One man's quest to ranch American bison in Virginia.
Bought a 20' shipping container
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Today I drove two and a half hours (five hours round trip) to the Norfolk, Virginia area to pick up a 20 foot shipping container I purchased earlier this week. This shipping container, which is weather sealed and can be securely padlocked, will be used to store many of the smaller tools and equipment I use on the ranch.
Until I was able to test the tractor front-end loader's ability to lift the container, I wasn't exactly sure how I would unload the container from the trailer. I had found a variety possible methods for doing this on YouTube (including the below video), which I reserved in my mind as possible solutions, but, because the tractor was able to partially lift the container, I instead came up with my own dangerous method of unloading the container.
On a trip like this one in which a somewhat costly and
larger-than-normal cargo is picked up from an unfamiliar depot and
hauled home on unfamiliar roads, there is always a higher-than-normal
stress level. My usual method for combating such stress is to do as
much as I can beforehand to reduce the likelihood of something going
wrong (e.g. giving the engine a tuneup, familiarizing myself the
regulations for transporting large items, etc.). However, you can only
do so much to prepare, and, in the end you simply have to hope it goes
well and do your best to deal with any problems that happen.
Fortunately, this trip was completed with a minimum of hiccups and the
cargo container is now firmly planted on the ground at the ranch.
Lifting one end of the cargo container up a small amount with the front end loader, I carefully placed a series of log rollers under the container. Initially I use short lengths of wood on each side of the container, but this was a bad idea. The short pieces of wood allowed the container to twist dangerously to the left or right each time I started to pull it. After several tries with the short log pieces, I replaced them with a single ten-foot-long log roller, which enabled me to use the front end loader to roll the container off the trailer and down the ramp fairly easily. I would definitely not recommend anyone try using this method of unloading a container as there was quite a bit of skill involved in using the front end loader, which I haven't outlined in this post.
The cargo container in its new location. I plan to put blocks under it to keep it off the ground and level it.
Since we started fencing the perimeter of our ranch in 2014, I've strove to increase the rate at which I am able to fence an area. Among the most recent improvements has been a t-post pusher which is mounted to our tractor's front-end loader bucket. This device is very simple, but has already saved us countless hours of work. The following photographs illustrate how I use the post pusher. Aiming: The loader is first positioned with the end of the pusher is close to the ground. I then maneuver the tractor until the end of the pusher is in alignment with the marked post location. This is how the lined up pusher looks from the driver's seat of the tractor. Yes, I know the loader has an issue with the hydraulics cover. Loading: Once the pusher is aligned, I place the tractor in park, raise the loader arm and insert a t-post into the open end of the pusher. Tilting: Correct placement of the t-post is dependent aligning the post along three axises,
For those of you who are unfamiliar with agricultural equipment, a cultipacker is an implement used to compress soil. There are several reasons a farmer may use a cultipacker, but, for me, the primary purpose for the cultipacker is to pack down soil that has just been planted with grass seed. This should greatly improve seed germination in newly planted bison pasture. Five truck tire rims welded together form the shape of the cultipacker. Technically this is really more of a cultipacker-roller hybrid as the ridged portions on the roller should be more closely spaced on a true cultipacker. A thick piece of steel tube runs through the center of the rims, which I'll explain later in this post. For added weight each tire rim was filled with concrete after it was welded in place. A photograph of the roller portion of the cultipacker completed and waiting for the concrete to cure. The length of steel tube that runs through the center of the roller is welded to the
Face flies beginning to appear a few days after my initial treatment with AiM-L VetCaps. I unfortunately don't have any photos of the original mob of flies, which was much worse. Since the forth of July an insect called the face fly ( Musca autumnalis ) has plagued our ranch and caused me a considerable amount of stress. It was a week ago, on the forth, while doing a routine check on the herd, that I noticed that the bison appeared to be greatly agitated by a surprisingly high number of the flies. While the sight of flies or other small insects buzzing around grazing animals is nothing unusual, this was something different. The flies flocked in groups around the eyes and nose of each animal so incessantly that the bisons' natural defenses appeared to be ineffective. All the blinking, ear flapping, tail wagging, snorting, rolling in soil, and rubbing on trees had little effect. No matter how many times they did these things the flies would just briefly fly up into the
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