Dealing with deadstock
Wellington county poultry producer devises innovative solution to manure and deadstock handling
BY CHRISTINA SELBY
Bill Woods, a Wellington county broiler producer, says composting dead birds beats incinerating and suspects his neighbours agree with him.His composter measures 4 x 10 feet, and five feet high, though Woods admits this is probably bigger than necessary for his 60,000 bird per crop operation. The composter was built "just to fit into the pole barn set-up."
Woods started composting back in 1990 and up until a couple of months ago still kept a small incinerator to take care of small birds. But when the burner broke down, he didn't bother to replace it.
Currently, small deadstock is frozen until enough have accumulated to produce a layer in the composter, which is then covered with a six-inch layer of manure. Wood says the compost settles 20 to 30 per cent, and all that's left after 10 weeks in the pressure-treated wood composter is a few bones and feathers.
Burning big birds, on the other hand, "takes a lot of management," says Woods; the process has to be watched over. As well, "you do get a barbeque smell in the neighbourhood." Meanwhile, the compost pile gives him a good indication of what kind of crop he's had: The bigger the pile, the higher the losses.
Composting produces a fermentation smell, he says. "You don't get a rotten flesh smell," and that's the question he's most frequently asked. On the other hand, there is a "fairly strong smell" when the compost is spread on the fields, but Woods incorporates immediately so the odour doesn't cause trouble with his neighbours. Each year, he composts 200 of the 600 owned and rented acres on which he grows corn, soybeans and wheat.
After weighing the options of burning fossil fuels and putting those fumes into the atmosphere versus gases that come off the composter, "I'd give the nod to composting" as the more environmentally sound option, says Woods. "It's not high-tech but it works."
An overabundance of manure is not a problem on Woods' operation. In fact, manure from a poultry operation 20 miles away gets shipped in as he has the land to spread it on. But Woods did look into the possibility of pelleting manure, hoping to produce an organic fertilizer for the horticultural industry.
Unfortunately, he doesn't think it's an option for individual farmers. "It's expensive and the product doesn't repay the costs," he says. Pellets can't be produced to compete with non-organic fertilizers. "It's like organic food," he says. "Only a small percentage of consumers are willing to pay the premium."
Still, Woods says there's a market for organic fertilizer for growers of high-value crops such as ginseng. And as both federal and provincial governments push poultry producers to export and operations grow, manure options will have to be considered more seriously, he says.
© copyright 1999 Agricultural Publishing Company Limited.
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Two more wheels for your four-wheeler
This versatile ATV-garden tractor cart with racks is a tippable wheelbarrow and mini garden tanker rolled into one. All it takes is changing a 45-gallon plastic barrel cradled in its pipe frame. It provides a great chance to practise forming and welding galvanized pipe and is a good excuse to creep out to the shop and avoid "The Young and the Restless" on a winter's afternoon.When you weld galvanized pipe, its zinc plating volatilizes at 786 F and combines with the weld metal (molten filler rod and pipe) at 2,750 F to produce porosity (bubbles of gas trapped in the weld). The result is weak welds, poor appearance, and language not conducive to a happy life in the hereafter.
Welding this type of pipe produces toxic zinc fumes that I wouldn't bother inhaling. Work in a ventilated area or outside and grind off the galvanized coating near the joint to be welded.
Select an electrode that is compatible with the mild steel pipe. For ground galvanized or black H-inch pipe, a J-inch 6013 will give you enough penetration (how deep the weld goes) and enough additional filler metal to bridge gaps that may exist in the joints as you assemble the project. You could, alternatively, oxy-acetylene braze weld all joints.
The cart shown uses the grooves in the side of the barrel to hold the pipe and avoid movement when in use; the barrel is also bolted in place. Your barrel may be different from mine and result in unique construction dimensions, so I'll concern myself with bending, fitup, welding and aligning.
* Bending pipe is never easy, unless you have a pipe bender. Princess Auto has a hydraulic jack model at a modest price. Alternatively, you could bend the pipe by heating with an oxy-acetylene torch at various points along the pipe, or find a similar-diameter object and cold-bend the pipe around it.Ken Valiquette is a welder-cattleman in Prince Edward county* Fitup is how the metals come together at the point of welding, the joint shape chosen and the closeness of this fit. A joint with wide gaps will be difficult or impossible to bridge with the best rod and technique.
