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The Championdrive Podcast
Episode 3.5 - Barn Renos Part 2 + Creep Feeds from Essential Feeds
01:17:30
Part 2 of our 3 part Barn Renovations discussion with Jake Wartnjes, Chad Charmasson, Brian Reilly, Cody Schminke and host Steva Robinson. This edition covers: Lambing Area & Creep Setups, Feed Storage, Ventilation & Manure Management Considerations, Cleaning Water Sources, Fly Spray Systems, Bird Control and More! In addition, this episode also covers Sheep & Goat Creep Feed options from Essential Feeds, with rep Barrett Carlisle.
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- [00:02]
A
Now entering the ring, another episode of the Champion Drive podcast presented by Novel Designs.
- [00:11]
B
We're back for our second segment of the Roundtable Barn podcast. The feedback from the first episode has been really good, so I hope you guys are finding it very valuable. For those of you that missed the first segment of this series, we have Chad Charmerson from Charmerson Club, Lambs and Clinics on. He's located in Oklahoma and I didn't really know until we got into the podcast and when I reached out to him to see who we thought we should have on, I didn't really know that barn setups and everything were his jam. And you can tell that he's. It's something he's really interested and passionate about. And he mentioned in the first episode that back in college he used to draw out sketches of barns. And Jake, who is Jake Warren? Jess is also on with us. He mentioned that Chad helped him with his barn a lot. So Chad's someone that has renovated some barns and then also built his and is definitely someone who has a lot of attention to detail. So he's a great resource in this. As I mentioned, Jake Warrenjez is also on. He's originally from Oregon. They've raised some sheep in California and now he and his wife have just built a newer barn in Oklahoma. And he talks about how kind of being able to grow into it. So I think his perspective is really unique as well. Brian Riley from Impact Camps in Wisconsin is also on. Brian doesn't live all that far from me and I remember growing up going to look at sheep there and he was in an older dairy barn set up and over the years they've since moved and built new. And he also is a dairy nutritionist, so I thought his perspective was really interesting as well, especially in terms of ventilation and cold weather setups and everything. And their barn is very intentionally set up. And then Cody Schmincke is on and Schmincke's live in Central Iowa or east Central Iowa. So they battle a lot of the same weather conditions that Brian or I would fight as well here. But you can definitely tell Cody's an engineering mind and that he's the maintenance guy and the fix it guy there because a lot of his comments I can tell is it's definitely from hands on experience. So I hope you guys enjoy this second segment. This is the second of three, so there will be one more that comes out in a couple of weeks as well. Before we get into our second segment, we've got another product up in the essentials From Essentials show feeds. This one should be of interest to all breeders. Creep feed options. I know fall lambing is just about here, so let's find out about the different creep feed options from Essential from Barrett Carlisle. Hey Barrett. What feeds does essential have to offer that breeders should be considering as we go into fall lambing and start thinking about what creeps to feed not only for fall lambing but also going into our winter lambing groups?
- [02:37]
C
Yeah, depending on what people prefer in terms of pelleted or textured options, we've got feed to kind of suit both needs. I know some people down south prefer the pelleted feed. If that's kind of where somebody wants to lean towards. We've got our 330 or 340 options. Would be a pelleted kind of high energy creep feed. You can get those medicated with Decox or Rumensin. Or on the textured side, which is probably a little more popular just kind of nationwide, we would have options. A lot of people are creeping with our 417 or 418, which would be our most popular show lamb feed or a newer one that's kind of gained some momentum. And some very reputable breeders have switched to here of late and had great success with would be moneymaker. It's a texturized creep feed that be just a little bit more economical and is medicated through Mensen. So a lot of people have had good success with that. So depending on where you want to be at pelleted or textured wise, we've got options to suit both.
- [03:44]
B
Do you recommend offering both pelleted and textured? Do you have some that just do pelleted, some that just do textured? I guess kind of. What's your stance on that?
- [03:53]
C
I still run into some people that in that kind of the first two weeks of those lambs being turned out and offered a creep feed will offer both pelleted and textured. Depending on where you're at. Some people think they'll kind of go to a pelleted feed just a little bit quicker and then switch over to a textured. I know personally we've done that on a few groups. Some groups go right to textured, some groups go to pelleted first. I think highly variable, but again I think that's something you can do. But I think most generally if you offer a combination, by the time Those lambs are 30 days old, most of them prefer the textured over pelleted.
- [04:31]
B
What makes essential creep feeds unique?
- [04:33]
C
We kind of hang our hat on consistency. You know, a lot of people have given us the feedback that they appreciate, the fact that everything that they get from us is very consistent, very palatable. Our feeds are all these feed options would have kind of amiferm prebiotic in them, elevated levels of organic trace minerals. The sheep just generally tend to perform and look very well on them. So consistency and people being able to get them consistently has kind of helped us gain momentum in this front.
- [05:05]
B
So speaking of getting the feed, what are our options for our listeners? If they wanted to order Essential feed, how would they go about doing so?
- [05:13]
C
So I would say first check with our newly updated dealer locator on our website. Everything is you know that everybody that carries Essential feeds or is dealing essential feeds is now currently listed on there. If somebody's not super close to you, reach out to us. We can ltl feed anywhere. So you know, if you want to order in ton quantities, it's pretty easy to ship that to you.
- [05:39]
B
Awesome. Well, thanks for joining us today. For those of you looking for more essential for more information on Essential Feeds, you can find more info on championdrive.com they There will be a product spotlight graphic up that outlines some of the feeds Barrett talked about as well as the Essential team is a really good resource as well. Barrett, J.D. pruitt and Dakota Quickle are the main sheep reps, so feel free to reach out to them visit their website@essentialshowfeeds.com or check them out on Champion Drive.
- [06:04]
D
Foreign.
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B
Let'S talk about lambing barn setup or lambing area setup. What's your preferred setup? Do you have a special area for it or is it just part of your drop pens? Let's each talk about our lambing areas.
