Just one idea that I saw someone do once--when you have a plan laid out, put the date on it and shoot a photo with a digital camera. Then if you change the plan on your whiteboard, you can still go back and find a record of what you had written down. Later on you can get those photos up on your computer and enlarge them so they are easy to see.
Please do post updates periodically. I'll be interested to see how things work out.
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Post by carragheendexters on Jan 17, 2014 7:36:25 GMT -5
I was wanting to irrigate our Lucerne(alfalfa) paddock this year. Lucerne is the only thing that will actually grow over here in a dry summer,( even the native grasses on our hill paddock, red grass, microlaenia, windmill, hairy panic etc) don't grow very well it has deep tap roots that get to the subsoil moisture. It is only a small paddock, about 5 acres, and I thought that if I irrigated it would really be able to grow and keep us with green grazing, and I thought that it would be quite achievable using our fast flow bore. My intentions were to buy a small travelling irrigator (like the ones the dairy farms use but designed for small acre paddocks) so that I could cover the whole paddock with just a couple of runs, and could get it out of the way so the cows couldn't trash it, as they love to chew on things and destroy them LOL.
Anyway, I asked my old farmer friend Colin to help me set it up. He helps us do things when we don't have the know how. He is an old farmer who knows how to do everything, water is his area of expertise. Anyone in our area need help with a bore or a windmill and Col's your man. He is an old water diviner, but relies on modern technology for help. He just shrugged his shoulders and raised his eyebrows at me, as he always does when I come with a harebrained idea, and sat me down to do the sums of irrigating.
Did you know that it takes 25,000litres (5,500gallons) of water per acre to give the equivalent of 1 inch (25mm) of rain? So for our 5 acre paddock for 1 inch equivalent of rain, it would need 125,000litres (27,500 gallons) of water. Now he calculated that with the temps , humidity, and evaporation for this time of year , we would need at least 3-4 inches (75-100mm) per month to make it worth our while watering the lucerne. That came to a whopping 375,000-500,000 litres(82,600-110,100 gallons) of water for just one month of irrigating. If you irrigate for 3 months , as we were wanting to do, that came to between 1.125 million and 1.5 million litres ( between a quarter and a third of a million gallons) of water.
WOW! I was shocked to say the least. I now realise why people don't irrigate pasture, unless they have an endless supply of water available. I was lucky he sorted me out before I went and bought the irrigator, I would have wasted my money.
regards Louise
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Post by Dahdo on Jan 17, 2014 10:53:38 GMT -5
Louise, as big as those numbers are, it turns out it takes even more water to put the equivalent of an inch on an acre. By my calculation it is 43,560 sq ft per acre x 1/12 in/ft x 7.48 gallons/cu- ft = 27,152 gallons. And as your old farmer friend probably figured into the calculations, no irrigation method is 100% efficient....a percentage of the water is lost to evaporation and runoff before it can get to the root zone. For sprinklers, that percentage can be pretty small, 10-20 percent. But for ditch irrigation, efficiency is low because so much is lost in getting the water into and down the furrows.....sometimes they lose 50-60 percent of the water just getting it out to the fields. Sprinklers are almost always the way to go, especially with groundwater where you have to pay for power to pump it our of the ground. It's usually the old federal irrigation projects here where you still find ditch irrigation because water is heavily subsidized and essentially "free". Sorry to take this even further off topic.....
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Post by carragheendexters on Jan 17, 2014 13:47:12 GMT -5
Hey Dave, did you just do the calculations, WOW! I didn't even try to confirm what he was saying, I just believed him. He is an old guy so he constantly jumps back and forth between imperial and metric. We went metric over here in the 70's, and the older people still think in imperial but have to work in metric, the likes of people my age work in metric but can partially still think in imperial, and the young kids well WHAT'S IMPERIAL??
It's really hard when you have to fix things that are really old like piping and water fittings etc and all your fittings are imperial and they only make metric now. it really sucks, you have to replace whole setups rather than repair.
So, going by your calculations, it looks like Col was mixing up imperial and metric when he was giving me the numbers. So it looks like everything should probably be multiplied by maybe 5 ? Is that it? WOW! It makes the numbers even higher. So for 5 acres for 3 months that is closer to between approx 5 and 8 million litres or water, or between approx 1 and 1 and a half million gallons. That is an even more astronomical number, really mind boggling. Yes we were going to use a sprinkler travelling irrigator. It really would have been pointless for us to irrigate, we couldn't have done that kind of water.
Sheri, catching rainwater off of roofs would work the other way too. One inch or rain goes so far when you put it in a tank. It really is amazing isn't it, when you get those torrential rains to think just how many billion of litres/gallons of water must be going on the land.
Yes, really off topic but water is fascinating. Maybe we could move it to a new topic. Dave, you look like you know what you are talking about with the numbers, maybe you could give us some calcs and scenarios to chat about. Re calculating water useage and collection.
regards Louise
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Post by Dahdo on Jan 17, 2014 14:30:21 GMT -5
Great idea Louise! You have primed the pump, so to speak, but I'll start another thread in the next day or so. May some like: "do you irrigate? Should you? Could you?" I was a hydrologist for 32 years before becoming a wannabe grass farmer, so now you know why I did the calculations!
