farm equipment

I'm going to play the other end of the rope - you said you have "Three Horses" - well, you have your tractor.... teach them to pull. Depending on their size a forecart is about $350 - in the FarmTek.com catalog there is a 1,200 lb. ground driven manure spreader for $895.00 on sale. There is a 2,000 lb potting wagon for $499 or you could build your own bed on the wagon frame for $239. Not sure what a chain harrow would cost but it is not that bad in price and you can buy them in sections - Got my Dad one to drag his pastures with and he levels off the humps and holes by connecting to it the other way so the teeth come down. I really like mine. I also live in the mountains - If you can scatter your piles without tearing up the ground the erosion is less but do remember that at times it is good to subsoil or chissel plow - this would take a bigger team or a tractor if the ground is real hard. Here one of my field had just been grazed and suplimented from the top - after 5-6 years the ground compacted so hard that the grass died off - now it has been deep plowed - composed and replowed. I will now pull the cultimulcher over it to smooth it out and reseed the pasture in 3 rotations of grains just to condition it before it is put back into a good grass. Your pastures will benefit from soil testing and possible lime application (esp if you are using green manure on them)..... take care of your pasture and it will reward you with lots of feedstuff and less money in purchased feeds!

Actually, Jennifer, if you are wanting to get rid of the manure, then you are doing the right thing. Well, either till it in, or else, as others have suggested, use some kind of dragging tool to break it up and scatter it about.

I am an organic gardener, and I cannot (IMHO) get enough manure. Aged manure is black gold to me, so when you said you were going to till it into the soil, well from MY perspective, that is the wrong thing to do. I want to gather the stuff up, age it, and then put it on top of my soil where the rain will pass through it and deliver a nutritious tea to my plant roots.


But for what YOU are needing, you are going about it right.


If you till that manure into the first six or so inches of the soil, it will be almost as if it was never there at all.


We just view that manure differently, given our different goals.

You don't want to till in the manure....you want to break it up. For this you need a set of harrows or even an old bedspring pulled around your fields to break up the piles. Heck,when it's been dry and we're out walking the fences we'll kick the piles apart!! That's real country!!! It is a fact that livestock won't graze within a certain number of feet around manure piles...grass might look great out there to you but not to your animals. The horses are the major concern as the goats deposit their berries as they walk. Know having sheep really improved our pastures as they are weed eating machines and don't make huge piles of manure. We have an ancient manure spreader that we found backroad cruising. Our yuppie neighbor actually has a tiny spreader that she can pull with her lawn tractor....DEE

Well I'm a little late to the party but I thought I'd throw in my two cents. I picked up eight sections of old IH 401 spring tooth and three sections of flex harrow for a case of beer, after taking the whole thing apart and replacing broken bolts and discarding parts too worn for use I ended up with four sections of spingtooth and lots of spare shanks, I use the springtooth and flex harrow combo over the hay ground to rip up cheat grass and weed sprouts. For the pastures I use three sections of rigid/leveling harrow, they look sort of like box springs with a lever on each section to adjust the rake of the spikes. The rigid harrow works a little better for knocking down mole hills and spreading manure, it also scratches the dirt a little allowing for a seed bed. A car or truck couldn't pull the spingtooth up hills with out spinning the tires, but they could pull the harrow, the nice thing about pulling from a tractor is that you can look over your shoulder and see where the harrow is, making it less likely that you will run over your tounge or harrow up 100' of fence. We have a 70hp tractor, as the rest have said buy as much horse power as you can afford. Tractors are great for more than just pulling, they haul hay, move dirt, snow, manure, hoist, the list is endless. Having said all that I would second the idea of useing your horses, they are paid for thier fuel is cheap, they make less noise and they are the ones making the mess anyway, the only downside would be looking at thier butts all day. Good luck.

__________________
The best of men is only a man at best.

If that's all ya want to do, just get a metal mat drag of some sort to pull behind your 4-wheeler.

An old set of bedsprings weighted with a couple of cinder blocks should bust the poop clods well.

I've got a drag made from a piece of chain-link fence with a few scraps of board wired to it for weight. It does a good job.

I've also used a wooden pallet as a drag. Use your imagination. Drag the poop piles a few times a year and your pasture will look fine.

__________________
"The most beautiful system of the sun, planets and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being." - Sir Isaac Newton
(A REAL scientist)

For that size acrage I would get 20-35 hp tractor, I had a Kubota L2350 ( 25 hp ) with a front end loader, it was a great little tractor for that size acrage. Get a chain or drag harrow and just drag it around your pastures to break up the manure piles and spread them out so they can erode from the weather better, we have one and use it all the time to keep the pastures looking great....I would get a rotary cutter ( brush hog ) and would really recomend the front end loader, they are SO handy. As far as brand, I would see which dealer is close and visit them, see how they are going to be to deal with. I have an older JD 4010 ( 1961 84 hp tractor ) and while it is cheap horsepower, its much bigger and requires a lot more tinkering and fixing of odds and ends as its 45 years old then did my little Kubota....so while I like tinkering and fixing up my old tractor, if you want one that is just always ready to go...consider a newer compact.

There is lots of info over at www.tractorbynet.com.

Here is a link to the chain harrow we use...

http://www.loyal-roth.com/Multi_Use1.html

Chickens. Chickens will breakup the manure so it can dry, killing the parisites, scratch it in, prevent flys by eating any maggots, add a little manure of their own, and provide fresh eggs!, You can't beat them. I have a 3 acre farm that I am currently renting out, and plan to move to in 2-3 years. I plan to pasture most of it and get by without a tractor, letting my animals do the work! I will let you know how it works out...

A bit off topic but would make for a nice field drag as well .
we had roughly a foot of snow last night . after trying to clear our half mile of drive with the back blade (that was a joke) I went to the scrap pile and pulled out two pieces of ten inch I beam (parts of an old double wide tongue )
and put together a A shaped drag in just a few minutes . the drag is about 9ft wide at the widest point and the sides run back at about a 60% angle
I braced it with a cross piece of I beam near the middle and hooked a chain to the point . Off I went cleared the drive in second gear with the snow rolling to the ditches .
I figure when the snows all gone I'll hook up at the wide end and drag the drive
it should pull the rocks from the edges to fill the pot holes . It can be pulled by a truck but a ft of snow was a bit much for the jeep so used the tractor