- [06:19]
D
This is Chad, our lambing area. As far as drop pins are concerned, we try to stage those in terms of time of breeding, different AI groups so they're going to drop. We we revamp or we take up one of the pins in our barn. You know when we were smaller it didn't matter. We had plenty of space. We had those four big pins and then we had our lamb and jugs and there's like 16 or 17 jugs on concrete. As we've grown and we've obviously we've added onto the barn so that means we're lambing more using bigger groups. We take up one of those pins and I and we manually just pop up a bunch of lamb and jugs. Good friend of mine used to be an ag teacher. Whenever he built these, he built us a bunch of five by five panels And a bunch of ten foot panels as well. So I can pop those up about anywhere I want. If I need to set up jugs, typically it's going to be in that, in what we call pin four at our place. And then right across from that on the concrete has another, like I said, 16 or 17 different jugs that we can go on there. We've, we've toyed with the idea of just, you know, letting them drop and be in those pins and set jugs up as they lamb. And it just never, it wasn't feasible for us. I just, I could not wrap my head around that. Especially from a cleaning standpoint. When we get through lamb in one group, we'll have them in those jugs, you know, at least a week, if not sometimes depending on the weather, they could be in there 10 days. When they come out of there, we kick them to a different pen and strip all those jugs out, hand pitch them. You know, the ones on concrete are for sure gonna be hand pitched. The ones that are in that other pin I've finally broke down and we just, we break up, we break them all down. I drive that skid loader in there and drag everything out and then we reset those pins back up for the next group. That area of ours has a. You know, when we added onto the barn, we didn't knock the initial wall down. So we can close the first, you know, 60 by 100 completely off. And then there'll be another 60 by 100 on the, on the south end of our barn. With that said, we put a tube heater in that initial part of the barn. And so it runs across the front of that barn itself or in that section of the barn. And it covers a couple of different pins along with the, with the what the jugs are on the concrete. So it's, it's nice to be able to close that in, be able to run that propane heater, that tube heater in there. Just. And what I like about that particular heater itself, and this may be on kind of going down a rabbit hole here, but it's surface heats as opposed to just, you know, blowing air. I mean, it seems like whenever we have that thing, this barn closed up at all, or we need to start heating stuff up, it's heating all the metal that's in that barn as well. And so it's just causing that, the surface of everything to be a lot warmer than what it would be just with a, an air, you know, or a heater that blows air. So we'll have that set up jug wise, I think again, when you start talking about the lambing area, the drop pin is obviously key. And then for us to be able to have a place to catch them, put them in to a drop pin or a pull pin as we call it. Once we get those babies out, then we move, move that ewe and we'll generally let those ewes clean out. If we are not just slammed and having four or five going at a time, we try to let those ewes clean out in that pull pin. Once they clean out, we move them to a jug. It just makes a lot fresher jug at the end of the week for sure without a bunch of afterbirth being stuck in there. And then clean those out, hand pitch them. It's a pain. Nobody likes cleaning jugs. I try to avoid if. If at all cost. I try to avoid having to hand pitch the jugs. But that's the nice thing about having a couple of able boys that are old enough now to do that stuff.
- [10:26]
E
This is Brian. In terms of jugs, our jugs are four and a half by five and some of them have a solid frame. The majority of them don't. We just. I'm pretty frugal so I just take a bolt cutter and cut panels and wire them together. But we have one dedicated lambing jug area that we can get 32 of them in that has in floor heat in it. The concrete is in floor heat. We have another dedicated area that we can put 40 of them in, so that'd be a total of 72. And then we have another area that's in between where we, where our first two drop pens are and the heated floor pans, we can set up another 21. When we set up our in floor heat, I thought, I thought that was the most jugs we'd ever need. And then with all the AI and embryo stuff that, that we do now that I didn't envision way back then when we first set it up. We need a lot more jugs now, so, so we'll get somewhere in that, that 90 range of jugs and we, we can set up even a few more. We need to now we will drop lambs in up to six pens. And where we first designed it, it was just the first two pens. But now it's the way our flow works. We bring all the pregnant ewes in the barn, we'll lamb those groups out. And generally speaking, if we time it right, we can have that set of 100 or 120 weaned before we bring the next ones in. But there's at times where we don't have that timed exactly right so we get pushed a little harder. But that's what we do for jugs. Like I say I'm pretty frugal and it seems like we're always changing or tweaking something a little bit. So I like the flexibility of, of being able to do something on the fly if we need to.
- [12:37]
B
Do you like your in floor heat?
- [12:40]
E
I hate it. And that is one of your questions earlier that you sent us. That is something that I would never do again. We, we rarely use it now because I thought it. Well, I thought it was the neatest thing ever. We, we put it in our house. We built our house really cool. And then when we built our shop and where we do our AI and embryo work we put it in there. And then we have kind of living quarters, big office in our shop as well. We have a different zone in there so we can, we can set these zones differently. And then where the lambing jugs were it doesn't work. The U's get too hot. Like if you could set it up where if it was just in the corner of a jug where the lambs lay and it was just hot there or warm there it'd be really neat. But the use especially these recipus we've not found a recip you that doesn't get extremely hot. I think the hard made blackface ones kind of like it. They like being warm. But those any white face you or any recip they'll sit there in those, in those jugs and pant so they're hot. They drink a ton of water which is good for milk production but then they also urinate a bunch. So it just it there it's. I would never do it again. That's one thing I would never do. So it's nice everywhere else. It's not great for lambing Jug area So where our big dedicated area is where we can put 40 of them we just use LB white heater there heat lamps as well. You know when they're. When we're first populating that area, you know we're using the LB white heater quite a bit more. But once we get that area area full when there's all four to use and lambs in there and maybe half the pens have heat lamps. Our exhaust fans in there are just running non stop. The heater never runs at that point. That's when it's the best. And that has no in floor heat that area is definitely the best.
- [14:38]
F
This is Jake. So yeah, we've got the whole north side of our barn or a pretty good portion of it set up to where we can turn it into a drop bin. So that's about 20 by 60. When we built the barn, we put, it's called poly board. They use it to line commercial hog barns. We put poly board all along the bottom four feet of the barn just so those ewes couldn't get to the spray foam and eat on it and rub on the tin and whatnot. And so I've got, I actually built our jugs. They're built with one buys basically just V panels that we can pin together and just stagger those all along the wall and then all along the fence portion of that drop pin. And so we'll let everything drop lambs in that, in that drop pen and then move them to jugs. We try to, we'll pitchfork everything out and clean all the jugs in between use and whatnot. But we're, you know, like I said earlier, we're pretty fortunate just from a size standpoint and us being fairly small, we get a little bit more time than some of these guys between groups so we can clean everything out, we can disinfect and make sure that everything's ready to go for the next group. One thing we have done is that drop pen not being just the biggest, those bigger groups. When we start getting 15 or 20 ewes, we will put them in the drop pen. We'll just run them across the alley into the drop pen at night just to make it easy if one of us has to get up and start, start laming them. But during the day, if they're not just actively lamming and, and going like gangbusters, we will push them back over into their U run just because I think it helps. Those used to be able to get out and get a little more exercise and get out in the, the sunshine when we've got some good weather and whatnot. So they're not just cooped up in that drop pen 24, 7 waiting on them to land for that week of or whatever. So we'll kind of, kind of move them back and forth a little bit, which probably isn't the easiest. But at the same time I think it's important those things get some exercise when they're that heavy bred. But yeah, homemade jugs, we've got D rings mounted on that, that poly board along the walls of the barn just to make sure that if we need to set something up we just it just takes a drop pin and. And they're set up and ready to go. And those things, they fold up together and can be stacked easily to store. And it makes it pretty easy, a little bit labor intensive just to all built. But it makes it really nice when you can just grab one of those V panels and set them up as a, as a jug.