Keep the joint tight. Butt welds, tee joints and lap joints are the simple joints used. The cart tongue is welded to the axle on one end and the clevis on the other with this simple joint.
Hammer the pipe tongue almost flat on both ends so you can use a fillet weld and avoid a patterned joint. On my cart, the wheelbarrow wheel axles slop inside the H-inch water pipe axle and were welded all around with a fillet weld.* Alignment. Assemble axle and wheels. Then heat a small area at the centre of the axle, and bend the axle to align wheels. To track well, even this little cart should be aligned like a big trailer. You'll need a little "toe in" (the distance between the back of the tires) - H inch would be fine; and a bit of "positive camber" (the distance between the top of the tires is greater than the distance between the bottom of the tires) - again, H inch would do. Work with care - a slight misalignment of the axle welds combined with a poor alignment job will impart a noticeable tilt to the wheels and the cart will be more at home on the Red Green Show than behind your ATV.
© copyright 1999 Agricultural Publishing Company Limited.
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A farming maverick steps back
Craig Hunter has helped bring supply management to egg production and a credit union to Innisfil, but at 80 he's decided it's time to take things a little easier
BY BERNARD TOBIN
Over the past half-century Innisfil's Craig Hunter has spent many a cold winter day in Ontario's Snow Belt talking to corn growers about their plans for spring planting.But after 45 years in the seed business, Hunter, 80, has decided that his friends at Dekalb will have to make do without him this year. The industry has changed a lot since he first acquired the Simcoe county-area Dekalb seed dealership back in 1953. That year he sold corn for $9.60 per unit. With Dekalb preparing to roll out its Roundup Ready corn in a seemingly never-ending stream of technology in recent years, all the excitement is tempting for Hunter, an innovator in his own right. "It was never my ambition to retire," he confesses.
But corn is only one chapter in the life and times of Craig Hunter. Over the past 65 years he's also built a formidable poultry hatching business, fought a long, hard battle to secure supply management for egg producers and helped bring the credit union movement to Innisfil.
It all started in 1934 when Hunter paid $5 for 12 leghorn pullets. It was the Depression and times were tough. Four years later he bought his first incubator, and by 1939 he had 400 chickens and was selling 7,000 chicks in the community of Innisfil and Essa.
In 1942, he borrowed $2,000 from his father to expand the hatchery. With a new 100-acre farm and a new incubator hatching 400 chicks twice a week, Craig began building Hunter Poultry Farm into a thriving business that would hatch more than a million birds annually by the late 1960s.
During the early 1940s, Hunter and others from the community started a drive to establish a local credit union. In those days, says Hunter, "banks would lend you money only if you didn't need it."
In February 1944 at the monthly meeting of the Stroud Federation of Agriculture, 20 men, including Hunter, each contributed $2 to help launch the Innisfil Farmers' Credit Union. Eight months later, with $163 dollars on deposit from 29 members, the credit union approved its first loan.
"The credit union would lend to people who were honest and really needed the money," says Hunter, who served as credit union president from 1950 to 1952.
"At the Innisfil Farmers' Credit Union, character was more important than collateral. Because people knew that money was coming out of their neighbours' pockets, they would pay back the credit union before they paid a bank," he says. Today, the Innisfil Credit Union has $50 million in assets.
Throughout the 1950s and '60s, Hunter actively supported the establishment of a provincial egg marketing board. The first vote to establish a board in the early '50s failed, but Hunter helped keep the idea alive in his area until a second vote was called in 1971, thanks to support from provincial ag minister Bill Stewart.
In 1971 the average price of eggs was 21. 5 cents per dozen. "That kind of pushed them over," says Hunter. This time egg board supporters would celebrate a victory, but it didn't come easy.
Anti-board forces tried every trick in the book to win the vote. "They brought people out of the woodwork," Hunter says. "I know of one case where a fellow would give his mother six chickens so she could go out and vote" against the board.
Hunter served as the egg board's first chairman and stayed on as a director for 12 years.
