Document Actions
Standing Water
Feed, floods and folly. A harrowing season on Menzel Farm.
The stubborn remnant of a deluge at Menzel Farm.
I moved in November to an area of Iowa that I love; just north of Iowa City and southeast of Cedar Rapids. The farm sits right on the Cedar River and continues out of the flood plain and into the bluffs that line the river valley.
The farmers there have been working the land all their lives and doing it in a way that transcends the trends of today. They farm the way they learned from their ancestors, who had a common sense about how soil, animals, plants, wildlife, and humans should interact on the landscape.
They are not organic, nor do they necessarily plan to be, but the practices they use
are in many regards as conscientious or more so than the national organic standard requires a farmer to be these days. So, I came here to learn a culture of farming that is being forgotten and to take on the responsibility of farming in this area, which I'm learning has a lot more to it than just what crops you grow and which brand of tractor you own (though these are common topics of conversation).
Now, if you are not aware of it, Iowa had a record winter this year. We had more snow fall this year than we've had since 1978, which incidentally, is the year that I moved to Iowa when I was a boy. We had ice storms, we had blizzards, we had power outages, we had sub-zero temperatures, and we all survived.
The spring was really cool and wet and it didn't stop until the floods came. Even before that time, prices on grain were going up beyond anyone's comprehension. The price of corn has doubled and so has that of soybeans in the past year. This is common knowledge for most in the agricultural circles, but when you are planning to start a livestock venture, it is not a comforting thing. I knew that I would have to raise my prices in order to stay viable; This was all before I ever had a chick in the brooder...
...which was still to be built.
So, over the winter, I had a talented carpenter friend come and help me build out a chicken house to brood my birds, which meant converting an old storage wing of a granary building into a suitable space for chickens. We gutted it and built new walls, insulated and vented it and I built these wonderful circa 1940's brooder hoods that turned out amazingly well. But through all of this, I recognized that I was going to have to do something about the feed prices. I could not afford grain that was going to be over .12/lb and I knew that I could not grow it myself, so I looked for an alternative. I thought, what about distillers grains?
There is going to be a lot of this stuff around with all this ethanol hype. So, I planned on utilizing dried distillers grains as a way to buffer some of the feed costs. Dry distillers' grains (DDG's) were considered a cheaper alternative to straight up shelled corn and by some accounts it has been stated that results on livestock were positive. So, I bit on this bait and went for it.
My birds arrived in early March after they were lost in the mail for an extra day. This ended up being pretty devastating. The extra time in the mail weakened a significant percentage of the chicks and I ended up losing about 50 in the first week out of a total of 300. However, the hatchery I work with was very understanding and credited me for the losses that happened at the hands of the US Mail Service. In any event, I had birds and I had to keep them alive. There was still a foot of snow on the ground and the temperatures stayed below 20 degrees for another month.
The feed I prepared for the birds was a ration that I cobbled together from an organic farmer I use to buy from in Illinois and from the Fertrell company, who produce organic feed mineral and protein supplements. I used 1000 lbs/ton DDG's at $.08/lb for the corn portion of the ration, 500 lbs soy bean meal at $.245/lb, 150 lbs oats at $.035/lb, 100 lbs alfalfa meal at $.10.lb, 75 lbs fish meal at $.44/lb, 25 lbs oyster shell at $.0675/lb, and 60 lbs of the Fertrell Poultry Nutribalancer at $.665/lb. This feed ration was as complete as I could get it and as cheap as I could make it and it still came out to be $.16/lb, which if you are a livestock person you know is very expensive. So, using the distillers grains was not the total solution I hoped it would be. Everything was just more expensive. I just hoped it would keep my birds healthy.
So, how did this work? Well, not too well. I noticed that my birds were not very interested in eating the DDG version of the feed that I had used with great success in the past. I ground about a ton of feed and fed it for a month and immediately saw poor results in the vigor and overall health of my chicks. I had nutritional deficiencies and sick birds beginning to show by the third week, so I immediately changed the ration back to shelled corn. After some tweaking of the recipe and understanding that feed of all sorts is going up, I swallowed the bitter pill of knowing would have to raise my prices by a full $.50/lb in order to deal with the rising costs of feed and fuel in our economy. This is a scary thing to do in a new market and in an economy where people are supposed to be spending less on food. What other choice did I have?
Well, find the people that want good food. That is the only way you can make it in
this business.
I thought a while about the DDG's and the irony of using them in my system. In most ways, I am contrary to agriculture that is based on a commodities mentality. I don't adhere to managing the land based on the speculation and the subsidization of cheap grain. So, why did I utilize a feed stuff that is the epitome of this agribusiness monster?
It seemed like the smart thing to do at the time. I was pressed to find a solution to a problem that was created by the system that was now baiting me to use their cheap by-product of a food used as fuel. The ethanol industry may not be the only reason we are having this influx in grain prices these days, but they sure are promoting the problem. The DDG's may work for some outfits, but I think it is an empty promise to those looking for a way to combat the ever rising feed costs in their operations. I don't think the nutritional value of the feed stuff is there.
I can't give you scientific proof of this, but I can give you observational data that tells me that my feed was inferior due to one change in my feed ration: DDG's. So, what do I suggest? I suggest growing your own grains if you have livestock that require grain (e.g., poultry or swine), or just let them eat grass!
OK, what about the flood? Well, we had a doozy of a flood. 500 years until another one like it they say, but we all survived. This farm is built to survive. Our piglets in the pasture down on the flood plain were swimming in circles when we found them at 3 am when the water was coming up a foot every hour, but we saved them and they survived and are doing well.
We lost 20 acres of corn, but we replanted those acres to beans and it is up and growing. The pasture down there was ruined by the muddy and wretched waters that stagnated and killed most of the forage growing, but we incorporated it into the soil and replanted the fields with annual grasses.
The key lesson to all of this is, you can't solve an agricultural problem with a one dimensional solution. Diversity of the land has allowed this farm to prosper in the face of extreme natural devastation and hardship. My chickens made it through because they had a good home and balanced diet that was supplemented when they were out on pasture eating legumes, grasses, and insects.
I processed them last week and they came out rather well. I am selling them for an increased price from last year, but people who want good food know that it doesn't come cheaply.
What I think this will teach us all is, we all have to eat, and what we eat is more important than having extra money in our pocket to spend on video games or frivolous expenditures.
Farming is about feeding people and the only way that can happen is if the people understand the cost we are exacting upon the land. It is better that we pay farmers to keep the land in good stewardship than to pressure them into using shortcuts and magical silver bullets that may work in the short run, but decreases the health of the land, the plants, the animals, the wildlife, and the people.
C and N Fluxes from Agroecosystems: Do We Know Enough to Offset Emissions?
NRDC call for nominations: growing green award
Forgot your password?