- [17:23]
A
Ours would be a lot like Jake's in terms of the actual. They're one by fours that we built out of wood. We don't got any D rings or anything. We put a two by four against the wall with some baling wire and we put them in and tie them in and we line the whole barn and it stays that way, you know, until it needs. And then it gets transitioned into a pig barn. But we clean them out after. Every. Every uh, every U is hand pitched. If you can envision this, there's a building land, there's a 50 by 60. That's land north, south, that's our drop area. And then it's tied into the old old hog house. And then we added lean tos on both sides of that hog house with about 25 to 28 creep pens or lamb and jug pens on each side. And we've got the thing that I'd say that is a must and all that is have a spot to wash hands, clean area spot with your medicine. That's handy things that they say we wouldn't, we didn't think we'd use very often. There's the little carts where you can put a bale of hay or bale of straw in and take it up and down them. Creep pens. That is freaking awesome now because you can run around and do all that and keep embedded. Well of course you hand water all them all the time and make sure their water intake is good. We use that a lot. We do a lot of big square bailing here. So we build a lot of carts actually to move big square bales around in barns and put, put some carts on some wheels so we can put them where we actually need them at. Nobody likes making little squares. You can't get no help to make them anymore. So do a lot of that in the mouths. And then when they come out and they drop like the guys are saying, let them clean out if you can. Of course, when those AI groups are going, it's. It's a madhouse so that doesn't happen a lot. And bring them in. And then we actually. In the middle of all that is a grouping area. So we'll put three to four ewes together. Hopefully leave them in there for three or four days to get acclimated to finding their babies. And then they actually go up to the big barn to go into their group. Like we were talking the 15, 18 mamas in those pens and. And really helps with not having them lose their baby or somebody having an udder issue or something of that nature. So having that transition, the only thing I got left to build is a walkway from the one barn to the other. So it's in the middle of winter, you just run them up an alleyway instead of putting them on a hog cart and freezing your tushy off. So it works well, and it's pretty inexpensive in building those gates. And you can use them for lots of different things.
- [20:14]
B
I can't believe none of you said. My number one thing on lambing jugs is the height of them. Because there's nothing that pisses me off more than Braden standing there laughing at me, trying to get over a lambing jug to hop in with a U like. So. I have the same ones as Brian, but it's for a very different reason. It's cause some of them other ones you can buy are too tall for my short little legs.
- [20:37]
E
I can step right over them. Steva.
- [20:39]
B
Yeah, you know, I'm still working on that. I'm waiting for my growth skirt.
- [20:43]
F
Chad has that problem too.
- [20:45]
D
Steva. It's fine. I definitely cannot step over them. That's why there's a gate on the front of every one of them.
- [20:53]
B
There's nothing that makes me more angry than when you're trying to hop in there and help you. And you've done it for three, three or four times. And she's ready yet. Yeah. You can't get over the gate, and then you've got your whole family sitting there laughing at you, struggling. So let's move into the feeders. We talked. We've touched on this quite a bit, but one thing we haven't talked about is what do you use for your creep feeders?
- [21:14]
D
This is Chad, you talk about. Just as far as for grain, for the creep feed itself.
- [21:21]
B
Yeah.
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D
So for years we just used hanging troughs. And then we kind of went to. As they, you know, get to eating more and. And. And consuming more creep and you needed more space. Then we would do a. A frame. Ketchum's. A frame style of trough. They went in the center. What I found was, is, you know, I personally really like the idea of being able to stand there and watch those sheep all eat when they come into the creep. That's like they all want to line up right there and eat together. But those a frames were taking up quite a bit more space inside there. And then whenever you'd want to get them in the pen and run them in the creep and somebody's there to want to look at sheep, you're moving those out and it's, it's can be more of a pain. So a year last year we. Buddy of mine contacted me about these big dog feeders in Texas. And so they're, they'll hold basically 100 pounds of, of creep. And then I got the ones that you could put a flake of hay in beside. So it's a hay combo. Creep combo. And I was hesitant on that because I like, I said I like to be able to stand there and watch them all line up and eat and then I can view them myself as opposed to the come and go situation. But they've worked really well. We only had them for one year. Um, and I like them. I mean it's, it's, it's made a lot more spacious in our creep pens for that matter. Um, I'm not having to move feeders around or you know, pick up to hanging troughs and hang them up higher so the babies aren't crawling in them. Um, nothing irritates me more than when you go to gather sheep up and you run them in a creep and they spin out and they run through and sling high dollar creep feed all over the place. Um, or just getting manure and stuff in it as well. So we started using those self feeders like that. Ironically, I've really enjoyed them and it's in your. From our standpoint too. If I'm gone or whoever's taking care of stuff, I, if I'm gonna be gone for a couple of days or whatever, it's less maintenance. And on Amy or the boys, they can go lift that lid up and they can see, hey, that needs a bag of creep. Or, or not. And it's, you know, you can fill that thing up and it'll, it'll last you, especially when those things are young. It'll last you for a couple of days. Pretty easy.
- [23:55]
F
This is Jake. We use the hanging troughs in, in ours and you know, you do get some of that where those, those babies will kind of run through them, things like that. But we'll just put them up on the, the very top rail of the panel before we run babies in. If we need to either show them to people or work them or whatever. It may be, but I do like you know, hand feeding them every day, watching them come to feed, keeping an eye on how much they're consuming. You know, this isn't obviously a nutrition panel but I try to feed about what they'll clean up every, you know, every feeding. That way I know they're eating, I know where they're at in terms of consumption and we can, we can really keep an eye on that. And I think that just helps probably my, my frame of mind more than anything just because I know they're in there and I know they're actually consuming feed. So that's what we're using. And then we've got just some hanging like just hay basket feeders that hang on the panel and we'll, we'll put hay in there with them. And then we've also got some A frame feeders that, that will probably utilize a little more this year. But like Chad was saying, they do take up a little more space. So just kind of personal preference. But I, I do really like just having the troughs in there hanging on the fence.
- [25:17]
E
This is Brian. We would use something a little different. Ours would be just self standing feeders. They'd be 4 foot or 8 foot long, might even be 10 foot long. They're about 6 inches wide. Similar to Jake. You know they would, we would have the feed in there. They're going to eat in a day or two like, like to have them clean it up. And they're easy to move, easy to get out of the way. They're not an A frame type. They like I say they are self standing because they have feet to them. But it's just one, one, one pipe going down and then two feet on the bottom going out. And we have, we have a ton of those things that we use in every single creep pen. So as the babies get bigger, you know, we can add, if we have a four foot in there we can add an eight or if we have an eight, we can add another four just to, just to accommodate when they're increasing on consumption.
- [26:18]
A
Ours would be the same. Ours would be the catch and feeders. Of course. I remember when we started with the hanging, hanging feeders went to the A frames and honestly I wrote down what Chad talked about of a big dog feeder because I'd be all right not moving them suckers in and out all the time. So. But yeah, we'd be the same way do it like Brian and Jake talked, usually put in what they're consuming and know where they're at. So.
- [26:46]
D
This is Chad, again with that said. I, I just to clarify, it's not like I go dump 100 pounds of feed in there right away when they're a week old and expect it to sit there that whole time. We are obviously going to manage kind of what they are consuming for the first couple of weeks. And then like I said, as the time goes on, obviously those big dog feeders have been, have been a huge benefit for us because you just fill them up and, and you're not stressed about them running out of grain. The last thing I ever want to happen for our scenario is even when we were hand feeding them like Brian and Jake mentioned as well, and even Cody for that matter, it's I don't want them running out. And I've stressed that whoever's in charge if I'm not here or whoever's in charge of feeding or they're checking that stuff. From a feeding standpoint. Again, we're not talking about nutrition but the last thing I want them to do is to run out of creep. Once they're on creep, good going to it and they're consuming a lot. When they run out we just, it seems like they gorge the next time and then we've got issues on top of issues. So.
- [27:54]
B
Let'S talk about feeding systems. Do you use bulk feed bag feed Totes, Brian, I feel like this is going to be one of your main, your main jams here.
