"How to Make Cattle Happy"

If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Hey happy dog. Hi. Hey Toby dog. How's it going buddy? You know one of my favorite parts about running a farm is that it requires a lot of problem solving and trial and error and working to find just the right way to solve a problem on the farm. Speaking of solving a problem on the farm, it looks like my heifers are loose again. We'll deal with them in a minute, but one of the things I actually wanted to show you guys was this. So this was my first ever happy cow mobile. It's a mobile shade structure that I can use with my cattle. You see because my cattle graze outdoors and they're often out in pasture in the summer, there's a lot of times where they're going to be in a certain spot grazing and they're not going to have access to trees. This thing when set up properly and the shade cloths aren't taken down like they are right now, was actually my first ever attempt at having a mobile way to shade my cattle. And despite some initial rough bumps, it actually started to work out pretty gosh darn well for me over the course of the first summer that I had the cattle out on pasture. And while it was good, I wasn't completely satisfied with the design and so I felt like I had a lot of things to work on and so I did a little bit of experimentation with different types of designs. All right, let's see if I can coax Alice and baby B back to where they're supposed to be. Come on girls. You're supposed to go that way. I know you're being a bad influence on baby B. Come on girls. Let's go. That's the idea Alice. Good job. Come on baby B. Follow Alice. There we go. That's what I'm talking about girls. Back into your paddock. Come on. I don't like that you're breaking loose. These girls don't actually even need shade right now because part of where they can graze is up along the edge of the trees and so they can use the trees as shade, but it's really the spots where I don't have trees. That's when I need the shade mobile. And every time I've tried to redesign my shade mobile, what I've struggled with is you have to balance these design constraints and specifically it needs to be lightweight enough so that I can move it by myself by hand on a daily basis. You know, it's all fine and good to use the tractor or ATV to get it in position, but I wanted something that I could like just go out there with my bike and just pick up and move. Number two, it needed to be durable enough to take the abuse of the cattle and then number three, it needed to cast enough shade for all of my animals. And by the way, on a gray cloudy day like today, which is wonderful for shooting videos, it's actually not the best day to show you the shade stuff, but believe me that shade is really needed by my cattle when they're in a hot summer day. Now the really challenging thing about these design constraints is the fact that trying to get something that does all three of those things is hard. Like this structure right here offered enough shade and I could generally move it pretty easily by hand, but it wasn't durable enough and it would tip over and it just had a lot of problems from that standpoint. And so I was struggling a little bit with finding the right mix for that. Last year's version of the shade mobile offered enough shade, but it was really heavy and really hard to move because I basically took some panels from a dog kennel and attached shade cloth to it. And even with two people, it wasn't necessarily an easy structure to move. But for 2024 I decided to go back to the lab again, and try to design something new that really did hit all three needs. Rise and grind weirdos. So I'm not going to give it away, but we do have some nesting activity going on inside this coop. All right, come on inside. Let's go Tobes. Unrelease the quacken. Come on. Come on, duckery deuce and goosery deuce and chickenery deuce. So I'm pretty much ready to break down these guys and start sending them out to pasture. You know, typically I'd still be a couple of weeks away from sending them out there, but I don't know. We've had such a quick, fast oncoming summer that it's not shocking that, I don't know, they're ready to go now. So I heard an interesting duck fact the other day. I learned that the reason that ducks have feathers on their tail is to cover their butt quacks. I'm still collecting goose eggs, which is why I haven't put the birds out just yet, but that'll end pretty soon. You guys are looking like you want a treat. Well, today, my friends, I have a treats for you. Come here, come here. Let's see these good ducks. Hey, Hey, Hey, we don't jump. Hamburger bun for you. Hamburger bun for you. It's so funny. The different dogs and their different eating style. Abby will wolf it down as quickly as she possibly can. Meanwhile, Toby will take his to a secluded place where he can appreciate it and smell it and lick it for a while before actually consuming it. Oh, you're such a sweet pup. Get back in there. You escape artists. Good morning, little piggies. Come and say hello to my friends. So this guy right here, his name is Prince Philip. We go Prince Philip. You can have a bun to that little pink one in the back. I think her name is Penelope. I don't think any of the other pigs have names just yet. After having kind of a rocky introduction, they were actually a little bit scared of me, but I've been plying them with treats on a regular basis and that's getting them much more comfortable. Can you be scratches? I don't want you to bite me, but you can let me scratch you. I'm just here. I'm surprised you don't