The Ruminant: Audio Candy for Farmers, Gardeners and Food Lovers - e85 Assembling a Herd| Mobile Hoophouse Design

Episode Date: May 29, 2016

This ep, Susan Kerr of WSU extension returns to talk about the right way to build a healthy herd; Hermann Bruns returns to talk about a 30'x100' mobile hoophouse design that has worked really well for him. See the companion post about his design here.

This is the Ruminant Podcast. I'm Jordan Maher. Owning animals is a privilege. It's not a right that we have. And if we have animals and we benefit from having them, we are obligated to provide for them, including adequate shelter and food and water and health care for all times. And it's disturbing to me when people get animals and they just take from them. They don't give back.

And they have to realize we are obligated to be good and caring stewards of animals because it's just the right thing to do. That's Susan Kerr, who's back on the show to talk about assembling a livestock herd. But first, Herman Bruns on building an affordable and effective mobile hoop house design and why he did it. All right, time for the show. Hey folks, it's Jordan. All right, I'm going to get right to it. Our first guest today is returning to the show. It's Herman Bruins of Wild Flight Farm here in the Okanagan Valley in British Columbia.

A few years ago Herman built a mobile walk-in tunnel that has really worked for him. It's cost-effective and to his mind simpler than some of the other designs out there so Herman came on to talk about that. With this interview it's important to understand that we don't spend a lot of time talking about the design itself because Herman gave me some great plans and photos of his design that you can find as a separate post at theruminant.ca. So there will be a link from the show notes for this episode to this individual post on Herman's mobile hoop host design. Instead, he's talking about why he wanted a mobile hoop host in the first place and then a few of the selling points of his design. So I hope you enjoy that. And after that, you're going to hear from Susan Kerr and you'll have an intro just before that.

Here you go. Hello, my name is Herman Brenz and my wife and I run a 25 acre market garden. And we've been doing it for the last 23 years in the North Okanagan. It's called Wild Flight Farm. So we have two main ways of marketing our produce. We have two farmers markets that we do, one in Salmon Arm and one in Revelstoke, and we also supply quite a lot of vegetables

to a home box delivery program in Kelowna called Urban Harvest. Herman Bruns, thanks so much for coming back on the Room Minute podcast. Oh, no worries. Herman, we're going to talk about movable greenhouses today. And I'm wondering if you could tell me why you decided to play around with movable greenhouse tunnels? One of the things I realized is if you start growing things like tomatoes in a greenhouse, or these ones are unheated greenhouses, so they're basically high tunnels that are movable, the ones that we built.

So we've been wanting to grow tomatoes and other warm weather crops in these houses. But the problem is that then you can only grow that crop in the house. That's one crop. But if you could move the house, you can turn that one crop into three crops and so suddenly the value of investing in a high tunnel triples. So the way I do it is we start off with early spring crops like lettuce, radishes, all kinds of things, everything grown in the ground in our high tunnel. ground in our high tunnel. And then when I go to plant the tomatoes, which will be usually around end of April, early May, we drag the house off those crops, which actually don't need the protection anymore anyhow, because they're fully grown and to some extent we're already harvesting them. And I can plant my tomatoes. And so we plant our

tomatoes in the new location. And then throughout the whole summer, the tomatoes are growing there. And then in the fall, what we do is we're in the space where we had our spring crops, we now plant fall versions of the same things, like, you know, just to use it as a season extension, you know, spinach, radishes, lettuces, all kinds of different things like that. And then once the tomatoes are done, so that would be sort of, I'd be probably planting those in August or September. And then once the tomatoes are done in the middle of October, we move the house back onto those crops just in time for winter so that we can protect them for the late fall and early winter rains and colder weather. So that way you can actually, out of the same structure,

you suddenly get three crops instead of just one. And so that was the real driving force. At the time, we were just getting our farm started and spending $5,000 or so on a high tunnel was a fair investment. And we wanted to be able to get the most bang for our buck by doing that. So that's why we did that. In the meantime, we built a whole bunch more, and most of which are actually not movable.