- [28:07]
E
Yeah, yeah. Because I'm in the feed business too. I've done Nutrition for 30 plus years as well. So all, most of all our feed is bulk, especially on the use side or on the replacement side. All our creep feed though is in bags and we've gone back and forth from bags to bulk. But the bags are just way more convenient for people to use and feed and they do a better job as the lambs are bigger to keep creep feeders full when they can just grab bags and walk down our alley into the creep pens and feed them. Our hay and bedding is all big squares. We don't use any small squares of anything and we purchase all of our hay. So we purchase 3 by 3 by eights or 3 by 3 by 3 by 4 by eights of hay and or straw. We prefer the 3 by threes a little easier to handle because we're manhandling all those and all of our labor manhandles at all. So that's what we use. That's what we do for feed. We have dedicated hay buildings and bedding where we buy that stuff in by the semi load and usually buy it all in the summer so we don't have to mess with it in the winter at all. Other than moving it for our needs. We do, we have messed around with some totes in the past because we have a little mini bulk system that we, that we have here in Wisconsin that some people really like, especially if they're on the smaller side of producers. It works really well because it's just a tote bag of feed that we can fill these mini bulk bins up. But ourselves we, we have bigger, bigger bulk bins.
- [29:55]
D
We do. All of our big feed purchases I guess are going to be bulk feed. We have a feed mill that mixes all of our youth feed and so from that standpoint they'll bring it. We just get so many ton at a time and fill up our bulk bins and then fill up buckets and got the boys wagon and holds eight buckets, eight buckets in it. And so we'll go and fill all those up and then take the wagon down the front of those pens and walk through those fence line feeders and feed those ewes that way. Replacement feed for like our keeper U lambs and that sort of thing. We have a custom mix made that's a ULAM developer and it's all bagged and I do that primarily just from. From a simplicity standpoint is we're gonna be feeding less of that each time and I feel like I can keep the feedback feed a lot fresher in those bags than what than what I could otherwise. And then on our creep, our creep is all bagged as we got a custom creep that we have that High Noon helps make for us and High Noon does our developer as well as our creek feed and so it's all bagged as well. You know, feed storage can be somewhat of an issue from time to time for some folks. We're fortunate enough whenever we did add on this barn, we did put in a surgery room or an AI facility, an AI room. So we store all of our bag feed in those in that particular room. As far as creep and ULAM developer throughout the season whenever we need it. Otherwise our U feed goes into these bulk bins outside and we just feed out of it. We do primarily kind of going back to the drop pin scenario a little bit. Not, not to reverse here, but we talk about ewes coming and going. Our ewes are in pasture pretty much year round. We do put out hay obviously for those gestating ewes and we're feeding them as well, but they've got access to pasture just from the exercise standpoint for our sake. I don't like a skinny sheep. Amy certainly does not like skinny ewes and we get poked fun at a lot of because our ewes are typically obese. But from that standpoint I think that extra exercise and we'll put those hay. We'll put the hay feeders out way out in the middle of the pasture so that those use have to go out there back and forth from the barn to get hay. And again our weather is allows us to be able to do that. Bedding wise we do all small squares of straw. We've got a source for really, really good clean straw. Simplicity. We keep, we keep it in small squares because both boys are easy. It's easy enough for them and Amy to handle as well. I can go through and toss over bales of straw into the pins and then they go back behind me and they break it and spread it. We buy in 21 bale bundles so I can move over whatever I need to. We were fortunate enough a couple years ago or spend longer than that I guess that we bought the place across the road from us and it had a basically a 50 by 100 shop on it. And so I that with that I could store a lot of hay over there. So we keep all of our hay storage as far as straw and small squares of alfalfa we put over there. We do keep a lot of small square alfalfa around for feeding in jugs. There's time. We'll also feed some small square grass hay in the jugs as well. Depending on what those use, you know, are kind of acting like and what their guts doing. Sometimes the grass stays a little easier on them when we first start out. But we do a lot of small squares, big rounds. We don't do any big squares. We do big rounds of alfalfa that we, that we do from that standpoint. But from the, from the standpoint of, of feed wise in our scenario I think bag feed is definitely going to be our go to on a general basis except for on the bulk you feed. And it just makes more sense to have it brought in delivered every. Every couple of weeks or three weeks, whatever we need to.
- [34:16]
F
This is Jake so obviously a little smaller scale. Everything we do on the feed side of things or the grain side of things is sacked feed. We've got a custom U mix that we get made there at Stockman's that the schedule family owns. They're awesome to work with on making custom feed and they'll they'll sack it for us. It'll be stacked on a pallet. Go pick it up. It's ready to go whenever I need it. So those guys are awesome for us. They also make a ulam just grower ration that we can feed keeper ewe lambs kind of cut a little cost there, but still just a good high quality feed that gets those things developed and rocking and rolling. We use the high noon creep feed and that's been really good for us. So all that stuff is sacked. We will feed round bales of wheat hay in the off season and through the majority of gestation. And then this year we've actually bought 21 bale bundles of small bales of alfalfa. So we'll hand feed all of our alfalfa and do small bales that way. But we'll feed the big rounds of the wheat hay and then switch to the, the alfalfa there before they lamb and through, through, through the time that they've got babies on them. And then we also do small bales of straw for bedding as well. Just makes it a little easier like Chad was saying to you know, toss bales over, embed those pins and, and we just at this point don't have the need for, for big bales of straw. An efficient way to handle those. But that's, that's kind of where we're at. But those guys, I mean can't say enough about like mill and just how easy they are to work with from, from a standpoint of getting that custom feed sacked and ready to go and making it easy on us.
- [36:10]
A
This Cody would be a lot like Brian's. We own our own, our own grinder mixer. We row crop a lot of acres. So we'd be using all the ADM side things making our. You feed all the bag feed, the 18 and everything would all come in bags for the, the creep feed and 21 and everything all comes in bags. We tried doing the bulk it, it didn't work. So we switched back to bags and keeping it fresher, bringing it in better and being able to move that around. We do all big squares so we have hay ground and oat ground. We have a three by three big square baler. That's my job in the summertime. So we make a lot of hay and like they said, I mean if you're going to keep big square bales around, you got to have inside storage. So there's. You got to have a bunch of area to put that stuff in. And actually if guys Are listening and they have their own certified hay ground. There is loans out there to build a hay facility for state loan or governmental loans to build hay sheds. That's how I built one of mine that's sitting here. Works really well and get you a cheaper interest rate like a grain bin set up. But just want to put that out there. But everything here would be the ADM side bagged. And then of course, we just mix our own here.
- [37:29]
B
Let's move into ventilation. What type of ventilation systems do you have in your barn? Barn temperature considerations and guidelines or suggestions on vent fans? I feel like this is a question we got from a lot of people or a topic we got from a lot of people. And we reached out on social media and on Champion Drive for people to drop their questions. So many of them were about ventilation. So let's kind of hear your setups and your suggestions.
