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Worst farm chores!

J

JayinNY

Well-known Member
Lets hear it guys, what farm chore do you dislike the most? I dont mind most of the things I have to do, but I dont care to much for pitching silage out of a silo, back breaking work. Whats yours? JayinNY
 
Shoveling rotting soybeans out of a bin that had a bad roof leak all summer. What a rotten smell. I was 14 back then. Now, I would have to say anything that I have to do in the house, is worse than anything on the farm.
 
Butchering chickens - love to grow them and love to eat them but the process to get from the 1st step to the last step is hard miserable work. I would pay someone to butcher them in a heart beat if anyone one around here would do it.
 
I went to a train derailment one time that had dumped a whole car of soybean meal and it had gotten wet. Imagine that odor.
 
Couldn't be any worse than the July that a hired man tipped a whole load of my uncles wheat over in a swamp. Right along the road too so everybody got to enjoy it for the rest of the summer.
 
After an old cow dies. Loadin her up and then the worst part... taking her to the fertilizer plant that has a hundred other rotting animals sitting around decomposing. I would recommend not eating before that chore.
 
stacking hay bales in an old barn,way up by the roof on a hot day is not much fun
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I'm gonna agree with the posters below...anything involving rotten grain, especially beans or wheat. Dry edible beans like Navy beans are the worst. Get the slime on your hands or clothes and it's with you ALL day. Can't get rid of it. Yuck.
 
Uncle raised turkeys ,like 100,000 or so . Picking up dead turkey's was bad,,if you missed a day it got really bad . They kinda fell through the tines of the pitch fork . Or exploded when you picked them up . But to be back on the farm in North Dakota would be worth it
 
working on a knotter an hour before dark half the field left to go and rain in tomorrows forecast! paying quarterly loans isnt much fun either.
 
throwing hay down the shoot when you run out of whats thrown down for bedding and feeding especialy when you have to walk a mile to get to the hole to throw it down
 
Working in the top of the silo when filling with clover. Shoveling oats to the back of the bin when filling with an elevator. Both are very dirty. We kept a few head of herefords after Grandad retired from the dairy. With only those few cows we cleaned the box stall in the spring. Needless to say manure laid down in the early winter was pretty bad smelling in the spring when you got down to that depth during cleanup.
 
Well, if working in a grain elevator back in the 70's qualifies, I will list them in this order:

1: Going down in the boot pit, standing knee deep in a mixture of water and rotting grain. Too wet to run through the grain leg, only way out is 5 gallon buckets up 2 10 feet handoffs then out the door to a pile.

2: Scooping moldy grain (milo) off the top layer of grain in small BSB bins after they had sweated.

3: Loading a 25 hopper car unit train when it was below zero. Meant working all night, we had 12 hours to get it done. Of course we still had feed to grind the next day and trucks to dump. We were the railhead for 4 other elevators owned by the same company.

4: Getting stuck on the all night shift babysitting 2 continuous flow and one batch dryer.

5: Shutting off the continuous flow milo dryer every 3rd day and sweeping the milo dust off the grids and out. "Cooled down" was still about 145 degrees inside it. You would come out of it and the only thing you could really do is to be swept off with a broom to get the worst off, go to the hydrant and spray some more off. Then go home and change clothes and get a quick shower.

I do lots of stuff now I don't like, but compared to that I don't complain. Yes, hay is hard work, but it doesn't stink, it isn't below zero, or 145 degrees. I also don't have to "babysit" it all night long. DOUG
 
Removing a retained placenta or helping cut up and remove a dead calf are great ways to enjoy your lunch twice--once on the way down and again on the way back up!
 
Aww,
Raking/shoveling moldy ear corn to the sheller and then baling heavy, wet hay bales in the afternoon (man that wiped me out). Made dragging and loading pig poop a desired job!

Thought I'd never live though it, but has to been close to 40 years ago.

THANKS for the memories!
 

hand tying bales where the mice have cut the strings. Forgot and filled a shed with bales that has no blacksnake(s). Some of the strings are cut twice! Used that green twine that the mice really like to chew in two.
 
Taking a 100 lb. newborn calf (and mother) to the barn at 3:30 a.m. this morning in the mud and snow (32 degrees).
 
Absolutly hate haulin grain to and from the bin or cleanin it out close second is washin the combine after harvest cause its usually not very warm out time we finish up harvest.
 
Probably not many remember back when ya had to do this : De-horning cattle! Large guillotine type de-horners for the large cattle and small two handled "scoop" type for small ones. Kind of a bloody mess and the smell of scorched baking soda and the beller of the large cattle still gives me goose bumps.
 
Mixing a minewer pile in the middle of a southeast Texas summer with the wind in your face on a tractor that has no cab, removing retained placentas in the middle of winter is another one and removing dead cows and stillborn calves. Combine both and you get to taste flavors you missed the first time you at your lunch. Finally stacking wet bales after a short rain shower in a old garage that was only one roof vent, in the middle of summer!!!
Alex
 
We had a guy that cleaned cows around here. When he got done he would wipe his hands and then take a big chew of snuff.
 
scooping out wagon loads of burned corn after the roof and loft of the old barn caught fire. i absoulty hate the smell of burned corn.
 
An old vet was telling me one time about doing that back before they used plastic sleeves. Said he did it one time the day of a DHIA banquet. Said when he got there that evening,he made sure he sat right across the table from the guy who owned the cow.
 
I done all them nasty jobs mentioned at one time or another,but that is in the past.

I think i stick with the Buffalo.The only nasty job left is pulling froze on twine from the bales
after a melt and refreeze when feeding in winter.....But that's only 3 hrs a week.

