feeding of the deer 2024

[thecfarm]

Looks like about 15 deer out there now.
I feed the deer in a long line. Maybe 50-70 feet.
This keeps the deer from fighting so much. But they will still drive the small ones away. Or try too.
I stand there and tell them, A course he's small, you guys drive him away from the food.  :D
I have fed 50 deer in past years. Most years 20 is no big deal, but 30 is not common.
I say I feed 50 deer. I am not a rich man. I put out about 4 gallons of sweet feed, really cow grain. If 2 come they eat good, if 50 come, they better eat quick.  :D
When I feed them, I holler, hey, hey, hey. They come a running!!!!
Most times I feed them at night because of the turkeys.
But I wanted to see them eat today.
I don't hunt, but the step son and grandson do.
But only 2 deer have been shot in 24 years here.
I have not seen any antlers this year come to the food.

[SwampDonkey]

Don't forget the pictures.  ;D

[Peter Drouin]

Only have 5 or so I think. Few deer can make a lot of tracks.
They are not eating as much corn now with the snow going away.  Going to be in the 50s next week.
I did see the pm you sent weeks ago. I just had a hard time getting back on the FF. I did mess up the PC some.
Got my grandson to fix it.
I hope you and yours are well my friend.

[thecfarm]

I am well. 
Same as what I posted at the first of Feb.

[SwampDonkey]

Haven't seen a deer or a track around here in weeks. And the snow really isn't deep. But I have a lot of coyotes. My snow shoe path has hardened up now so they run my paths everywhere. I think a lot of it is at night, I never see one in the day time.

[Peter Drouin]

I see deer on the edge of the fields in town. Tracks in the yard. There is corn out, but they just nibble at it now with no snow.

[thecfarm]

I am having a steady 10 deer coming for the food.
One night I had more about 15.
The deer will stop coming to the food when things start to green up. I came home tonight and there were about 13 deer in the field.

[Peter Drouin]

I just put out another 50 lbs of corn. Their eating it just not as fast as when I have snow cover.
With the bears coming out I think the corn will go fast.
And that's ok I have more.

[SwampDonkey]

Have not seen a deer or track all winter. Drove out to Howard brook where the deer congregate in winter. None in the fields or yards. They aren't yarding this winter, they can roam anywhere with no snow much. A deer has no chance on my place with all the coyotes, the darn things even run my snow shoe paths like they own the place. The moose never stayed on the woodlot, just a couple roamed through and moved on. No beds at the inn. They can't get much to eat there except willows in the wet runs. A few new shoots out by the road where I've been cutting and the moose did walk through there nibbling. Not seen any bear moving yet, no tracks and I have a den on my property line about 1/2 a mile back from the road. Last fall it looked like 3 different bears up there, tracks of different sizes.

[SwampDonkey]

Saw a couple does this afternoon in the field. Probably the same two that made tracks a few days ago on the woodlot. 

[Peter Drouin]

With the snow now. I put out 50lb of corn mixt with 40lb of sunflower seeds. And a new salt lick.
Are any coming in Cfarm?

[SwampDonkey]

I see a deer trail across me and lots of poo on it, but it's not a frequent trail and days go by and no new tracks on it. It would be well sheltered for winter there, but trouble is nothing to eat unless they travel to open meadows or go to my cedar patch and nibble some greens. Since I have no browse pressure on the cedar at all, I can conclude that there are very few deer around. If the snow gets deep, like 2 feet, there won't be a track at all.

[thecfarm]

I did mean to pick up some grain last week, but forgot to get it. Have to do it this weekend.
No big number of deer around close to the house.
I did see tracks. but nothing to make me think there are even 5 hanging close to the house.
The deer have trails that come to my house when I start to feed them. 
The deer don't hang around close to the house accept at feeding time.
Musket season just got over with here.
The stepson hunts here and really don't want me to feed the deer until he's done hunting.
He would never shot over bait, but just don't like the idea of it.

[Peter Drouin]

Shooting over Bate in my eyes, you are not much of a hunter.
In NH they do it for bear hunting.

[Peter Drouin]

Corn gone, #2 50lb with sunflower seeds. They are hungry this year.   That's ok I'll get more.

[thecfarm]

Put out some grain today and I just went out and saw 8 eyes. 
probably the same 4 that walked across the field this morning.
No horns.
I cut my firewood about 100 feet from where I feed the deer. I have seen deer come in to eat as I am sawing wood.

[Peter Drouin]

Nice, But with all this night cutting. You don't make up a pile of wood for the year?
I know the outside boilers eat like 6+ times the wood I use in my house. How many cords a year do you need?

[SwampDonkey]

The neighbors went through 32 cords with one their first year, and they bought the wood. They used it to heat a greenhouse and the house. They are now (and his brother) on wood stoves and burn 6 x less wood. 32 cords is lot more work than 5 cords. 

[thecfarm]

I think I burn about 10-12 cord a year.
I don't think I am using much more wood when we had 2 stoves going.
I have a pile of dead EWP that I think is about 10 cords. It's still in so called logs lengths.
The only winter I thought I burned a lot of wood was when I was cutting EWP that was a live, I would cut it down and split it and burn it. I could never seem to get ahead that year.
I had a bunch of EWP that I wanted to get rid of. I cut it down all winter. I bet I went through 20 cord that year.
I have a better burn with the standing dead EWP then what I did that year.
I can burn cedar in my OWB with a control burn.
I tried to burn EWP in the stove in the cellar. Either be 80° or no fire. 
The night time in the woods comes from me waiting until fall to get my wood. I chased down a lot of dead EWP this year,
We have much better heat now.
Sometimes I would let the fire go out in the cellar.
By the way swampdonkey. we had a green house, 75 feet long and we heated that with oil. The OWB was bought for that, but the wife's health declined so we closed the greenhouse.  I I can believe the 30 cords for the greenhouse. We would go through a 1/4 tank of oil in a single number night.
I would hate to back to burning wood inside the house again.
But if this OWB breaks, then I might have too.

