Welcome to
Gate Farm Home of
"Diamond C
Montana Jack"
Leslie Heulitt
HC 78 Box 27
Rock Cave, West Virginia 26234
304-924-6176
e-mail to:
montanasmama@hughes.net
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((Submitted
to M.D.T.) HELPFUL
HINTS FROM GATE FARM In
this issue I'd like to share some of the things I've learned over the years.
Here at Gate Farm we run a diversified operation.
We have donkeys of all sizes, along with goats, pigs, ponies, sheep and
Sport, the Llama on duty, so not all of these things apply directly to donkeys.
Hopefully you will find something useful for around your farm.
Ever been out in the back forty only to find you needed a lead rope?
Mount a mailbox out there to keep some supplies.
A halter, collar, lead rope and hoof pick on site can save many trips
back to the barn. A shelf mounted
on top of a gatepost is a great place for a feed bucket or whatever and leaves
both hands free to get in the gate. My
cats think these are great places to survey their domain.
Baking soda is as handy around the barn as it is around the house.
Baking soda quickly cleans and sweetens feed pans and water buckets.
It rinses off easily and is friendly to the environment.
Baking soda also makes an excellent fire extinguisher; a large box of it
thrown on fire produces a dense cloud of carbon dioxide effectively smothering
any young fire. Ever wished
for hot water in the barn? Large
electric coffeepots (found at yard sales) are great little water heaters; they
heat water to boiling pretty fast and even have little spigots.
A couple of gallons of boiling water are enough to take the chill out of
a lot of cold winter water buckets! Because
of the lay of the land and the huge rocks here at Gate Farm, creative fencing is
always in order. I know there has
to be one other person out there who has wondered how to put a fence post in a
rock. Just take a metal
"T" post or piece of pipe and weld it to a tire rim then cement the
tire rim to the rock. Ain't purty
but it works! These post and rim
affairs teamed up with some hog panels also make great portable pens.
Lots of the gates here are wood attached to locust posts.
I know it's the start of a bad day when the first gate I open hangs askew
from a broken hinge. For a fast fix
a leather belt (also found at yard sales) with extra holes punched, buckled
around the gate and post is quick and neat looking.
We keep lots of goats to keep the fences and hillside pastures clean.
They're known as the brush control patrol and they do a great job along
with being profitable and very entertaining.
As much as I love them, trying to put out grain for a herd of 50 or 60
greedy little goats can give one a real attitude first thing in the morning.
We built a feed chute by fencing off a small section of road. Depending
on which gate you open, the goats can enter this area from any of the three
large pastures where they might be living.
Being able to put out all their feed before we let them in made feeding
the "main herd" a pleasure again.
This worked out so well we have put little catch pens in all the smaller
fields and paddocks. For
years I kept a milk cow or two. Ole
Bossy was a kicker and had hurt her foot. Not
having any fancy facilities to doctor Ole Bossy's foot without getting my head
kicked off was a problem until my neighbor, a tiny old mountain man, showed me a
trick. We tied Ole Bossy to a tree
and he took a long rope, put a loop around her neck then put a half hitch
immediately BEHIND HER SHOULDER then another half hitch around her flank.
When he pulled on the end of the rope Ole Bossy gently laid down, stayed
down and was perfectly still until I was finished doctoring her foot.
As soon as the tension was released on the rope, she got up no worse from
the experience. Everyone has used
heat lamps and heat lamps have burned down many a barn.
A cheap 15-foot dog chain cut in half is a safe way to hang two lamps;
each end has a snap for the lamp while the other end is hooked to a hook in the
rafters. No rodent will chew
through a chain to drop the lamp into the bedding.
My pig, Batman, has a heat lamp all winter, twenty-four hours a day and
we keep one or two lamps in the creep feeding areas for winter kids to use as
needed. We check these often for
dust. A lot of fine dust can
accumulate on the top of the bulb and hood in a very short time.
Heavy dust is a fire hazard and can actually cause an explosion.
So keep your bulbs and fixtures clean.
Check electrical cords for chews and wear often and keep those dusty
cobwebs cleaned out of the rafters. Most
donkeys love bread if given the chance to develop a taste for it. Once they
start eating it giving a pill becomes a snap.
Just wrap the pill in a piece of bread and down it goes.
Keep a calendar and pencil in each barn to jot down things you might
forget by the time you get back to the house like who was in heat or when the
buck got out. If you have a donkey
that throws its grain around put a few smooth round stones in its bucket. Float
a small piece of board in your stock tank so birds and chickens can get out of
the water and won't drown. If you
get a small hole in your stock tank you can fix it by making two leather
washers, put one on each side of the hole, then put metal washers over them, run
a bolt through and tighten it down and no more leak.
When you want to paint those old galvanized gates scrub them good with
vinegar first and the paint will stick much better.
You'll have fewer mosquitoes if you eliminate their breeding places.
Check around the farm for anything with stagnant water in it.
An old tire with a little water in it can breed clouds of these pesky
varmints. Chickens and cats are
great around the farm until they start scratching in the flowerbeds and using
the garden for a litter box. Chicken
wire lain down before you plant or around your plantings will put a stop to
this. A lot of our feed comes in
50-pound paper sacks. We carefully
fold these up to be recycled as floor mats for the truck.
Two on each side will catch an enormous amount of muck, manure and water
while working around the farm in messy weather.
Then fold them up and throw them away.
We keep a couple of cans of Sprayline sheep marker around.
It comes in red, black, yellow and green.
It will last a month on a sheep, two weeks on a goat and six months on a
donkey!! We use it to mark kids in the "for sale" pens, so we can tell
at a glance which are does and which are wethers which is a real help when there
are bunches of them. Also use it to
mark an animal that needs medication. I
also used it on three look alike gray dun Jennets I bought last year.
Put it on kind of heavy since the donkeys roll so much and BIG 'cause I
wanted to be able to identify them from the house so if one of them was making
kissie faces at J.R. I would know who it was.
That's when I found out it lasts six months on a donkey!
We have lots of raccoons here that delight in eating all the cat chow and
then tearing the barn apart for fun. Trapping
these wily critters or trying to can be very frustrating.
We bait Hav-A-Heart traps with cat chow and for 3 or 4 nights set them so
they won't close. After a few
nights of being able to walk right into the trap and chow down, the 'coons
relax, then we set the trap to trip and catch them every time!
Check with your local authorities because you may need a permit to trap
and relocate raccoons and other varmints out of season. A
simple and cheap hayrack can be made from a piece of woven fence wire and some
scrap lumber. Staple the wire to
the wall on both sides and the bottom. Cover
the sharp edges with scrap lumber or 1 x 2s.
It will fit tight enough to the wall so no heads, legs or whole bodies
can get caught in it but books of hay slide easily in between the wire and wall.
This is a neat and economical way to feed hay.
Everyone who visits the farm comments on them and copies them. I would be interested in hearing about your helpful, neat or time saving hints so drop me a line at Gate Farm, Rock Cave, WV 26234-9708 or on the Web - MontanasMama@neumedia.net.
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