But we only remove the ones where we want to, because you don't really need a movable house if all you're doing is season extension. If you're just growing spring crops and fall crops they don't conflict so you can easily have the same house use the same house in the same location but it's when you want to insert that third crop that summer tomatoes long English cucumbers, peppers in our case, all grow much better inside a greenhouse or a high tunnel than outside. And Herman, I imagine there's probably one or two or three other benefits. I think you mentioned in an article you wrote about your movable greenhouses that it's easier to deal with couch grass when you're moving the hoop house. I assume you mean the couch grass that kind of creeps in right along the edges where it can be hard to get at it.

Of course. By moving the house, you can easily get at any of those weeds because you can just till all the soil right along the edges, which you usually can't get at with any kind of equipment. So you have to hand dig it out if you're having it come in. So you have to hand dig it out if you're having it come in. In the meantime, we've developed a strategy for preventing that weed from coming into our stationary houses too by just installing flashing along the edge, along the outside edge of the greenhouse when we build it. And then I also, I'm only assuming, I don't really know, but I feel like I've read that when you're able to move your hoop house,

you're going to perhaps slightly reduce the pest and disease pressure that can build up on a piece of ground that never gets rain and that sort of thing. Do you see any benefit to that? Yeah, I mean, I think those are sort of definitely there. I think it's theoretically there. I can't say that I've actually noticed it, but I think it just sort of makes sense that if you can expose, you know,

a piece of ground that is inside a house all the time, if you can expose it to rains and weather, that it would be beneficial. But I can't say that I've actually really noticed a striking difference in that regard. It does give you that opportunity, and you could use a green manure, crop rotation, a little bit more crop rotation, that kind of thing. Sure. Now, Herman, I should say at this point, you've shared a few photos and some diagrams that will be up at the ruminant, will be posted at the same time this interview goes live. So people can actually, we're not going to talk a lot about the technical aspects of your structure, but I do want to say, I mean, the idea of a movable greenhouse isn't a novel concept, but the way you approached it was just to try and find a really cost-effective and easy way to build one, and your design, it seems like you achieved that.

You did it fairly cheaply compared to some of the other models out there, and it seems like it wasn't that difficult to build. Yeah, like that was one of the, like I said, the original idea behind putting up a house structure like this was to save us money. And I looked at some of the designs at the time. You know, I had Elliot Coleman's book and I just thought it was too complicated looking for my liking. And I just thought, OK, well, maybe we can come up with a simpler, cheaper option. You can just drag the house from end to end. So that's just easier than having sort of rollers or wheels or other ways of doing it. I just find, you know, I go and borrow a tractor from my neighbor

and I use my tractor on one side and the other tractor on the other side and we just drag it. It becomes like a ski that it just sort of drags on. And it's really simple. And it doesn't leave any kind of posts or anything in the way in the previous location, which was, again, like I said said or we were talking about earlier that it enables you then to get in there and get away get rid of any quack grass or perennial weeds that are um giving you problems and uh those are fairly large structures 20 by 100 30 by 100 so you know one can build a large hoop house on your model.

Absolutely, yeah. It doesn't take, it works really well. It's amazing. They just, they're very, we've had them now for, I think some of them for more than 15 years. And, you know, we move them twice a year. And it goes quite quick, actually. We can move a house in about one person.

You can do it in two hours. You'll just need help to actually do the dragging. You'll need a second person just to drive the second tractor. But other than that, it's just one person. but other than that it's just one person each side of the house so that you one thing you do have to of course do is you can't just put them on these angle irons without sort of fastening them to the ground because if you do get any amount of wind those the house can take off on you and it's happened to to people before and so in our area, we don't get a lot of wind, but we, so we can get away with,

I just built little angle iron, sorry, out of rebar. I bent pins that have a little hook in the top and I just pin it to the ground with these rebar pieces. They're about two and a half feet long, and I just pound them into the ground, and they're attached to the angle iron skid, which you'll need to see it in a picture to be able to see how it works.

But in any case, it's really simple. And we put one pin every 10 feet or so. And when you go to move them, you just have to pull up your 10 pins on either side and drag the house over and put the 10 pins back in. And then you're good. And so it goes quite quick. All right. Well, listeners can see some fairly detailed diagrams and some photos at theruminant.ca.