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Post by Deleted on Jan 17, 2014 15:23:46 GMT -5
Wow those water figures are astounding but it still beats putting our hands in our pockets for feed which we don't want to do if we can help it. And for the majority of this year we also supported the feeding of 40 agisting cows for a friend. But we are still hanging in there unlike many of our friends who have been buying in feed for the last couple of months or so. We don't irrigate with our bore, OH wasn't happy with the water test results that came back for the table olive trees. So that ended up basically being a huge waste of money especially since we didn't strike water until after 100m. It was only ever to be used in an emergency, hence the dams and waterholes we have dug. But we are thinking of connecting a few of the irrigation branches into it for next spring to irrigate the 700 odd deciduous and semi-deciduous trees we currently have growing in pots ( which I am so very proud of as I have a major black thumb) so we are not feeling too bad about having to spend all that money on the bore now. And today we are scheduled for between 5 - 10ml of rain, and then showers for the next 4 days...........here's hoping they are right and then I can stop the irrigation process started a few days ago and hopefully it will top up those dams which aren't at their max. So I'll let you know how we go and if we have to buy in feed by the end of Summer going into Autumn. Cheers Donna Oh forgot to mention, our water pumps attached to the irrigation are solar pumps. The cost of running petrol pumps was totally out of the question.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 17, 2014 18:04:11 GMT -5
Hi Genebo Thank you so much for the link. We too want to feed only grass and have been working on this aspect as soon as we knew we we buying property. We knew what we wanted to buy and it took a long time in finding it. As a property warming gift, mum gave me the book Back from the Brink by Peter Andrews. We also have his book Beyond the Brink. With our environmental studies in hand, we contacted Peter and found him to be invaluable in the management of our property. We have followed many of his suggestions with our dams, planting of types of trees and the contouring of the land. We were very fortunate that the previous owner concentrated on grass only grazing for his livestock and had the bit of land we purchased, contoured for maximum water absorption instead of run-off. We want to keep and improve our native grass property while supporting the Dexters and our chosen farm income of table olive trees. Sowing introduced pastures over native grasses is like knocking down half your house in farm equity. Our irrigation goes a little against his recommendations but for the sake of the olive trees, it is a must to help prevent bumper bi-annual crops, helping to maintain an annual average crop instead. And the trees will need support during droughts.noir property is sandy-loamed soil ( if you can call it soil) another reason why our dams are so deep to try and prevent leakage. Peter was very helpful in helping us to plan where the irrigation would be best served for both trees and property. And we followed his advice. To date we have not had to use the irrigation until a few days ago when I thought better to start before the grasses turn to crunch under foot. We have been here for 6 years now. It's taken much time and money to set us up to where we are, and I don't feel as if we are even halfway as yet. We bought a boundary fence with land. No power, no water no house -nothing! We rely on solar and wind turbines for power and our water source is stored rain water collected from every available roof including cow and poultry shelters, and that collected in small-surfaced but very deep dams. We know that our practices today will need tweaking along the way until we find that balance of Australia's drought cycles with feeding a year round grass-only diet to the Dexters as well as supporting the chosen farm-income of olives. So it is great to hear what others are doing. It's food for thought for us. It's going to be a trial and error approach to get to the place we want to be, and understand this and are prepared to change at a moment's notice if we need too. Have you read his book at all? Cheers Donna PS: Here's a small write up about his book from the ABC; ...................................... Australia faces a catastrophe. For 200 years, our farmers have been using methods developed in European climates and landforms which, in Australia, have wreaked havoc. On the driest inhabited continent on earth, the delicate balance between the land, its climate and inhabitants has been disrupted. Where once our country was able to survive long droughts and to prevent salinity, it is now on the brink of irreparable damage. And it's not just a problem for farmers - it's starting to affect our cities. Can we pull ourselves back from the brink? With a lifetime's experience of working the land, Peter Andrews has seen the landscape change. He has watched and experimented with the movement of water. He has observed the importance of biodiversity - weeds included. And he's concluded that to save Australia we need to return the landscape to its original systems. From his observations, a radical new approach has developed. Long rejected by farmers, scientists and politicians, Peter's theories are being taken more and more seriously - because his theories work. Back from the Brink tells Peter Andrews's story and explains how we can, if we choose, save Australia from the mistakes of the past. ........................................
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Post by Deleted on Jan 17, 2014 19:25:19 GMT -5
Now I feel abashed, because it reads like you have really done your homework. I hardly feel qualified to give you advice Oh no Genebo, that wasn't the intent to make you feel 'abashed' at all I have read the link you gave and bookmarked it for future reference. There is always room to learn more. No one person has the perfect answer for every situation. We just like Peter's principles and his reasoning makes sense to us. We can also see how much of what he explains will suit our particular wishes for land management, for now and in the future but it doesn't make all he says as the sole answer. Thanks Redridge for yet another possible resource . Wow we have really gone off topic, but thank you all so much. With the temp now reading 36 degrees Celsius at 11.30 am, moos resting in the shade with guinea fowl and chooks walking around them, muscovy ducks under their shelter in the middle of a dam, it's time to sit with some good reading in the cool. Will check out what I can find on Internet about Greg Judy. Thanks again.... Cheers Donna
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