- [37:55]
D
All right, this is Chad. Again, ventilation is a big deal to me. And like I said, I've been in enough barns throughout the years. And there's been times whenever I'm like, man, the air quality in here just scares the crap out of me. And how you keep sheep healthy, whether it's babies or even mature ewes. And so when we built these barns, we get a lot of straight line south winds. In the winter, we'll have a few more north winds. But everything is facing our barns. All face to the east. All the runs open and the sliding doors open to the east and to those runs or those paddocks that we talked about as far as the. The grass is concerned, the pasture is concerned. So overhead doors, we've got a couple on both the north and south on. On this U barn or this breeding barn. So we've got that set up to where we can open those overhead doors at any given time if we have to close it down in the winter. Not have to. But when we do start closing it down and trying to monitor some heat and stuff in the winter, we've got a big giant, what I call a giant exhaust fan. And we've got to set up on a timer where it comes on about every hour and it'll run for about 15 minutes and pull as much of that dead air and moisture out of the air. Our barns are insulated. We do not have any top vents or anything in our barn. So all ventilation is going to come from the sides. We've got one major opening and overhead door space on the west side of our barn of this U barn, but everything else is going to be open to the north or the south or on the east side. When we do close it down, we've got some little drop. I don't know how to explain these little windows. Cody will know what I'm talking about. You just kind of. They're on a pivot type deal. You can open them up and swing them open. However bigger, bigger area or small area you want. And those have been ideal. You know, when we building barns in Oklahoma, when you start seeing stuff out of state and up north especially, one of the first places I ever actually saw this type of opening or this window was, was in, in Iowa. And so when I was telling them in Oklahoma about those, they're like, I have no clue what you're talking about. So I did some research and finally found them for them and we ordered a bunch of them. And that's what I like as far as when we close the big doors down, I can still crack those open. And they're not windows per se. You know, it's not like you're getting a daylight through them necessarily, but you can get some airflow coming through those and allows you some, some good ventilation throughout. Throughout the winter. Again, we're open barns as much as we possibly can. The only time we try, we actually close these things down tight. And in our area is when it's really, really bad, we'll get ice storms. We don't get as near as much snow is probably what you guys do up north. But we'll get plenty of ice and plenty of cold weather. But our winters are a lot milder than what most guys are probably accustomed to dealing with. But I still think that even from a ventilation standpoint, you've got to be very, very careful and cautious of good air quality. We use a product as far as not kind of off the subject of ventilating, but it's as far as air quality is concerned. We use a lot of Sizyme product that Flextran makes, kind of ammonia eliminator we use in our jugs. Whenever we clean those out, we'll spray the pins down along with the lime and those things. And I think that air quality, from a baby lamb standpoint, those things are closer to the ground than what a mature you is going to be or even yourself. And so when you start thinking about you want those, you want good ventilation in those barns, but you also want that air quality for those baby lambs to be good. And they're pretty close to the ground. So we try to do something to eliminate as much of the ammonia smell and urine smell as we possibly can. On top of just cleaning those barns out regularly and not letting that buildup of wet, damp straw get too excessive.
- [41:57]
F
This is Jake. I'll chime in real quick because the northern guys are probably gonna have a little more technical talk to have on, on the ventilation. We're pretty similar to Chad. Our barns are oriented just slightly different. We sit at the top of a hill where in the summertime we get a really, really nice south breeze come off of a pond that we've got sits below the barn. So our open and per se, where those U runs go is out to the south. And so we've got four 10 by 10 sliding doors that can either be opened up all the way or shut down with just a shut down halfway with a five foot opening. You know, when it starts getting colder, we've got two 12 by 10 overhead doors on the east and west side. And then on that north side we've got four sliding windows as well. And so from a summertime standpoint, we can open that barn up completely. It really stays pretty comfortable. Not to get too far ahead of ourselves, I think one of the questions was like, what would you do again? Or what's worth spending money on spray foam insulation? Like 1000%. From a summertime standpoint, we open up that barn completely open all the sliders, overhead doors, windows, and we've got a big show barn fan above each run of use. And then we've got a couple other show barn fans just placed throughout the barn just to keep airflow going. And you'll get, I mean it's comfortable in there. When we get 100 plus degrees, those things will, will come in the barn and, and there's a 15 degree difference. I mean just from a, an airflow standpoint and radiant temperature standpoint, just keeping air moving in that barn seems to really, really help during the summertime. You don't necessarily notice it a whole lot when it's 70 to 90 degrees, but when you start getting 90 plus just having that, that insulation and then the airflow from all those fans rolling above those U runs and whatnot, it sure makes a difference. And then opposite side, like Chad was saying, we, we don't have just terrible winters. I think this last year there was one week where we got down into single digits and it got pretty close to zero. And, and we can shut up that barn completely. There's still, you know, we can crack windows, we can crack those overhead doors if we need to to keep some airflow in there. But really during the wintertime we Only shut up the barn at night when it really starts to get cold. Other than that we can open up those sliders halfway and come and go and you keep good airflow in there, you get some ventilation. Air quality stays good. That size, I'm product, we've used it as well and it sure helps with just air quality and keeping the ammonia under wraps and, and use a lot of lime when we're cleaning pens and whatnot. But I think just having the ability to open that barn up in the summertime and get as much of a natural breeze running through there as possible is great. Like I said, we're very fortunate in the fact that we don't have to keep those things shut completely down 24,7. In the winter time when we have nice days, we can open it up and use and babies spend a lot of time outside when you get sunshine. And so that's been really good for us as well.
- [45:19]
E
This is Brian, so we would have, you know, here summer ventilation and winter ventilation. So winter wise we have everything confined, locked up. They're in, they don't go out. Summertime, they can go in and out as, as they want. All of our fans for the summer are on thermostats. So they turn on and off depending on the temperature we have those thermostats set at. We use very large fans. They're originally designed for poultry buildings and then they're adopted into dairy facilities. That's where I saw them. They're 52 inch fans, they're six bladed, you can barely hear them run. And they push the most air I've ever seen something push. We have those 20 foot apart hanging in the ceiling. They push air 40ft. So we have those set through all of our buildings and they're all on different thermostats. And our big main barn, they're on two thermostats. So half of them turn on a certain temperature and then the other half turn on at a certain temperature. So ewes can come in and go as they please during the day. They're laying under those things all the time. All of our buildings are insulated. We've gone to lining all those buildings. Now the spray foam we had in for 20 years, the birds start to just destroy it for us. So we, we've gone to lining it. So then in the winter, like I said, everything's confined. We have, we have two different designs. There's exhaust fans in every barn. Every barn has inlets in them. So what Chad was explaining, we have inlets in our ceilings. Those inlets are weighted, so it's a very lightweight. So when the exhaust fan kicks on and they're all set on thermostats as well, that inlet will open up based on the exhaust fan turning on, and it lets fresh air in. The best ones of those are just the manual. We put an exhaust fan in on one end and an inlet on the other end. And depending on how many cubic feet are in that area. So it's length times width times height. You buy fans that accommodate that amount of cubic feet that needs to be exchanged. It's pretty simple. You can buy exhaust fans for those. Acme is one of the companies that we work with and. Or Hog Slat. Both of them are really good. Our big main barn, that one has temp sensors all the way through the ceiling. It's really nice. It's not necessarily needed, but that one has a couple different designs for exhaust that has a tube that runs through the entire center of the barn, that it runs at different speed depending on the temperature of the ceiling. And it brings in fresh air from the outside in that barn. We also have inlets throughout that barn, and those inlets open up a certain width to let fresh air in based on what the temperature is in the ceiling. And then there's three fans, exhaust fans on one end that pull the air through it as the temperature rises throughout the day. So. So the extremes that we get, like, a few years back, Stevie, you may remember this, and Cody, like, it was recommended in town and on the news to make sure you leave your water running. Make sure you leave your water running to keep it from freezing. Because we had so many cold days, such extreme cold, that if you didn't leave your water running, it was going to freeze. So we have that kind of extreme where it gets that cold throughout the night, and then during the day it warms back up. So on the end of our barn, we have three exhaust fans. And this was designed by Acme for us, which actually is from Oklahoma. Those exhaust fans turn on. One is variable speed. It turns on and runs faster at certain temperatures. So it runs really low when it's cold out and actually will shut down for 10 seconds, then a run for five seconds. And then if it gets to, like, 45 degrees, the second exhaust fan will kick on, and they're just constantly running. The inlets will open up a couple inches. Then if it gets to 50 degrees, all three exhaust fans will kick on and the inlets will open up 6 inches. So technically, we don't get above 50 degrees in the winter. We don't have auxiliary heat in those barns where we keep the main flock. The ewes themselves keep it warm enough. That one's kind of expensive. It's nice. The ones I like the best are the ones where we put inlets on one end, exhaust fans on the other. The most recent barn that we built that we have dual purpose where we have bucks on one end, upens on the other. The inlets are right above the buck pins. The exhaust fans are on the other end. Set up with a simple thermostat. We set it at 50 degrees and it. It's inexpensive works awesome.