If you're hearing this, it means those photos are up on the website, so you can go check it out. And Herman Bruins, thank you so much again for coming on. I hope we can have you again on in future. Okay, no worries. Thanks, Jordan. My name is Susan Kerr.

I'm the Washington State University Northwest Regional Livestock and Dairy Extension Specialist. I'm a veterinarian and also have a doctorate in education. I'm located at the Mount Vernon Research Center, which is in Gesset County, Washington. My email address is k-e-r-r-s at wsu.edu. So my guest today on the Ruminant Podcast is returning to the podcast. This is Susan Kerr, Northwest Regional Livestock and Dairy Extension Specialist at Washington State University. Susan Kerr, thanks a lot for coming back on the podcast. I'm happy to. Susan, today you suggested we talk about assembling a herd. So why don't we start with the basics? What do you mean when you say assembling a herd? That means getting started

in the livestock business. If you don't have any animals at all, how do you go about assembling a herd or a flock? Let's say I approach you and I'm really eager to get started in some livestock production and I don't have much of a clue. Where would you start with me? I always recommend people start with sitting down with the paper and pencil and make all their mistakes on pencil. You want to, if you're going to kill any animals, you want it to be theoretical. Many, many people start off with lack of information and they make some big mistakes. And they could have avoided those if they just sat down and did some planning at the beginning. It'll just save so much time and money and headaches and maybe prevent some divorces too.

Because sometimes having livestock is one member of the family's dream, and it's not everybody's dream. It's a lot of work, and everybody has to pitch in, or it's just not going to work. Okay, so during that planning stage, what needs to be considered? Excellent question. The first thing is, why are we getting animals? Why are you interested? What's your reason for having them? first thing is why are we getting animals? Why are you interested? What's your reason for having them?

If you want to make a living with them, your goals are going to, that's a lot different than just having them there for fun or to eat grass or for your family's own meat or fiber production. So you've got to agree on your goals. And also then, if you want to make money with them, you've got to determine if there's a market for the product you're going to produce. Many times people do everything. They get the animals, they start raising them, and then when the animals are mature or the fiber's ready, they say, great, now we're going to sell it. And there's no market. There's no one to buy what they've raised. And then so then you've not only not made money, you've lost money.

Another thing to figure out is what resources do you have for this enterprise? How much time do you have? How much land, fences, building, all of that? You've got to figure that out. Are you going to have to hire labor or can you do it all yourself? Again, we're still on paper. We haven't purchased a single animal yet. But Susan, that almost sounds like so far what you've mentioned, the question seems to be doing that planning to determine if one should have livestock at all. Am I right about that? I mean, I assume after that, then you get into what species and what breeds. You are absolutely right, because we all have the, well, most, some of us anyways, have the ability to have livestock, but not all of us should. We often think of just the benefits of having livestock. We don't think

about the responsibilities. And I've got to say that an awful lot of people that get started with livestock on a small scale end up not being involved with them even just a year later. They were just poorly suited. Either they weren't familiar with the amount of time that's involved or they wanted a more flexible lifestyle than we're allowed to have if we care for livestock well. They and the livestock were poorly suited. And I really hope people, like I say, make those mistakes on paper or just sitting around talking as a family.

on paper or just sitting around talking as a family. I'd say the biggest mistake is people probably who don't have enough land to have the type of animals or the amount of animals they need or want. Especially with sheep and goats, it's very easy to get way too many animals on two little acreages, and then you enter into the problems of heavy parasitism and other issues that are all a mistake from human mismanagement. And it's just very important for especially new people to have a good understanding of what's required by both financial resources and time involved and the land involved. If you get the wrong animals and too many of them in the wrong place,

we're really going to hurt the environment, we're going to hurt the family because of the stress, and we're going to hit people's wallets as well. And we want to keep people producing healthy And we want to keep people producing healthy animals and healthy food products successfully on a small scale for their family or their community and not have them have a horrible experience where animal health is affected and people have lost a lot of money. So it's the right animals in the right place at the right time. the right animals in the right place at the right time. And sadly, I've got to say, for a lot of us, it's not the right time or we're not in the right place, and we can just wait or we can have it be a dream or, like I say, find someone and go help out there once in a while. And then also you can go to shows and sales and other livestock events to just talk to people about livestock and the different breeds and species, bearing in mind that anyone who's a breeder is going to want to promote whatever breed and species they're selling. Okay, so but are there certain species that you would recommend

