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Pasture enhancement pictures

G

Grassfarmer

Well-known member
Joined
Aug 21, 2005
Messages
998
Location
Central Alberta, Canada
This is what our cows are busy with this time of year seeing as we don't start calving until after the middle of April.
rings.jpg

Feeding the heifers/leaner cows in rings moved every day, portable windbreaks in background.
manure.jpg

We move the cows to cover 1 acre every 5 days with a group of 100 so we are putting down 500 AUDs worth of manure per acre.
readytomove.jpg

Mature cow group finished a field ready to move to their next pasture.
movinout.jpg

Movin' out - as you can see we still have good snow cover. Twelve inches + on the flat with no breaks in the cover - another reason we don't calve in winter!
trail.jpg
A rear view through a dirty window.
bunks.jpg

the heavy duty silage bunks we use - the mature cows get silage 1 day in 4 to supplement their ration as we are still feeding quite a bit of straw as well as their hay.

And finally - a neighbor's pasture improvement - drill waste spread recently from a new gas well being drilled just east of me.
drillwaste.jpg
 
Looks like a good system. I've never thought of portable wind breaks...what size are they/how are they put together? Good idea :D . Also, it's nice to see that manure. I've fed more cattle this winter, and have been able to spread their feedground out so that my meadows should be well fertillized.
 
We buy the frames for the windbreaks as there are lots of guys around here building them from oilfield pipe. They have 2 skids that run full length then 5 raised cross bars that connect the skids together. Then there are uprights welded to the crossbars that hold the cross timbers. They are 32 feet long and we find 3 will shelter 100 cows in extreme weather. Some people make them with an inverted T shaped skid at each end that sits perpendicular to the wind boards but they blow over and are tough to pull on frozen ground.

Come for a visit anytime RSL

The drill waste is the drilling mud they get when drilling a new well. It will be a mix of soil, rock, metal etc they tell farmers it is great stuff because it has a little bit of nitrogen in it but in reality I think there will be a lot more undesirables in there that they don't mention. They pay about $1200 per well to spread it on your land so most guys jump at the chance.
 
Grassfarmer said:
We buy the frames for the windbreaks as there are lots of guys around here building them from oilfield pipe. They have 2 skids that run full length then 5 raised cross bars that connect the skids together. Then there are uprights welded to the crossbars that hold the cross timbers. They are 32 feet long and we find 3 will shelter 100 cows in extreme weather. Some people make them with an inverted T shaped skid at each end that sits perpendicular to the wind boards but they blow over and are tough to pull on frozen ground.

Come for a visit anytime RSL

The drill waste is the drilling mud they get when drilling a new well. It will be a mix of soil, rock, metal etc they tell farmers it is great stuff because it has a little bit of nitrogen in it but in reality I think there will be a lot more undesirables in there that they don't mention. They pay about $1200 per well to spread it on your land so most guys jump at the chance.
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If ya' have a chance,could you take a pic of that windbreak,kind of something new to me.As for the drill waste,sounds like a short term benifit.The local mill many years ago would truck the ash from the co-gen plant to your field,lots of choked fields needless to say,hope you folks fair better.
 
I made some portable windbreaks out of windbreak panels that Daniels MFG sells out of Valentine NE. The panels that they sell are 20' long and I took 5 of them and made then hinge at the ends and they fold together like a road map. One 20' panel stays in the middle where I put a axle that can be raised and lowered to travel down the road. It takes maybe 20 min to unfold, but I learned the hard way is that you need to put some wood post in the ground to anchor them to. I just used some metal T-post and the whole dang thing blew over.
 
Northern Rancher said:
Ohh some s..t from oilwells....
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According to the Material Safety data Sheets the "mud" has no toxic ingredient. What they fail to mention is that it throws the balance of the natural minerals and causes toxicity by overloading various chemicals. A neighbor spread a bunch on his spring pasture a few years back. The cows would not touch the spread parts and camped on the non spread areas. According to Albrecht; Cows are capable chemists.
 
tenbach79 said:
I made some portable windbreaks out of windbreak panels that Daniels MFG sells out of Valentine NE. The panels that they sell are 20' long and I took 5 of them and made then hinge at the ends and they fold together like a road map. One 20' panel stays in the middle where I put a axle that can be raised and lowered to travel down the road. It takes maybe 20 min to unfold, but I learned the hard way is that you need to put some wood post in the ground to anchor them to. I just used some metal T-post and the whole dang thing blew over.
Click to expand...

Yep, I'd have to set a few posts myself if I had portable wind breaks up here...thanks for the tip :D . I just think they'd be ideal since my permanent wind breaks get soooooo manured-up. You clean them out, but the ground is never the same again. Being able to move them around would be nice.
 
Good evening folks. One little tidbit about the drilling "mud" - it's not the mud that really causes the trouble - yes it can throw the ratios of micronutrients out of wack - particularly the Calcium which is bad for Alberta since most of the province is Ca defficient. The other thing they don't mention though, is the potential for heavy metals coming out of the well. Anywhere you have an oil deposit worth drilling for, you're going to have some interesting deposits of various metals in close proximity. What comes out and gets spread on the land is a real cocktail of who knows what, unless you demand an analysis and have it looked at by someone not connected to the oil company.

It is however quite interesting from a soils/geolocial perspective, to see what's down there when you get the chance to view their data. Gravel deposits, Calcium deposits, and various other things are always marked in the drill reports.

By the way GF, great pics. Thanks for coming to the sale this past weekend, I wish we had more time to visit.
 
I guess the drilling mud is kinda like the fraccing fluid mystery. I've been at public meetings where the oil company rep stands up and swears that the only thing they frac with is straight nitrogen. Do they really think that landowners are so stupid they will believe that? It's become a good way to see off an oil company in my area - demand to see the ingredient list of their fraccing fluid and they withdraw their plans straight away - I guess it isn't just nitrogen they are pushing down into the aquifers?
Good to catch up with you PC, we'll have to make a point of doing an exchange ranch tour this summer.
 
Nice shelters GF, the Hutterites down here are producing some similar to them. I think a few more here would be useful. Can't have too much shelter.
 

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