list of jobs for my single working heifer

[KellyandKatie]

So, I have my list of work I would like to do with my heifer.
Pulling chicken tractors (on sleds). They do not weigh all that much, but more than I can do single handed while DH is out. For the sleds, I just used old plastic rain gutters, because that is what we had around. Works fine. It is not being turned, just pulled forward a few feet. Its a good job for her imo, because I do worry about overworking her, this thing is certainly not.

I want to start buying hay in round bales, and I have no way of moving them. What sort of ways could I use my Hazel or my noggin to move these round bales? I could just cut the hay and pitch fork it too, always an option, but if you know of a better way, I would love to hear it. I am thinking even on a sled they are too much for her to manage, right?

My new garden. It is not huge, but it has not been broken or worked. I have never used a hand plow before, I understand there is some learning curve there. I am not sure what size walking plow I would want, and what determines the size to use? http://seattle.craigslist.org/see/grd/3460838251.html I saw this one on CL. Do I want to borrow someone’s machinery to at least break the ground before I set about learning how to handplow? Is this too much a burden on a young heifer? Not a large garden, but not good soil, and unworked.

I also hope to get her working with hauling firewood, so I need to figure out a better sled for that kind of load, or chains and hooks. Not sure, its not like I need to have her do all these things all at once.

We are on the fence about going for a tractor or not. I would like to not, just not sure I am being realistic

[Kevin Cunningham]

My advice, and I am not sure I am even qualified to offer it, is to not set your expectations too high. I have learned that with my steers this year. I had high hopes for them and I was often asking too much of them, and it caused some problems. I think that I have turned this around as I have now recognized that my expectations were too high, and this winter I have gotten back to the basics with them. That being said I think you can do a lot with a single. I can easily pull a two or three string bale with a single on a sled (my steers are just over a year), but a round bale would need a lot of conditioning and wheels for mechanical advantage. Chicken tractors should be easy and the repetitive hitching and moving and unhitching (with daily or frequent moves) would be great training. Small diameter logs should be no problem even with a simple chain set up. I can only speak from my own experience and keep it nice and slow. I rushed head long into it and my steers often balked because I want to do too much too fast.

[Oxhill]

Kevin is correct. You never want to hitch her to a load she can’t haul. If she is a young heifer then you want to start small and slowly build her confidence. You will be conditioning both her body and mind. A simple stone boat is a great tool. You can use it to haul fire wood, pick rocks from your garden of field, haul dirt manure etc.
It is difficult to get into specifics of what is or isn’t to much for her because so many variables exist. For instance how old is she? How big is she? How well broke and conditioned is she? What size round bales do you have? What are the conditions like? If you put the bale on an old car hood and pull it over snow it will pull very easy and maybe even run you over. In the other extreme if you put the bale on a old tire and pull it on dry ground it will pull extremely hard. Most likely the bale is too much now but with some ingenuity can be done in the future.

This is what we use to move bales. Those are my dad’s cows but right now we use it on a small tractor.

I am not an experience plowman but I am sure that plow is too big. I think you want an eight inch plow.

[Eli]

I dont have any input but was wondering who made or makes the bale mover in ox hills picture. thanks and good luck! Eli

[carl ny]

I don’t know who made one but TSC has one they sell. All mechanical,no hydrolic.

carl ny

[carl ny]

Don’t know who made that one but TSC has a manual one.

carl ny

[Droverone]

My bale mover is a peerless that’s nearly identical in design and is identical in function

[Eli]

Thank you.

[bendube]

This is probably also posted elsewhere on this forum, but worth linking to again:
Tillers International Implement draft manual .

This may be helpful for comparing different tasks, and understanding how much of a load you’re going to be asking of her in different situations. As everyone else has said, you don’t want to hook her to something you aren’t sure she can pull.

I’m not an experienced plowman but there are a lot of factors that could impact your choice of plow size and whether it makes sense to try to plow with her at all. Two very important ones would be soil texture and how you plan to use the plow. Plowing 8 inches deep on clay or clay loam soil, the plow that you show there could be difficult for a full-grown team to pull, let alone a single heifer. If you have very sandy soil, and only plan to plow to 2 or 3 inches, that plow might be usable with a very large single cow. I agree with Andrew that an 8 or even 6 inch plow, if you can find one, would be much better sized to your heifer.

If you’re breaking ground, get someone to come with a tractor (or a team of large animals).

If shes well broke, there’s a lot of work that she could do with you in the garden, especially cultivating and ridging.

For bales:
In my experience, a round bale on a stoneboat is a light to moderate load for a full grown team (about 200-250 lbs force). Last spring I pulled 2 at a time on a stoneboat as part of conditioning for plowing.
Theoretically, a 1000 lb heifer could be worked up to pulling a 600 lb bale a short distance on a sled, but that might not be where you want to go.

If your terrain is very level, you could roll the bale with the bale speared on each side, and hooked to the traces. I’ve used this setup to roll out bales, and it seems like a pretty light load. It would be pretty dangerous going downhill…
Possibly you coul even rig a similar setup with shafts so she could hold back the load?

Enjoy working with your girl.

[Oxhill]

@Eli 38563 wrote:

I dont have any input but was wondering who made or makes the bale mover in ox hills picture. thanks and good luck! Eli

The info on it is “GRABILT; Graber Welding, R5 Box 23A, Bloomfield, IA. 52537 515-830-2971”

It is well built and I think the only maintenance it has had is to replace the break cable every few years.

If you google “tumble bug hay mover” or something similar a bunch of different ones should come up.

[dominiquer60]

If you decide to take hay off of the round bale and move that in a sled or cart a hay knife is handy(http://edgetoolworks.wordpress.com/tag/hay-knife/). I used one on a farm that I worked on years ago, I would make 2 to 4 cuts around the bale making the hay easier to work with and measure out for the animals. It is good at making you sweat, but if you can’t move a round bale beyond rolling it into the barn to stay dry, this tool can give you a better option than striping large sheets off of a bale.

Go slow and if you challenge her with a bigger load, alternate with and easy load.

An 8″ walking plow is meant for a single draft horse, a very fit saddle horse could be used to plow a garden with a plow this size, a friend has a 6″ plow from Canada that works nice too. Keep your eyes out now for a plow that you may be able to use later. Until your heifer gets more mature you may want to hire a neighbor to plow/till your garden, you might be able to use her to harrow and cultivate if you find something suitable for her size.

Good luck, I am glad to see someone working a heifer.

[Author]

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