- [50:36]
A
So yeah I'm going to reiterate what everybody just said talked about so just on. On ours. So I'm. We had a lot of changes that transpired this summer because I think ventilation is something huge and I'm a. I'm a. I like to dive into that and truly see what CFMs are needed for what build how to intake it. So ours are a lot like the gentleman have talked about. Our. Our barn runs north, south, faces the east then has a 20 foot lean to off the side and and like Brian has talked and and Jake and and Chad have talked about we have to open it up and it's completely open and tries to get as much air through as as we can. We still have the turbo fans running. The part that we just added on to I help design and we put some different fans in. We put the. We put the dairy fans in and they're so much quieter and move so much more air. If you guys are looking looking for a way to spend dollars please spend money and fans and maybe build your own gates or something but move some sneaking air through them things and like we talked about the then pop out windows. They're great in the summertime. But we have come to find out all that big. That big 300 foot building is all spray foam. It's all lined and actually it's. It's three different additions. So there's. There's wall. There's walls in between it like three different buildings so we can set them buildings all up differently and they all. They all have tube heaters in them so we can set them all up. But we found is. Is if it's really really cold they freeze up and we can't open them anymore. So we went in this. The parts are still coming from Hog Slide is who we use is Ed over there and and great gentleman and and can help anybody through a building. So we put new intakes on all of the west Walls because this part of the country, everything comes from the west and, and blows like a banshee. And so we're going to intake air from there and then move it up across. So we've added more and, and significantly larger exhaust fans to exchange that air and do it in a better fashion. Probably wasn't the thing that we dove into as early when we built buildings, but now is. Is so much more important than what it was. I know when I built this show bar we just built my. Put all the fans in there. I think my dad looked at me and told me I was nuts. But they can move freaking in there and keep things dry and healthy. I know there was a talk on there or a question on there about using the fly spray and that kind of stuff. We utilize that. I think python or whoever makes that. We have that Mr. System through the entire building. Keep the flies down and then also utilize. I don't know if the same product that Chad was talking about or not, but keep the ammonia smell down. We clean the pens out probably more often than most. I have an old bunker silo that sits here. Like I said it was an old cattle yard. So we can stockpile a bunch of manure and try to keep them pens clean out and, and not always recommend to remove that. That top 2 inches a lime that are in them sheet pens to let that smell get away and replenish that with lime to let that smell keep going. If you're using it with skid loaders, no matter if you're doing it on the. The front end or the back end of that building that thing because before you know it you're going to be pushing out the walls. So I'd spend that money up front. Of course by the time we added on the third time we. We did that and a lot easier to clean out a facility with a skid loader and those kinds of things. And like Brian was talking about, if you can spend the money and put one of those. I think it's a EC34 controller in where it truly controls everything in it. And you just set it and it, it modulates and you know you got the variable speed fans that can bring it in. That is the, that is the cast meow. Because then it's just going to keep it, keep it right where it needs to and, and keep that building right. But that's one thing we learned significantly here recently.
- [54:43]
E
That's the engineer and Cody talking there. I had no idea what that thing was called. And he's talking to model number Good job, Cody.
- [54:53]
D
I had no clue. Anything but.
- [54:55]
B
Brian, what do you do for manure management? I believe your setup's a little different than most for that, correct?
- [55:01]
A
Yeah.
- [55:01]
E
So. So we would. We use a lot of. A lot of bedding. So we bed every day with wheat straw. Like I said, everything's confined. We clean our main. All the jugs get cleaned out between every u. All the main pens get cleaned out every three weeks. And then we stack it all. We have not a bunker silo, but we have a concrete area. Wasn't always concrete, but we would stack it all. Pen pack, manure, we would stack it all. And we. We make lots and lots of good manure. But we're pretty fortunate where we are because we're a livestock dense area and we have a lot of organic guys in our area. So we have a neighbor that takes all of our manure. We don't pay to have it hauled. He wants it all. Because in the organic world, manure is the only fertilizer they can use that's considered organic. So we're kind of lucky that way. But we have skid steers. It seems like we're constantly cleaning pens.
- [56:07]
B
What about the rest of you for manure management and such like that?
- [56:12]
D
This is Chad. So as far as on our cleaning process, not to beat a dead horse, but I think it's important to keep stuff clean. As OCD as I am, I like having clean pens. And we probably go through way too much bedding at times. Manure management for us, it goes in a pile. Scrape it all out of the barn, scrape it out from underneath the lean to whatever needs to be scraped out. Even since we're feeding all of our hay outside, we'll move those round bell feeders out and we'll scrape the lots down to the base again. And we go pilot in the pasture. And the best thing for. For us is the fact that once we get those big piles, every spring we go in, I bought a manure spreader, and we've got a little tractor that will go in and. And spread that on our pastures. And, you know, our pasture management has probably been as expensive as anything the past few years as far as trying to control sand burrs and weeds and keep a lot of Bermuda grass coming back and forth. But in the spring, that's what. As far as our manure is concerned, we go spread it out on those pastures and. And do that until our. Until it's completely gone. Just pile it up. Throughout the winter, we work on the same schedule, is what Brian Would be we try to clean those out every, every three weeks, maybe stretch to four weeks depending on the weather and what scenario is. But at least every try to do it every three or four weeks, Scrape those pins back down and re bed.
- [57:49]
F
This is Jake. So we, we clean everything by hand. Unfortunately at this point, luckily we, we live 20 miles from Stillwater. So we've got a couple college boys that'll help us. And if there's anyone that is going to be listening that goes to school at Oklahoma State and wants a job cleaning lambing jugs and lamb, lamb and ewe runs, by all means give me a call because we're kind of on the same schedule. We'll clean jugs after every ewe. We'll clean that drop pen in between every group. And then those, those runs we re bed probably a couple times a week depending on the weather. Sometimes just once a week if it's nice weather and they're spending a lot of time outside. And then we'll try to get them cleaned probably every three weeks to a month. Try to keep things as. As organized and clean as possible. When it's all hands on deck, it might go just a little bit longer. But it gets to the point where you can't hardly stand the smell or anything like that if you go too far. So we, we do it all by hand. But we're the same way. We've just got a pile out there that we, we stack it all up for the wintertime.
