Linda Johansson

What is the permie take on ozone laundry systems? Have never used one, all I know about it is from about a 5 minute google search after seeing an ad. Are they actually permie approved or are they just claiming to be “eco friendly” while really hiding something? I don’t have a grey water system, and I haven’t ever used the alternatives that some of you are suggesting. Maybe those are just as good or better.

From my quick google search, it looks like the main complaint is that they’re not spectacular on stains/farm-level dirty clothes, but even if you still have to use detergent on maybe your jeans, but t shirts, towels, bedding, socks etc can go through without, you’re avoiding a significant amount of nasty detergent stuff.

I had an old broom laying around and used that. But I’m not wasting my time every single night of my life chasing chickens out of there. I bought an automatic coop door for a reason.
I have considered my chicken keeping a great success so far, much better than I expected. But I farm by the “if the animal doesn’t fit my system, it doesn’t belong on my farm” philosophy. If the chickens don’t have enough instinct to go in the coop with everyone else, natural selection is going to take its course and I’m ok with that. I’ll do a certain amount of modifying my system as I learn, but I don’t have time to be screwing around with chasing chickens out from under the trailer daily. As for the eggs, I can retrieve when I move the trailer, but they get extra dirty under there which makes washing annoying, so I’d just prefer to not deal with it.

Cecile—I have kept them locked in until later so that I can move the set up while they’re still inside. I don’t care to do that because I keep it basically as full of chickens as I realistically can, so they really need as much outside time as possible so they don’t get crabby and stop laying. Also historically the water has been located outside because the waterer I had, they would roost on top of it and poop in the water. I now have a different water system where that won’t be an issue.
Even in the deep cold of winter (-40 F at times), my first winter my chickens continued to lay nearly an egg a day. This winter there was slightly less but again, I was getting by for the winter with a coop that was a bit small, so when it got super cold and they wouldn’t go outside they felt a bit crowded. Next winter I will have a much more spacious coop which should help with that issue. Interestingly, I find that my chickens are consistently done laying by 2 pm every day, as during those extreme cold snaps I have to collect twice daily to keep eggs from freezing. If I collect at about 8 am and 2 pm, I get all the eggs without the first ones freezing before I can get to them.

I find it so interesting that everyone loves the feature of the birds hiding under the coop…that has been my biggest complaint with my trailer. They hang out under it, lay eggs under it instead of in the nest boxes, and the birds at the bottom of the pecking order tend to roost under the coop instead of inside for the night where it is safe. When I build my mobile yard I intend to make some changes such  that the birds no longer have access underneath the trailer.

I have a summer “tractor style” coop made out of an old horse trailer. Dolly wheels on the front allow me to pull it with the four wheeler easily to fresh grass daily, and for this summer I intend to make a mobile chicken yard out of electric net fencing mounted onto a drain tile footprint. This will be attached to the back of the trailer and dragged along with the trailer during moves. I have honestly not had any issues with hawks or owls, just the occasional raccoon, but I find that if I let them free range completely in the summer I lose too many eggs to the tree rows or haystacks. This is, after all, a business.
For the winter I am currently getting by with the old coop that was in the corner of the barn on my property. I appreciate living with it for a coupe of winters before building what I want, as I’ve done some trial and error to find out what works for me.
I wish I had thought of this sooner, but if I was starting over I would buy an old junky school bus that still runs and drives. Gut all the seats out of it and wall off the driver area so the chickens can’t poop all over it. Then mount roosts and nest boxes, an ibc tote for water. The slick floor could easily be scraped clean during daily chores. The windows, I would cover with chicken wire so they could be opened in summer to allow lots of ventilation. Probably some shade cloths over them that could be rolled up in winter, so you don’t get too much of a greenhouse effect in summer but all that sunshine in winter. Automatic coop door mounted off the back emergency exit with a ramp. Then in summer I would move it around as needed so keep the girls on fresh grass, in winter I would park next to the garden and set big round haybales against it for some insulation. This of course would be for a large flock.

As I read forums here on permies, and watch some of Paul’s videos, I notice that it seems like many permies are located in forested regions, and for that reason the ways they manage their homesteads take advantage of their natural resource of trees/wood.

Some of us, however, reside in the prairies (or desert), where trees are scarce and the climate is different. I thought it might be fun to start a thread all about prairie things, that might work differently than in more densely wooded areas. For example, it would make no sense for me to try to use a wood stove as my primary heat/cooking source. While I find round wood timber framing to be fascinating, it’s not exactly something that is practical in my environment.

Tell me about your distinctly prairie things. This can be really broad…gardening techniques, critters, building. Does anybody have an awesome heat/power/fuel source alternative? It seems like solar or wind is the obvious choice in the prairie, but there are aspects of those that aren’t exactly permie. Has anyone coppiced a caragana? Tell me all about your unique solutions that our woodland permie friends wouldn’t do!

I have never halter trained my sheep besides 4h animals. I actually prefer sheep that want nothing to do with me as tame or bucket broke sheep are incredibly annoying and hard on knees. I can’t get anywhere near my sheep without having them in a crowded pen where they can’t run. When I need to pull a lamb, or fix a prolapse, or adopt a lamb, I just put a rope halter on a wild sheep and tie her up. They generally just put their head down and pull back and ignore me. I’ve never needed more restraint than that. For any individual needs like trimming hooves, giving shots to a sick animal, stitching up a torn face because sheep are sheep, flipping the animal over is the best restraint.