that real newbies start with? I mean, are there certain species that are going to have newbies less likely to abandon the project a year in? I think maybe chickens, and I don't usually think of them as livestock, but that's a really good area to start with. There's a demand for eggs and for poultry all the time. They're not physically hard to raise, and people can get used to the chores and animal caretaking on that small scale. And then they can always add other things as well. And I don't feel comfortable recommending a certain species for people,

because if I recommend cattle and you've got half an acre, forget that. So it really depends on resources and so on. Susan, earlier you alluded to the folks who may not be suited to livestock. Let's assume, though, now we're going to talk about the people who are suited. They've got the right infrastructure. They've got the right skills and mindset. What do those people have to think about when they're assembling a herd? After you've decided, yep, we're going to go ahead and do this,

then it's time to get animals. And it really is worth your while to spend a lot of time looking for and purchasing maybe a few high-quality, healthy animals instead of a whole lot of animals at once. Focus on high-quality, healthy healthy we call them foundation stock your first animals and how do you find these high quality animals i i recommend uh asking a lot of people ask your local veterinarians where they would purchase livestock from uh just ask around check your your 4-H people and county extension folks and say what's a good source of whatever species you're interested in locally. You certainly can go on

the internet and find lots of people willing to sell and sell cheaply and certainly you can go to the auction yard but when you go to the livestock auction yard, you have no idea why the animal is there. Generally, that's how people sell their problem animals. So you could be buying something that can't get pregnant or it's got a really bad attitude or it has chronic mastitis. And that is just the worst place to buy an animal and bring it home to have it as a breeding animal. Yeah, I guess you just, in this case, you really, you get what you pay for. So it's worth spending a little more money.

Sadly, when you go to an auction yard, you get a lot more than you pay for because you, whenever you bring an animal home, you bring home its viruses and bacteria and parasites. And when you go to an auction yard, you can be bringing home some really, really difficult problems to fix so um the only animals i recommend bringing home from auction yards are one you're going to eat that day and that's not the best source of them either okay so uh do you see many examples of people choosing you know running into trouble because they've chosen the right species but the wrong breed for for their farm or for their skill set uh absolutely you get uh mostly it's people that have done all their research on the internet and they tend to then

go to um breed associations and as i mentioned every breed association wants to promote its breed and some breeds are poorly suited for some situations, such as, I'm just making an example, say you buy a Suffolk ram from a purebred breeder and it's grain fed and a farm-based animal, grew really fast, that animal, grew really fast. That animal, that strain of that breed tends to do poorly on range when they've got to travel a lot to eat and they've got to travel a lot to find the use to breed. They often don't hold up well at all. It's very important to make sure you get the right, even the right line of the breed you want. I feel sometimes novices can be taken advantage of, so you just have to ask a lot of people, find hopefully a reputable mentor, an experienced person that can guide you through the process, and have them go along with you to help look at animals and ask questions. Okay, Susan, what other considerations should be in mind when

assembling the herd? Well if you found a reputable source then you really need to address the health of the animals you're purchasing. It's really a good idea to bring in a veterinarian and have them do a pre-purchase examination if you're purchasing some valuable animals you want to keep for a long time. The veterinarian will do a physical exam and also blood work. And for each species, there are several diseases that we're concerned about, and we don't want to bring those diseases home. And a reputable breeder will not mind that you do these tests. They might have done them already, and you're going to repeat them. They won't mind you're looking at their records and answering all your questions. A reputable breeder really cares about where their animals are going and they should be really happy that you care that much too. And it's not only the lab tests on the animals you're purchasing that

are important, it's the health status of the whole herd of origin is very important as well. We have some long-term diseases that take a long time to manifest themselves. So you could easily purchase an animal that's negative now, but if it came from a positive herd, it could convert to being positive later. And it's been a typhoid Mary all those years in your herd spreading the disease to others. So if you're interested in long-term healthy animals, make sure you're buying animals that have had a physical exam and appear healthy and also appear to have negative test results. Getting an animal tested, how much does that cost in your area if one wants

