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Donkey Down!

We got about 2 inches of snow the other day … no big deal.

Midday yesterday, I looked outside and saw a big dark lump on top of Hooey’s trout pond.  Looked closer and saw that it was Soleil, so I thought maybe she fell through the ice.

Went out to investigate and found her not THROUGH the ice, but instead just splayed out on top.  I guess she walked out, hit the ice, and WHOOOP … down she went.  No idea how long she was there, but she was cold (shivering), wet and looked really scared.

I went and scared up a bag of sand and a bag of pea gravel and packed it all in around her legs.  Not sure why, but she bit me three times.  Not hard, but more like PLEASE HURRY.

I couldn’t get her to try to stand, so I had to deadlift her fat ass up off the ground and put her back legs down beneath her.  Then, I had to hoist her front end up and get her forelegs down.  THANKFULLY … she could stand and I didn’t see any evidence of a broken leg, which would have been a death sentence … just like a horse.

She was smart enough (I guess) to just stand there, until I spread my jacket out in front of her for more traction.  Got her to take a few steps forward, then she trotted up the pond berm slowly beat feet back to the barn stall.

Might sound nutty … but when I went and fetched a 5-gallon bucket of warm water and brought it to her in her stall, she had a look on her face that said THANK YOU.

Video:  Soleil DOWN

Video:  Soleil Back UP

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*New* Artillian Pallet Forks

Received and installed a new set of Artillian pallet forks on the Mahindra 1526.

Getting too damn old to be lifting as much as I do, and Lord knows I have a lot of projects on-going, and new ones cropping up seemingly every other day!

Besides moving pallets of material around the farm, I plan to also move a few tons of wood (trees), for example to complete the 300 meter rifle range.

The tractor has a skid-steer quick-detach system up front, so it’s just a matter of decoupling the front-loader bucket, and picking up the pallet forks … or vice versa.

Whoop … whoop!

 

Damon

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Chicken Tractor Prototype: 17 December 2017 Update

Welp … it took me three different designs to finally come up with a mechanism for towing the prototype tractor from point A to point B without putting too much lateral stress on the bottom of the dome, which isn’t strong enough to sustain that much lateral force.

The current design isn’t part of the dome itself, but instead a rather large skid frame (16′ x 10′) with a single cantilever mounted caster wheel in the back.

Before I could test the new skid system, I had to first remove two fence posts from the pasture fence on one side of the gate to have enough room to drag the chicken tractor through the gate and into the pasture.  I could have dug up the posts, but that sounded like too much work and my right wrist is TOTALLY SNAFU … so I instead just ripped out the posts with the truck winch.  😉

Only thing left to do was hitch the chicken tractor to the Mahindra tractor and do a drag test, which went pretty well.

Next steps:  Get the chicken feeder, waterer, roost and nest boxes installed.  Then, install chicken wire to keep predators out, and tarp the ceiling to keep the weather elements out.  Then, BUILD FOUR MORE.  Yikes.