want this bun here. Prince Philip. Part of my project plan for today is I'm going to do a little bit more work fencing out their corral because they're going to move out of here pretty soon. Isn't that right? Girls and boys. Actually it's three boys and one girl. I'm just so used to saying girls because of last year's pigs. It looks like it could top off their water. Pigs are still figuring out how to eat out of the trough. They like to put themselves all the way in oftentimes. So even though it's big enough for all four of them, they sometimes run into a little trouble. I feel like I finally have figured out the ultimate shade mobile for my cattle and I don't think it was actually going to work until I made this very unique discovery, which I want to show you guys right now. Come on, sweet pie inside. So the boys are still in their bachelor pad. Got Joey Ramone. How you doing over there, pal? You doing good? Joey is a two year old steer. You can actually see macho man down there underneath the tree. Ideally this pasture would be just dotted with trees all over the place. Every 75 to a hundred feet I would have a tree. Like if I really had the perfect situation, it would probably be that. But instead of that, that's where the mobile shade coop comes into play. What's up, macho man? How's it going, bud? Getting so big. He is so big relative to what he used to be, but he's still friendly as ever. Come out here actually once a day and brush him. Now that we have the extra space, it's much easier to brush him again. And so I've been spending a lot of time with him and yeah, he's pretty used to Abby so he doesn't freak out. So I was actually looking on Facebook marketplace the other day for a project that I'm working on that actually isn't even this project, but I stumbled across a deal on a boat trailer. You know, like one of those lightweight trailers that people use to like transport their boats and drop them in the lake and that sort of thing. And it was in pretty good condition. It wasn't great for being used as a boat trailer anymore, but the bones of it were pretty good. And so it kind of made me wonder if I could actually use a boat trailer as the base for my shade mobile. The advantages of the boat trailer are that they're lightweight and that they're very durable. And so I figured it could be something that I could probably move like, you know, 50 75 feet easily by myself by hand. But then obviously because it's a trailer, I could tow it with the ATV if I needed to. And so I went out, checked out this boat trailer. It seemed like it was in pretty good condition. And so I got a pretty gosh darn good deal on that. And then once I had the boat trailer, it was not too hard to build something on top of it and basically make a shade structure. Like I toyed with actually making this like a whole how to build video, but I don't think it's going to be very useful or that informative because how you build it is going to depend on the trailer that you get. But I feel like if you're watching this and you're thinking about ways to shade and shelter your animals, thinking about finding an old used boat trailer is something I had not really had on my radar, but I'm shocked not more people do it. Grass is getting really tall about now. You'll notice I actually have some extra fencing wires up just to keep my bull from wandering. I don't want to create a situation where I have him out trying to get with the girls. And so even if he slips past the first wire, there's still like three or four other wires he's going to have to slip past. And my experience is he's not the type of bull who's going to just charge through stuff. He's relatively patient, but knock on wood, I haven't had an escape yet and I only have a couple more weeks of doing the split up of the bull and the steer before I put them in with the cows. That is the shade mobile or the new happy cow mobile 3.0 in action. Here's my crew to move. Hey girls. How's everybody doing? Been using this now for two days, three days. I think it's been actually working great for everybody. I'll give you guys a tour of all the features in just a minute, but let me first do the pasture move so I can get it out of the poop. Hey, guess come on. Guess fresh grass, fresh grass. Come on. It seems like everybody's still got grass in their bellies. Annabelle is the only one who got the message, but I think once one starts to go, they all kind of go, Oh, look at Betty rubble. She might be the prettiest calf we have. You actually look at all of her kind of characteristics. It's kind of ideal for the breed, but yeah, this thing is pretty darn easy to move. So let me give you the rundown of all the features that I've got here. I think it's about 11 feet high. It spans out about seven feet wide on each side. I'm using shade cloth for the majority of the shade cover. It's actually best mimics trees. There's actually this portion back here where I use some leftover roofing material that I had, but that's actually more to give an overhang for their specialized mineral feeder, but it also casts some extra shade for them as well. The construction of it is extremely straightforward. It's just pressure treated lumber fixed to the metal frame of the boat trailer. Nothing too magical about it. I use two by eights in the back. I use two by fours in the front. This just gives it a little bit more sturdiness in the back and a little bit more weight in the back because I take advantage of leverage to be able to move this. And so I just easily lift that part up because the lightest part up front and I can slide it around, but