The rest of the time in winter i play in the shop.LOL
 
Yup--it's enough to gag a maggot off a gutwagon, as an old man I once knew used to say! Especially fun when they cow can't get up and you're doing the whole operation laying on your side with your face 6" away from the gutter! Got "volunteered" to help a vet with cutting up a stillborn calf out of a cow (they use a wire saw and cut it into small enough pieces to pull out) when I was about 14. Big bull calf, small heifer, and it had obviously been dead a while. About a 3 hour job, but the heifer lived and went on be a good milker and have several more calves with no problems, so it was worth it, though I was off my feed for the rest of the day!
 
Good timing on that topic Jay, I spent 10 hours doing it today, pitching sopping wet horse manure, pine shaving bedding, barn flooded.... what a mess, all the darned snow pack & ice causes major drainage problems. One of those days you wish you did something else at some other place !

2nd thing I dislike is double work or excess handling etc. regardless of the task, don't make more work for yourself or the next guy by virtue of your methods, think ahead and work smart. If I can find a way to handle something 1 less time, it's a no brainer, make it happen. Kind of common sense, but some people don't seem to realize this.
 
You should put in an unloader, then you could have a new worst job--fixing the unloader when it breaks.
 
Yep, wet horse manure is not fun to clean, My horses dident get any water in there stalls luckely today, but it has happened. I left the horses out tonight, need a break every now and then. LOL,....J
 
Standing knee deep in dead rotten chickens trying to salvage the metal roof that had fell in under wt. of snow a couple of months eariler!!!!
 
anything having to do with oats. just being around the straw makes me sick.
when i have oat straw tall kid gets to bed the barn.
i like wheat or barley straw better they don't bother me.
cleaning calf pens. feeding calves ain't much better
 
Standing knee deep in a pit of chicken s!!t shoveling it into an elevator, but still glad we had the elevator!
We always did that job in the summer to intensify the smell!
 
Thats funny, I just got kicked this morning feeding calfs on the left leg, which was just a brushing, and a few calfs down in the right leg, that was a painfull one, I wacked that little nut with the grain scoop!
 
Worst farm chore I know of is having to go to town to the banker, and explain why I cant make the payment on time. Or ask for more money. I would rather eat worms!
 
I've done most everything listed on here including the OB wire saw to remove a dead calf. Most of it's in the past now, the thing I hate most is books/paperwork. I dread sitting at the desk going through receipts.

Luckily, my wife is now the book keeper, and I only have to help out right now, while we are getting ready to go see the tax man.

Tim
 
I feel for you! nothing worst than throwing dollars at the goverment. Maybe pitching silage isent so bad. LOL... J
 
Anything to do with maggots. I'll cut your dead calves out if you get those flesh eating maggots off my lambs. Darn things will eat a lamb from the outside in, work of Satan me thinks.
 
Not a farm chore, but one of my employees was walking beside the spray truck spraying trees under the powerlines when the driver ran over a big old dead dog, in August, in Florida. It blew up all over my guy! He couldnt eat for 2 days.
 
Not directly farm related but they were spreading this "Stuff" on agricultural land; sludge from the bottom of the pits from the city of Toronto's sewage treatment plant. A bearing on the loading conveyor failed,I get to fix it. How wonderful!!! I got home that night just as my wife did. Iam not out of the truck yet,she says"WHAT IS THAT SMELL?"My coat hung out in the yard for a week,hosed it down daily,had to move it further from the house twice,even my tools stunk. When that outfit moves back to start operations this year Iam going on holidays.
 
Looked down pretty far at replies and was surprised not to see anyone talking about cleaning the hog house. We had a 1 1/2 inch hose that we used to spray and push all the manure into channels that run out into the pit. Had to do this while in the pens with the hogs. The hogs loved the cool water on a hot day and would run right up to you, not uncommon at all for them to knock you down right into the muck. Used to make Grampa laugh and laugh! He'd always tell me to go do it, then come and watch, and wait for the inevitable. Nothing like being covered head to toe in hog crud. I hated doing it, but it was almost worth to see him laugh like that.
 
I had to spread the cow manure when I was about 12. Bottom chain in the spreader was just plain wore out- every time I filled it, it seemed like, another link broke. Of course, only happened when it was full, so had to pitch the whole load out by hand every time. Dad claimed he was broke, couldn't afford a new one- just a bunch of repair links.

Finally shamed him into it- went to the dealer and priced a new chain, something like 50 bucks. I was getting $5 a week allowance, went to dad and said if he'd buy a new chain, I'd pay him back by reducing allowance to $3 a week until chain was paid for. Made sure I made this proposal in front of Mom. That weekend, we put the new chain on, and nothing was ever said about allowance reduction. It worked!
 
I hated going to school. I would have rather been doing chores. I'm weird however, my IQ and standardized test scores were never below the 90th percentile (scores seemed to drop as years wore on)--I should have loved school and college, but my GPA only averaged 3.5 in high school and dropped to .9 one semester in college, although I graduated with a BA around 2.3 gpa. Just a lack of interest in city slicker academics. While in school the cows went and my dad's been mostly haying for the last 15 years.

-karl f
 
Yes I hate that too. Go threw all the trouble to get the baler knotters working right, then come winter a dang mouse chews threw the twines, cant win, if its not one thing its something else right. Im gonna try stacking the bales flat this year, twine up and down, instead of on there side.
 
Unclogging a silo unloader when it is minus 10 F, it is dark, the unloader is 40 feet up in the silo and right before milking by myself. Let us not forget working with frozen manure spreaders.
 
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