to get some tests done before making a purchase? Oh boy. Well, if you want to have the veterinarian come out and examine your animal, it'd be a basic farm call and then an exam time. And you could go even as in-depth as having x-rays done uh and and so that's we're talking about several hundred dollars i think probably you could start with a basis of maybe a hundred dollars to several hundred depending on uh how in-depth you want to go uh as far as the blood work goes or the other testing um that again could probably be like about $20 to maybe $100. Okay, so that's really interesting to me. So we're just talking about getting an animal examined and we could be talking about a few hundred dollars or even a bit more. But I guess that speaks to your belief in the

importance of buying the right animal in terms of health and, and, um, you know, uh, you know, other, other characteristics. Right. Because, um, there's, I'll give an example of a few diseases. There's something called Yoni's disease, which is a contagious bacterial disease of all ruminants. And if you bring that home, um, it's going to be on your property and perpetuated in your animals for years. And if you want to get rid of it, it's going to cost you thousands of dollars to get rid of it instead of the $100 to identify it in the first place. Okay, Susan, so what do we need to be thinking about in terms of facilities when we're assembling a herd? Very good question. It just makes sense to have the facilities ready before you purchase your first animal. It's like people that are going to have a baby, they spend a lot of time getting that nursery ready. Get it ready before

the baby comes because you won't have time after. Very important to have facilities that are safe, go through and make sure they don't have trash and debris Very important to have facilities that are safe. Go through and make sure they don't have trash and debris and broken glass and nails and lead batteries or toxins around. And if animals can get into trouble, they will. So go through and have a facility that's safe. And you don't need a solid barn. A three-sided shed is great depending on, for some systems anyways, and just have protection from the prevailing winds and the precipitation. And three-sided sheds leave a lot of good ventilation, and that's really important. You don't want to have a real tight barn because animals can spend a lot of time in there, and a lot of condensation happens and then pneumonia. So just have a safe, well-ventilated barn and walk your pastures and make sure there aren't toxic

plants out there or dangerous holes. Make sure the fences are in good repair and remove any type of risks that are out in the pasture. And I really encourage people to learn about poisonous plants. There's just a whole lot of them and you need to either fence them away or keep animals from having contact with them. And also it's important to figure out how much storage space you're going to need for hay or grain or other supplements you're going to need for your animals and make sure you have clean, dry that can be protected from from vermin and and keep that feed safe and are there any particularly pernicious and fairly common poisonous plants that a lot of

people aren't aware of when they're when they're you know when in terms of when they first get started in livestock production well it's just a, just a couple that come to mind are the nightshade family, wilted branches and leaves from the prunus family, that's cherries and so on. The hemlocks, both poison hemlock and water hemlock, those are just a few that come to mind. There are a lot. Yeah, important then to research that's a that's a really good point um okay so we've taken care of facilities we've done our due diligence in in just purchasing the right stock what about once we once we have at least the the the origins of a herd what about managing um

that that herd you know once we've made our purchases right uh well and one thing i forgot to mention for the housing we want to make sure we've got plenty of space for all the animals for them all to be able to eat at the same time you've got lots of clean water for them and space for them all to move and and also be bedded down and relaxed so that none are left outside in the elements, including the hot sun or the wind and rain. Plenty of space for all. And then if you are bringing new animals into a farm where you've already got animals, it's very important to keep these new animals isolated from the home herd. If you can do three months, that's great. We want them to be isolated and separate by at least 30 feet, and that's downstream and downwind from the home herd.