In 1968, Hunter's son Craig Jr. returned to the farm to help his father build the business. Craig Jr. took over the operation the following year and would later expand the hatchery and add feed milling to the company's operations.
Hunter retired from the poultry business in 1980, but continued in seed sales with Dekalb until last year. But corn farmers in the area haven't seen the last of him. He's always willing to share his knowledge and help farmers and the community any way he can.
"The most important thing to know or to learn in agriculture is that you must work in harmony with creation and nature," Hunter says.
"By helping other, we really help ourselves.
© copyright 1999 Agricultural Publishing Company Limited.
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Can you dig it?
Farmers can play a leading role in cultivating knowledge of the province's prehistory
BY LARRY DREW
Farmers are the stewards of much of Ontario's prehistory. An arrowhead or other prehistoric stone tool found on the surface of a field or clearing may be all that's needed to lead scientists to new and valuable information about Ontario's history prior to settlement by Europeans.And so far, without exception, every farmer or land-owner I've encountered while documenting these local collections - my family included - has been excited and fascinated by the archaeological information those artifacts can reveal about their farm or area.
My interest in artifacts started when, as a youngster, I found my first stone tool - a beautifully polished stone axe unearthed while hoeing. As with many farm families, ours kept a box filled with arrowheads that had been discovered over the years. It was there that my axe found a home until, years later, box in hand, I visited Neal Ferris, regional archaeologist for Southern Ontario. He determined some of the artifacts were quite rare finds for Ontario. Many of them dated from 8,000 to 2,000 years ago, he determined, a long period of which little is known or understood. My interest quickly shifted from "artifacts" to "archaeology."
I used to think that the family collection would be of little interest to archaeologists: There weren't many tools - certainly not enough to suggest our Kent county farm site had once been a thriving prehistoric village.
However, small sites in any area may be of great value, as up to about 2,000 years ago village societies did not yet exist. People travelled in small bands for seasonal hunting and gathering. Only single encampment and seasonal camp sites would remain from this period, and due to their small size and scattered distribution they are rarely found and reported on.
As archaeologists suggest only about one per cent of artifacts may be on the surface of cultivated fields at any one time, a single artifact may be all that's needed to pinpoint these valuable sites. That underlines the value of documenting and mapping the general location of each find known from your farm.
Even documenting general locational information such as which field or farm an artifact came from can be valuable. It reveals broader patterns and periods of use. Our Merlin-area family farm was located on poorly drained clay soils away from any major waterways. Any archaeological information from this clay plain was important, as no previous prehistoric data was documented from the area. In fact, archaeologists believed it was relatively inhospitable during much of Ontario's pre-history.
However, by combining information from several local collections it was possible to determine an apparent steady increase in use of the area from 10,000 years ago to a peak of about 4,000 years ago when mature deciduous forest had developed in much of Southern Ontario. Also suggested from the data is a marked decline in use about 2,000 years ago, which roughly corresponds to the advent of village-based societies that perhaps preferred settings on or near larger waterways. These new inferences were determined solely by documenting artifacts in existing collections.
I'm still amazed at the opportunity for involvement at any age and any level, and reminded just how much archaeologists rely on the general public to assist in documenting the scant information available and preserving resources of Ontario's past. The Ontario Archaeological Society itself was founded by enthusiastic "amateurs" in the 1950s and continues to attract membership from all walks of life. It also sponsors seminars and programs for all ages, including Passport-to-the-Past, in which participants are alerted to volunteer opportunities ranging from assisting on actual digs to sorting artifacts in a lab.
While archaeological surveys and excavations are regulated for obvious reasons, anyone interested can apply for a licence as an avocational archaeologist. The licensing system - required in part to ensure proper documentation and reporting techniques - is straightforward and specifically designed for non-professionals such as myself. The Ontario Archaeological Society also publishes a field manual for avocational archaeologists and novices. It's a superb guide to the licensing system, walking readers through all aspects of archaeology, including field techniques, artifact identification and report writing.
Having obtained my licence, I'm always eager to head out into the fields each year to map new finds and sites, and to document other local collections - all adding further to our knowledge of Ontario prehistory.
© copyright 1999 Agricultural Publishing Company Limited.
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