Squeeze chutes come in many arrangements depending on your needs. For someone operating with 25-50 cattle, it becomes reasonable to purchase a proper squeeze chute, a one-piece item that restrains the animal completely. If I was a homesteader and only intended to have a family milk cow and raise the calf for beef annually, I think I would focus my efforts on halter training both animals and having a sturdy milking stanchion that can do double duty if needed. In my 4H days I loaded many a halter broke cow into a trailer with no need for a force alley or chute.

If I was going to raise a handful of cattle, enough that it become cumbersome to halter break but not a full sized herd, I would look for what we call a head gate. This is simply the head catch portion of a chute and can be mounted between two sturdy posts with a single file alley leading up to it.

As others have mentioned, they can be handy for sheep and goats, but in roughly 20 years raising sheep, I’ve had at best an alley. For adopting lambs, I opt for tying the ewe in a corner of a pen and leaving the lamb in there, helping it nurse for the first day or two in case she tries to kick. The best use for the alley is loading them onto the trailer and for the sorting gate on front, makes sorting sheep so much easier as they do not sort like cattle! Also nice for shearing day of course. But there really is rarely a need to restrain a ewe that can’t be handled with a halter.

I have a few that come to mind. The first few happened when I was working on a large scale ranch in central ND, prairie potholes region.
In one case it was an October blizzard that blew up, after getting the main cow herds managed for the blizzard I headed home early in the tractor to try to lead a group of yearlings in from their pasture to hunker down in the yard through the storm. It was starting to snow and by the time I got home the wind was picking up too. It’s nearly a full section of pasture, and as I went driving around out there looking for the cattle the storm really turned into a blizzard. Never did find the yearlings, after the storm we found they had drifted into a neighboring pasture and all rode out the storm just fine. Of course, I was safe and warm in my nice tractor, but I drove around out there for hours in the blizzard until I realized I couldn’t tell much where I was anymore and decided I better head it back home before I lost my way completely. It was going to be a 3 day blizzard and I would’ve run out of diesel if I had had to ride it out in the tractor. Made it home, but there were definitely more than a few moments where I wasn’t sure if I was heading in the right direction.
That same February/march, it seemed like we had a blizzard consistently starting every Friday and going on until Sunday afternoon. When they forecasted a particularly bad one, I had gotten tired of being snowed in at my place until Monday afternoon when someone from work could get there with the tractor to dig me out. So I borrowed the snowmobile and rode it home about 8 miles. Had never ridden a snowmobile before, tucked my 6 month old border collie pup on my lap and took off. Storm was going prettty good and it was down below zero. I took the shortcut past the lake but really didn’t know where I was. Luckily the wind had swept the snow up into big drifts and bare spots so I could see the gravel of the road now and then and navigate. But the next stretch was just an open field for 2 miles, no fences, no landmarks, and no visibility. I can tell you I was awfully glad when all of a sudden I about fell off the edge of the earth, had found the ditch of the road I needed to turn onto and head north to my house. Lost my hat with a couple miles to go, boy did my ears hurt when I got home.

The worst one I ever experienced I fortunately was at home. This was a few years later than the others. It was a bit April storm that hit during calving season. My husband and I had about 100 head and a good percentage of those had calves on the ground. We had to hook the snowblower on the tractor in the morning and blow a path to the barn, then hurry up and get unhooked and hooked onto the bale processor to feed. Well, we had all the cow calf pairs locked in to the corrals as well as the bred cows. There wasn’t a lot of room to spread the feed out with all those cows in there, and besides, by the time we could get half the feed out the path we had snowblown was about drifted shut again. So we’d hurry it back up to the main yard, go in and have some lunch since it was about noon anyway. And then after lunch we’d switch back over to the snowblower, make a fresh path, and then run back and get the bale processor to feed the other half of the days feed. Took us most of the day to get the basic chores done. For overnight calving checks, we typically take turns getting up in the night and heading down to the barn, but the tractor with the snowblower was the only vehicle that could get through the snow. Barn is about 300 yards or so from the house. I’m talking a mfwd tractor was the only thing that could make it 300 yards without getting stuck. We were scared to go alone in case something happened, there was no way the other person could get there to help them. To try to walk the 300 yards would’ve been incredibly dangerous, we were just praying every time we got in the tractor that we found the barn. At least if we didn’t we had a climate controlled cab until we found our way. Never have I had so much respect for what nature can do, nor what the people who settled this place went through. I’ve got 2 neighbors within 2 miles as the crow flies, and there’s fences everywhere. And I could’ve been lost on the prairie in minutes in that storm. But back when it was first settled, there was just miles of nothing. I can’t imagine living through those blizzards.

Tim: I will definitely be considering purchase of one of these. Looks great.

Anne: some oil is a good idea. I’ll give it a shot before buying a new door. I think I will take R Scott’s suggestion and do a full “entryway”.

R Scott: the entryway idea is something I had thought of myself. The question in my mind was, what sort of door do I put on the outside so that the entryway doesn’t just blow full of snow? A traditional doggie door? Will the chickens push it open or will it confuse them? I think I may have a design in mind that will minimize snow blowing in even with no door at all.
As far as keeping a light sensor working, I use the timer function as I found the light sensor closed the door about an hour before the chickens went in for the night. So that’s not an issue, just need to make sure I build in access so I can change the settings, and clean out snow if it would blow in. Not that my terrified chickens will leave the coop if there’s a snowflake on the ground anyway 🙄.
If you would want to use the light sensor, simply build the entryway out of clear corrugated plastic, like for skylights in pole buildings. Then you just have to clean snow off the top of it when you get a fresh snowfall. I think I would build out of that material regardless, as the chickens would likely be more willing to walk through it if it’s not a dark tunnel. Last year I tried to stack small square hay bales and leave a gap for them to walk through and I could not get those birds to go out even when I tried to train them. Once I took the bale tunnel down they went out every day.