That way, if the new animals we brought in, despite our efforts to detect disease, if they break with something, they will be significantly far enough away from the home animals to not endanger them. And if you're purchasing new animals, you always do the chores on the home animals first and then the new animals second. And you change clothing after you've handled and dealt with the second animal. And would you say that also applies to to poultry as well? You bet. Anytime you're adding new animals, mixing new animals at all, very important. And you shouldn't share feed equipment or any type of equipment with these two groups. They should be separate. People might think that this is overkill, but all you need to do is have one animal

come in with a disease and spread it to your others and have your home animals that you're already attached to start dying. And you'll understand the need for this biosecurity of quarantine and isolation. Have you seen it? Have you seen instances where the new animals contaminate the origin herd and create big problems for a farmer? Absolutely. A real common one is something called sore mouth in sheep and goats. And what often happens is that the new animal brings in a strain of the virus that the home animals haven't seen before. So the new animals are fine. The older animals, the animals that have been on the farm longer are the ones that, uh, for which this is a novel strain and they

all break with it. And, and that's just one example. Um, any other comments about post-purchase management or should we, we move on to routine monitoring? Well, just, um, post-purchase management. Now you're into the routine things of maintaining a good diet and sanitation and vaccinating animals and parasite control, all those routine things we get into. And if you need help with that, certainly your veterinarian can help you design a program. I hope you know I didn't say dewormer, I said parasite control. We're trying to get away from just thinking of parasite control as using chemical dewormers. As we talked about before, it's important to emphasize the non-chemical control measures so that we can preserve those dewormers for the animals that really need it, and we delay the development of resistance.

Right. Okay. And any other comments you want to make about assembling the herd, Susan? Really important for you to identify individuals, especially if you have a type of breed where they all look the same. You can't just say that one. You have to be able to identify them. So that, lots of reasons. As part of your record keeping system, you're going to write which animals you've bred to which animals and all the details about how fast did they grow, what's their health. And you certainly have to be able to write down and identify which animals received any medications if they were sick. So you can keep track of medication withholding times and stay within the law sometimes people just identify them by name but realize that what if something happened to you how would other people be able to recognize these animals you really need a backup system besides just a name your

tags or tags just a variety of means are available. Right. And Susan, as a Canadian, I don't have a good grasp of just of the role that extension specialists like you are able to play or do play. I was just trying to get a sense of whether you encourage people in your region to call you or email you, or is that getting too much because they're just not the resources that's my job so that would be great probably though the first place somebody would go locally would be their own local veterinarian and that person would be very qualified to do this i happen to be a veterinarian too so i like to emphasize prevention when I talk about assembling a herd and really like to emphasize the need to bring veterinarians in and start that relationship with a veterinarian that will be positive and educational for years to come. a privilege. It's not a right that we have. And if we have animals and we benefit from having them,

we are obligated to provide for them, including adequate shelter and food and water and health care for all times. And it's disturbing to me when people get animals and they just take from them. They don't give back. And they have to realize we are obligated to be good and caring stewards of animals because it's just the right thing to do. Right. The stakes are a lot higher when you're going to start your first cattle herd than when you just want to start growing carrots for the first time, I guess. You're right. Well, Susan Kerr, thanks a lot. I've appreciated both of our conversations now that we've had on the Reubenant Podcast,

and I hope we can have you back again soon. I hope so, too. I hope it's what you want and had in mind and think it's useful. Well, thank you very much. Okay, there's your episode, folks. I hope you enjoyed it. So a reminder that if you want to check out Herman Bruhn's mobile hoop house design, you can check it out at theruminant.ca.

I'll have that up at the same time this episode goes live. As well, I'm excited to tell you that if all goes well in the next week or maybe two, I'll have an interview with Tom Philpott, who is a food politics and food culture writer. He's written for a number of publications, but primarily lately for Mother Jones. He's also part of the Bite podcast. And he is on to talk about a recent article he wrote all about the use of antibiotics in the livestock industry that was pretty interesting. So you can check that out at Mother Jones. Or hopefully, if all goes well, you'll hear Tom talk about it a little bit here on the show. So'll be coming soon and uh well until next week have a have a good one reaches we'll live off just not spring water and peaches we'll own nothing to this world of and live life like it was meant to be

life like it was meant to be Because why would we live in a place that don't want us? A place that is trying to bleed us dry. We could be happy with life in the country. With salt on our skin and the dirt on our hands. I've been doing a lot of thinking some real soul searching and here's my final

resolve I don't need a big old house or some fancy car to keep my love going strong so we'll run right out into the wilds and graces we'll keep close quarters with gentle faces and live next door to the birds and the bees and live life like it was meant to be Bye.