- [59:04]
B
Let's move next into some questions we got from our listeners. The first one is how do you clean your automatic waters or water tubs by hand?
- [59:13]
D
This is Chad. So my boys, that's their job around here is to make sure that whether it's the show barn or the buck barn or the ew barn, they are show barn's all on hand watering. We don't do any automatic waters in there. But the buck barn U barn is all going to be automatic waters. We go through several little brushes, Whether they're for like dish brushes or whatever the case is. They drain them, they scrub them. And we do that every. At the bare minimum they're getting, they're getting done once a week summertime. The algae issues, you got to watch that. But so we may do them a little more often, but scrub every one of those automatic waters by hand. They've got brushes hanging by there. We feed a lot of dura firm tubs. And so with that, from a nutritional standpoint on the UV side, we feed all those tubs. So those Become our water troughs in the show barn. And so they're responsible for scrubbing those out and keeping them clean as well. But automatic waters are funky and they can get real bad in the summertime, especially around here, as it's hot as it gets and they start growing some algae in those things. So I'm very, I'm very much Hitler when it comes to clean waters around here. And if I see any kind of funky growth in there or something that does not look right or. And then those shoes are just gonna bring in a mouthful of grass from the pasture or a mouthful of hay and get them a drink and drop half of it in there. There's nothing more irritating than that. Or whether it could be mineral, for that matter. It could be mineral that they dropped in there or a little excess feed. Bucks are the worst about dump. You know, they'll. They'll crap in them and, and end up having manure in them. But on these ewes, as far as it's usually hay or feed and we have to hand scrub those things.
- [61:08]
F
This is Jake. Same deal. We, we actually hand water everything. And so every on the used every other day we dump and scrub waters on the everything else. It's every day we'll dump it, scrub water. So it's not fun, but we got to keep them clean and, and we scrub them by hand with those little. I mean, you buy dishwashing brushes on Amazon or from Walmart or wherever, and that's what we use to scrub them.
- [61:39]
E
This is Brian, like I said before, we have automatic waters everywhere that we can have them. So we would have 16 automatic waters. And in the winter, we clean those waters by hand every day. So brush, drain them, brush every day. In the summer, they don't get done every day. We don't have as much labor around in the summer. A couple times a week or as needed. In the summer, our lambing jugs, when we have all those lambing jugs set up again, we have, you know, all kinds of labor around at that point, they're all hand watered and they get cleaned twice a day. So we're pretty particular on. On the waters. So yeah, it's a lot, a lot of time cleaning waters here.
- [62:33]
A
Yeah, it's same here. Waters are clean morning and night. We use SOS pads and we're on well water here. So it'll hire high iron and clean very much so all the time. And like the little. Like everybody said, the ones in the jugs, they get hand, you know, just run your hand around them quick and clean them out. The thing that we had added to our water and well treatment, maybe somebody is a peroxide treatment that you can do in your well the first time you do it. I clean every stinking nipple known to man and. And clean everything out. But peroxide treatment in the well, it actually uses a dosatron and goes right in as the water's coming out. Well guys would know that that was a big changer here for some of that growth and some of those things that happened. But yeah, gotta keep them clean.
- [63:27]
B
Was there a reason you went to the peroxide treatment? Did you have a problem that you weren't able to solve or was that just something that's just a general maintenance.
- [63:38]
A
It was actually from our well guys. We could just. The waters were growing and they. Black smudge and I. I can't tell you what it was but. And they cleaned those lines out. You know, we got a lot of piggies on. On feed too. And it. It'd plug up the nipple waters. You know, there's little fine filters in all the nipples. And you're cleaning them things, you're tearing nipples apart and cleaning them out. And it's like, all right, there's got to be something better. And they never ran real water up. Up our way. So we all have wells and that was their solution. And man, it worked. It's going to clean your lines out too. I mean you're going to be blowing some stuff for a little while, but it really does a nice job.
- [64:20]
D
And that runs house as well. Like the whole farm.
- [64:25]
A
Yes, sir. Yep. Now I like cab. My water's so bad. I got a reverse osmosis iron ox. Everything you can dream of. My. My shower will turn brown in like two days if we don't keep it clean. It's bad.
- [64:41]
D
We're just. We deal with a lot of hard water water softener. The farm is not itself, but the house and main. Main places are.
- [64:50]
A
But yeah, so we put it to the entire deal. And my shop here, I even put an RO system in my shop. Just trying to keep stuff clean. But I mean that peroxide. We just did the peroxide deal on the main farm and that was a game changer.
- [65:06]
D
Okay.
- [65:07]
B
All right, the next question. Cody, you already talked on this one, but do any of the rest of you have fly repellent misters? Thoughts good or bad?
- [65:15]
D
This is Chad. We do. I. I like them. They stink. Amy. Amy. Amy. Amy hates the odor of our fly repellent. We have one set in each. Each one of our barns. They come on automatically on a timer for so many minutes. It has helped a bunch. You're still going to have some days whenever or their time of year where you're like man, the flies are still bad or they seem bad. They're probably not bad to most people but they're bad. They're bad to me. They drive me nuts. But we do the, we do the Mr. System. 50 gallon drums, two of them in this 200 foot barn. They're on two different systems and then one in the show barn and the buck barn. There's like I said, there's times we'll end up spraying with some vegeta or piranha something on top of that. If I, if I see that there's some major issues. I'm a big fan with that said, when we get into breeding season I think it helps a pile especially with you know, you hear about the mosquitoes and flies and different types of issues that you might run into as far as blue tongue is concerned in our part of the world. I think that helps a bunch. I forgot to unplug or and do that the other day and that thing kicked on about the time we were flushing the second U and I thought our technician was going to lose his mind and I would have too. I mean I about did myself. It's just a foul up. So you don't want that stuff all the time. So usually the day before we are flushing I unplug all that stuff so they don't have any of that mist in the air and that sort of thing. But I'm a big fan of the fly system.
- [67:02]
F
This is Jake. We do not. I've kind of got a home rigged fly trap system that has worked actually really really well. This summer we were as wet as we've ever been through a summer and flies were terrible and so I kind of started experimenting and they make all. They make fly trap lids that you can just put on a five gallon bucket and I'll mix up some vegeta with some water and those fly bait packs and then just douse those buckets and the lids and the inside and everything with the spray called PT Alpine. And that stuff is incredible and it is. I've spread, spread four, five, six, five gallon buckets with that mixture mixed up in it throughout the barn and it has knocked down the flies like nothing I've ever seen before. So that's what we do. We don't have the fly spray system but. And then we'll. When we shear the using spring we'll ultra boss Them and then if I notice the flies are getting bad, we'll. We'll run them into a group as a group and just kind of fly spray them as a group topically if we need to. But this. This kind of mixture with that pt, Alpine and a Jita has knocked down the flies like I've never seen before.
- [68:18]
D
Jake, is that Alpine and aerosol?
- [68:21]
F
Yes. Yeah. You can buy it on Amazon.
- [68:24]
D
Okay, that explains why I received some of that on Amazon. I guess. I talked to you and ordered it and I couldn't figure out what the crap this stuff was that I had ordered.
- [68:34]
F
Yeah.
