John Denver was wrong

[welsummerchicks]

I'm just a farmerette on a farmette. I admire all you real farmers.

I only have disasterettes.

'I have to leave work, I have a stampede!'

'Wels, you need more than one animal to have a stampede'.

'There's a chicken and a horse'.

 

[Mac in Wisco]

A few days before Christmas last year I walked out to our layer barn to pack up the day's eggs and found water running out the front door. Several birds had perched on and snapped off a water line connection to the watering lines. The water had run all night and completely flooded the barn. 20 tons of deep litter all turned to slurry with the birds walking around hock deep in the mess. It was around -10 F outside, so I cracked one of the overhead doors open a little and did my best to try to drain what I could out the door. We got 20 bales of hay out of the hay loft and tiled the barn floor with leaves of hay to give the birds something dry to walk on. Within about a week it all started to rot and blow off massive amounts of ammonia. Our two boys and my nephew were still on Christmas break from school so I dragged them out there and we spent about 8 hours removing the saturated litter, one wheelbarrow load at a time.

 

[Cindiloohoo]

Quote:
Trying to catch a rooster can make a good story.

The good rooster story is the one where the nasty roo that gave chase down the fence line every day did it to DD, and wound up doing a nose dive into a 5 gallon water bucket sitting just inside the fence because the idiot wasn't watching where he was going. He almost drowned because we were laughing so hard at him.

He did survive long enough to get rehomed. But that was hillarious!

 

[Cindiloohoo]

Quote:
One word. EWWWWWWWWWWW!!

 

[Katy]

Silage cart and manure spreader feeder chains have both broken while loaded more than once.

Somebody (not me either!!) cut the field driveway too short and drops the back tires of the grain truck off the edge of the culvert...loaded of coarse.

Heifers who chose the coldest and snowiest night to calve.....cows too actually.

Backed into and bent the auger while backing up the grain truck to unload into the bin.

Turned too short with the grain cart and bent the PTO shaft.

Neighbor burns his pasture and the fire gets away and burns up over 1/2 mile of our pasture fence.

Can't count the number of times the combine has broken down during harvest.

Having a late season freeze knock our wheat crop back from 50 bushels an acre to less than 7 bushels per acre.

Finding out when you preg check cows when you bring them home in the fall your bull was shooting blanks and almost everybody is open.


I'm sure I'll think of more.....

 

[Mac in Wisco]

I never really pictured a "farm" when I heard that song. I always pictured a ramshackle hillbilly shack in the hills with a few hogs running around outside and ma and pa sitting on the porch. I guess my thoughts were kind of tied to his Country Roads song, singing about West Virginia and all.

 

[turney31]

Could have been the time I was haying cows, and my 10 yr old son was jumping from one large round bale to the other, and he stopped dead and waved me over to where he was standing . What did we find? A cow upside down, all 4 hooves straight up in the air, stuck between hay bales. I had to move 40 something large bales before she could get up. Cows are stupid.

Or could have been the time we found about a 400lb calf stuck in the water trough. Picture a very long trough made out of half a pipe about 2+ feet deep. It had a pipe rail about 2+ feet off the top of the water, ironically to prevent cows from getting in it. God only knows how but the calf was laying quite comfortably. A cow gets up rear end first so.. every time he tried his butt hit that pipe. Couldn't free him by using a cutting torch because the pipe would get hot and burn him. We ended up making a sling on the tractor hay forks, sliding it under him, I smeared lard on his back and sides and sucked him out sideways.

Cows are stupid.



One good luck story was I was unrolling a big bale and noticed a cow standing staring at a old rotten tree stump,I went to investigate and found that she had just given birth with her rear end next to said stump that happend to have a deep hole next to and under it. Of course the calf had slid all the way in that hole. I was in time to pull him out ,swing him to clean his lungs , and to cry like a baby when he took a breath. Cows are stupid.

And last but certainly not least, was the time when I was getting a round bale off of a top row of about 3 round bale high stack, out of the barn. It was a very large tractor, it was a tight area between the barn supports, bales and back fence. I managed to get the front of the bale against the barn support and the back of the tractor against the fence. I could not go forward or backwards.

When dh got home I dreaded telling him what I had managed to do and that I just couldn't think of any solution. He sweetly said " It can't be that bad." We went to take a look and in a half a minute, he jumped up on the tractor,dumped the bale off the fork and drove right out. My hero! I can be really stupid! Bless my heart.

 

[cmjust0]

Bushhogging down a hill and see something go by to your right just as you experience what feels like the rear tractor tire going into a hole...and then you're like "Hey, is that my rear tractor tire rolling down the hill?"

And it is.

Luckily, the tire began to fall over which caused it to veer to the right, so it just kinda rolled to a stop and flopped over instead of crashing into A) the barn, B) the other barn, or C) the house. Unfortunately, it was FULL -- like, to the tippy top -- with calcium chloride solution, making it EXTREMELY HEAVY. Had to dig a hole in the ground and drain several gallons of calcium chloride out of the tire into the hole just to get it lifted up to where I could roll it.. The best part was that it had to be put back on the tractor where the tractor sat...which, again, was on a hill.

You've just not lived until you've had to "work" an EXTREMELY HEAVY wheel and tire to line up the lug holes with the studs, then lift it into place.

On a hill.

By yourself.

BTW, it's been several years since that happened and STILL nothing grows where I drained that calcium chloride solution out.

 

[dacjohns]

Quote:
The joys of larger scale chicken raising.

BTW, I'll be up in Wisconsin for Thanksgiving. You aren't anywhere near River Falls are you? I could use some good eggs.

 

[Orchid]

Quote:
My father in law does on-the-farm tire service for a living. I am SURE he can relate!

And no, calcium chloride is not so good for the vegetation.