Green Ranches

We have Alpaca Angels of The Highlands in Highlands County, Florida on just about six acres of Bahai grass, guarded by our donkeys. Money is always an issue, and we have found ways to cut costs while doing things to help protect the environment as we worked to put it together.
For instance, I build "feeders" in each of the dozen fields. These sturdy four post items cost about $15, are about six feet tall, and nicely keep hay from blowing around. I collect sturdy wooden pallets when I see them, from tile stores or installers or maybe in a dumpster at a store or residential rehab site. Also, if you let painters know that you'd help dispose of exterior latex or enamel, every six months or so you probably would get a call to pick some up for free. Or, at Home Depot or Lowe's, you can find "Oops" mis-mixed paints for $5 a gallon or $15 for five gallons... I use a good deal of exterior paint, most of it free, to paint posts and pallets and signs and...name it.

So, with four posts supporting an upside down painted pallet...hay will stay in the pallet without blowing out, usually. For a roof, I use a large pallet and nail or screw it across the top of the posts. I raid Carpet Depot's dumpster (actually, carpet installers will save room sized carpet that they have replaced with new) and use fence staples to attach cut carpet over the roof pallets, making a good cover and even a shaded area (in Florida, shade is important) for the food and critters.

By hanging some wide carpet strips down, you can block off rain and wind from affecting the loose hay.

Including digging four holes with a Ph.D (Post hole Digger), nailing the pallet at the right height for the animals, putting another pallet for the roof and covering with carpet...painting it all, takes roughly 60-90 minutes if you are organized with the tools and stuff.

At times we get different colored paints...whatever is bring thrown away at the moment. It is a good idea to have a different color for each feeding area...it makes it easier for help to recognize the feeder and field you might be talking about. "How about putting some hay in the blue feeder." is an understandable askance when other feeders may be green or brown or orange or....

Of course, hot dipped galvanized nails or exterior (deck) screws will hold things together without rusting away quickly. We have a lot of large pieces of tin roofing that blew off a huge barn during a hurricane. That tin gets painted and use for roofing the shelters, feeders, and even as siding for some shelters that need rain kept out (some prevaling winds can be diverted.)

Same for building barn stalls...by the way. If you have a six, seven, eight or so feet long area between posts where you'd like a "stall divider" of fence. You might invest in two landscape logs...pressure treated, often about $1.97 each. Can be painted to help preserve them longer...and you pre-drill a hole in the ends where you'd drive a 6 or 8 inch spike through after leveling them at the desired height for your partition. There are many types of skids or pallets that, before you spike in the landscape logs, fit well onto the logs, one at the top, another at the bottom which should be 6 or so inches above the ground or floor of the barn. Painting the entire thing one color lets you and everyone else easily identify which stall area you might talk about. "Let's put Boomer in the gray stall." can save guessing on someone's part.

Anyway, if you have an open or pole barn, you could drape the hanging skids with carpet to help cut down wind, or not. For the hot months, I have $12 window fans in between pallets, secured, and giving the alpacas a breeze, operating off of a timer and outlet bar.

These are inexpensive ways to create useful items for your animals' well being. And, you are recylcing, reusing stuff that would have been thrown in a landfill otherwise. That's also known as reducing waste. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle....keep your farm or ranch doing green things and share them with all of us.