- [68:34]
D
Yep, that's.
- [68:35]
F
It works great.
- [68:36]
E
This is Brian. We don't have one of the Mr. Systems. J, J.C. and Kelvin manually spray hand. We bait. They rotate between three different products. I would we. Or I should say we probably wouldn't ever put in one of the misters. It just creeps me out to like Chad said when it kicked on when he's flushing. I've been in buildings with those things and if it kills flies, I don't want it spraying on me. But that's not. Not to be weird, but it's just like they work great. They're just not for us. I'd rather manually do it here.
- [69:15]
A
I'm gonna give one heads up because I'm the poor SOB that always has to clean those. This is Cody. And if you do put one of those things in, you make sure it goes through purified water system or some kind of an RV filter when you're filling that tank. And you got to keep those when it. If you're in our part of the country, you do have to run it like you're treating a sprayer like a. Like a row crop sprayer. You have to put in. You know, you're keeping that building warm. You've got to clean that thing out religiously or all them. All them misters plug up and you've got a headache because you got to go up there and clean every single one of them things out to get them spraying like they need to. And at Brian's regard, Mom doesn't like it much either, but it keeps the flies down.
- [70:04]
D
That is our issue with us being extremely hard water. For those that are listening to this podcast, you got really hard water. You've got to do some form of softener or some type of filter. You'll ruin your spray nozzles pretty quickly. And we replace them every year. Back to that. Creeping Brian out. It creeps Amy out. Amy hates it. She says it. She says it smells Like BO and. And it does. It stinks. But we have a lot less issues. But the fact that we'll be standing in the show barn and I think I'll kick on. And she's literally does the peace out. I'm getting out of here. I'm so. I have to be.
- [70:45]
A
Mom does the same thing.
- [70:46]
D
Yeah. Mindful of that. That it is gross and that nobody likes it, but I hate flies. Second, I hate birds the most.
- [70:57]
E
Ditto.
- [70:58]
A
Sorry, Steve. I was gonna say that earlier on the waters. If. If you gentlemen have open buildings up top, try to do something to eliminate them birds from perching on a truss and pooping in your waters.
- [71:12]
D
Yeah.
- [71:12]
A
However you can.
- [71:14]
F
Suggestions for getting rid of birds right now.
- [71:18]
A
12 gauge.
- [71:20]
D
So the bird topic. Is that what we're getting into? Steva.
- [71:23]
B
Yeah, that was one of the questions someone submitted on Champion Drive was what do you do about birds?
- [71:29]
D
Okay, I'm gonna. I'm gonna jump in here on this because me and birds do not jive. And everybody who ever works for us, especially through the summer, I have devised. And Jake can attest to this. He's seen it. But it's literally taken broken broom handles or shovel handles, whatever, and making an extension off into a. It goes all the way to a show stick. Cattle show stick. And we pull bird nests down on the regular. I figured the more you pull them down, the less likely they're going to want to come back. And it is a daily process for constantly pulling bird nests down. With that said, as bad as I hate snakes, I have started leaving the old bull snakes alone in our barn. Now, if I do that, and I tell you anybody in my. I'm out that I there was a bull snake in the barn, they won't ever come back to the barn or if there's a snake in the barn at all. So I leave the bull snakes alone. But nobody else can know this. And if my family listens this podcast, they're gonna know I've lied to them this whole time. But we don't have any snakes around this farm. But I do leave the bull snakes alone. That has helped immensely. Like, I am anti snakes, but. And I try to get rid of them myself, but I've started leaving them alone. The birds are obnoxious. We try to. We try to knock those nests down. The more I knock them down, the less they come back. And again, back to the droppings in the water and automatic waters. That's frustrating as anything, but birds are my biggest pet peeve. And they tear up our insulation Brian mentioned that he has lined all of his barns. I mean we have contemplated that ourselves. We need to sell a few more high dollar sheep in order to go through and, and line all these barns at this point. But this, the insulation, they just, they tear it up, they bed into it and it's, it's a very, very frustrating. So there's not a perfect scenario other than your, your snakes help a bunch I think and just keep knocking those nests down.
- [73:40]
A
Hey, when they tear into your insulation and your spray foam, get landscape foam in a can. They won't eat in that.
- [73:48]
D
Good, good call.
- [73:51]
A
Landscape foam. They will not eat into it. They'll, they'll, they'll be done.
- [73:56]
D
What do you use, Steva?
- [73:59]
B
I'm taking notes. We spray foamed everything and for those that have been through like we've had the birds kind of wreck havoc on it. And then I have two boys that like to do the BB gun method and then yeah, up for suggestions. It's kind of a never ending battle and it's really frustrating when you just watch them just eat up your spray foam. I need to do better on it and I honestly don't have a solution.
- [74:28]
E
They're miserable. The big 52 inch fans that I said are on thermostats, they work awesome too.
- [74:37]
D
That's awesome.
- [74:38]
B
I kind of want to see you getting the nest down though, Chad, like what happens when the nest falls on you and then you know.
- [74:44]
F
Chad doesn't get the nest down.
- [74:46]
D
No, Chad gets the nest down. Chad's fallen off of a ladder a time or two and it's been brutal.
- [74:53]
A
I would have liked to seen that deal. I'd be all right.
- [74:55]
D
It was not good. That is why Chad's hip is completely out of whack right now. Because I got and Chad tipped off the ladder. Not ideal.
- [75:07]
A
And if folks don't know there's a 22 bird shot that's actually salt. So if you're inside of a steel building, you gotta buy an old Huntington Long Rifle.22. But it's, it's salt. So if you shoot a bird in the building, it ain't gonna put a hole inside your shed.
- [75:27]
D
That's good to know too.
- [75:28]
F
I'm about to put Cody on speed dial for all pest control and engineering questions.
- [75:33]
D
That is, that is cage choice of getting rid of birds. He wants to shoot them and I'm like, you cannot shoot them with just anything.
- [75:40]
A
Give him a little. The old Henry. Henry's the name of old Henry Rifle a little long shell. 22. It's loud, but it'll get rid of them.
- [75:51]
E
Single. Single shot. 22. It works great.
- [75:54]
D
Yep.
- [75:55]
A
You gotta have that because you can't dislodge the shell because the front of it's too long or the shell's too big. They make a sign mill.
- [76:07]
B
You'd like to see me out there with a gun?
- [76:09]
D
Yeah, I could see Steve out there with her gun. I think.
- [76:12]
B
I've only shot a gun like once or twice and I'm not very good at it, so you probably don't want me doing it.
- [76:19]
A
No, I'm just gonna say, you all know Mama Candy and she has my.22 rifle sitting in a strobe box with that. Just because she hates birds that much.
- [76:35]
B
Now's a good stopping point for the end of segment two. I hope you guys check back in a couple weeks for the third segment of the Barn Rentals podcast. We'll get into more of the questions that you guys submitted on ChampionDrive.com thanks again to these guys for joining us. Like I said, it was about a three hour recording on a random weeknight, so I really appreciate their time. I hope you guys have found it enjoyable. I know the feedback so far has been really good. Be sure to check out championdrive.com in the meantime for results, we'll have coverage from Exarban as well as some other state fairs that are going on. Be sure to visit championdrive.com daily and we'll be back in a couple weeks. Have a good one.
- [77:18]
D
Sam.