then it's got enough weight to it so that it's hard for the cattle to push it themselves. I've mounted a couple of brushes on here and it's pretty crazy to see just how much they've beaten them up over the last two days. I think I lost one of them. I guess over there I'd have to go find it in a minute. I tried to Mount them to these carriage bolts, but I think I'm gonna have to come up with a better system because they keep unscrewing them because they rub up against the brushes so vigorously. But yeah, I'm extremely happy with this new happy cow mobile and particularly from what I've seen from the cattle themselves, they seem pretty happy about it too. Isn't that right? Bonnie McMurray. Another cool feature about the happy cow mobile is wherever I put it, they're going to actually beat it down and they're going to poop and they're going to sleep around it and they're going to trample whatever's around it. And so for example, I actually had this big patch of golden rod that was kind of like right in this area here. You can see just a little bit of it that they didn't touch. And so what's nice about it is I can strategically move it to wherever it makes sense. And so whenever I have spots where I have less than good forage, I can use the happy cow mobile as a way to trample out the stuff that I don't want and then hope that some of the good stuff springs up in its place. I was also really happy with the new mineral feeder because I used to just have to use a sled to carry my minerals around and it would get covered in water. I think having it in that shopping basket is going to make life a lot easier. Look, you can see Bonnie giving it a good rub. They like the brushes, but they also like the angled corners. I'm just happy to give them something that makes them happy. There's our Betty's got Betty white. Who's a little bit more skittish than Betty rubble. I'm working on her. She's becoming friendly. You know, my original plan was to actually try to trade my two heifer calves that are the daughters of macho man. I'm actually starting to reconsider that. I think there's actually a strong potential that I might end up keeping them and just separating them from macho man so that he never really has access to them. But then using basically AI artificial insemination for those of you guys who might be thinking I'm talking tech here, but using artificial insemination to get them pregnant. And so I'm adding more genetics into the herd. I would have to keep them separate, but I already have to separate my heifers out anyway, like my young heifers. And so I would just take those cows when they become cows and I would just keep them with the heifers. And so it really wouldn't be that much more work. And what I'd like about it is it gets macho man's genetics more broadly into my herd without sending them off farm. And so I don't know, it's something I'm thinking about. I'd be curious to hear folks thoughts on that one, but there is a strong potential that Betty and bell could end up staying here on the farm much longer than I anticipated and having them give me future generations of cattle. Cause it would be really nice to have, I don't know, four or five generations here on the farm. Isn't that right? Bonnie McMurray. Bonnie's a really pretty heifer too. She should be getting pregnant pretty soon. As soon as I introduced her to macho man, she's going to be probably the one of the first ones to go. She has definitely gone into heat. She's just past her heat cycle. She's breedable and I would hope to get her pregnant this summer. Now, a lot of you guys have been wondering when is Abby going to come up with the cattle full time? To be quite honest, I'm running into more problems with that one. She regressed pretty hardcore this past winter. Last summer I was getting her trained up, but then she got injured. And as she's come back out here this spring, she's just trying to be a little too playful and chasey. And so I'm working with her. I'm getting her to spend a lot of time up here, but much like with Abby, with the birds, I'm not ready to trust her with the cattle. You know, I feel very strongly that it's my responsibility to be the one to ensure that she is in a place where she can be trusted when I'm not around and that she doesn't create problems. And if problems get created when I leave her unsupervised, that's on me. That's not on her. And so it requires patience. It requires adapting your plans, maybe to not what you wanted, but probably to what you need to do. And I don't know, maybe Abby is never going to quite have the makings of a full livestock guardian dog, but she'll be a good farm companion for whether it be me or Toby dog or just to have around. And so I don't know, we'll figure it out, but please don't go starting rumors in the comments that she's going anywhere because she's not. So here we have Alison planting in her garden and you can see Pablo barn cats supervising the activity. How's it going there, Pablo Escobar. Good to see you pal. Oh, that's very kind of you, Pablo. So you're weeding. Oh boy. You got most of the stuff planted now, right? You have big visions for this space this year. Well, we'll do a garden tour eventually this summer, but it's probably still a little early for that today. I also have to finish building Alison's garden gate. So that's basically my next project on the farm. Hope you guys enjoy this update. If you're curious about more, you should check that one out. Or if you really want a good book to read, check out the Toby dog book and I'll see you guys in the next video. Thanks for watching everybody.