[thecfarm]

Don't be like my FIL you two. 
I did not tell him I was getting a OWB, because I know the way he is.
He saw it and said, you won't like that they smoke all the time.
He said he saw one and it smoked all the time, all the time. I asked him what kind it was and he had no idea, was he burning rail road ties ? He had no idea.
So he knew nothing about it.
I did point out a few times when he was here, if he saw it smoking.
The only times it really smokes is when I am burning green wood. That thing smoked when I was burning That EWP green!!!! Once it got the water out it was fine.
Then he came up on a cold day and I had a bunch of dead rotten EWP pine and he hollers, you can't burn that stuff!!!
I told him, Lets go inside where it is warm and talk about it.
The only reason I really got one was because of the dead wood I have here.
When My father and me was cutting wood here with a tractor we would push a dead pine a foot across out of the way. A couple days later we would push it out of the way again.
I put A LOT of dead pine and fir through that OWB.
There would be some hard wood, but that was just because I was clearing the pasture out here. 

[Old Greenhorn]

If you are going to have an OWB you HAVE to have a plan for the wood supply and it really shouldn't be 'buying cordwood'. there is a house down the road from me that has a small one and the original owner that put it in used his deadfall with the rare dump load of junk EWP, etc. from a neighbor. He got cancer, sold the house and is gone now. Two fellas bought the house, but they had a different lifestyle, working remotely and in the city. They were going to pull the OWB and scrap it. I never saw them outside on the (very nice) property. One of them got a promotion/transfer and they sold that house nearly a year to the day after they bought it. The new owner, I have no idea what he (they?) will do. They just moved in last month, I ain't seen them yet, but I am watching to see what happens. No smoke yet.

 Bill has always had OWB's to heat his complex, he's been through 4 now and is very happy with the newest one which he installed in Nov. '23. It makes the same heat but burns less wood. The old one was a top load, so we would fill it with the forks, just dump a fork load of 4' slabs in there and good for a day. Chunks would last longer but burn less well. That boiler had build issues and everyone who bought it had problems with boil overs and leaky jackets. They ran away and hid and didn't make good on any claims.
 His new one he has to hand load and we had to change the whole way we cut, store, and feed wood to it. 36" pieces now and I buck slabs off the mill and stack them in a purpose built rack about 4' wide and 6' tall, packed tight with it's own little roof on it. We then move it up the hill and stage it near the boiler. When Bill has time, he will cut and feed branch wood from his tree jobs (4-10" dia) usually EWP to fill it. If it's late at night, early morning, or he is in a rush, he will just grab the nice dry stuff off the racks and fill it. I can fill one of those racks in about 5 hours of milling time, sometimes less with thick slabs. We need more racks though. I think we have 5 in circulation and he tends to avoid using that wood because if we get bad weather, it is ready to go and requires no work. He burns year round. That boiler is his heat and domestic hot water source for the shop, apartment, house, and pool.

[SwampDonkey]

The shop stove here is only going to use 1-1/2 cords all winter and the house furnace uses 6-7 cords. I burnt 2-1/2 cords of 2 year old wood now. 5 months to go. In the old house I burnt 7 or 8 cords with good rock maple. It was insulated to. So I have never seen any benefit of burning good hardwood over aspen and fir, of which I have 2000+ cords on the stump. :D This year, and most years I've been burning since September, 3-1/2  months, not 3 weeks in both stoves. Most of it is what not many around here considers firewood at all. As far as fires, there's no way you could stand a fire and 90+ degrees all day, that's why I let fires burn out here. It's no big task to start a fire.  You light a fire when you need heat, not when the house is 50 degrees, but 70 degrees. Throw a load in the furnace in the evening on coals and have heat in less than 10 minutes, same in the morning even if newsprint is used. Lights fast and heats quick. It's 80° in here right now, the fan is mostly off and I won't add wood all day long. The shop right now is 88°, won't be no more wood going in there for 20 hrs. I see no need to waste heat and wood. This house holds the heat quite well. In fact, as you know I open windows around here. If I want to go somewhere for days in the winter I have electric backup furnace, which is very cheap compared to stove oil. In fact, it would be far cheaper for me to use electric than buy and burn wood when that day comes. Price of firewood around here is about double what it was 10 years ago, an average around 7% inflation each year. $180 then, $350 now. Around here most processors never paid more than $25 a cord stumpage for firewood logs.  If you buy the logs yourself, you'll pay at least $125/cord, it's probably a bit more now. The logger has equipment costs and often has to build the roads to get to it.

[Peter Drouin]

I burn 4 to 5 cords all hardwood. Woodstove in the seller 10' from the wood. House is 75 to 80 all winter. I like to sleep with just a top sheet, not covered with 4" of quilts.
Ann liked that too. But, when we got fooling around, 65 was too hot in the house.

[SwampDonkey]

I woke up this morning thinking it was plenty hot and a little bit too warm. Come to find out it was down to 67 and the electric furnace just kicked on. Never had much fire all day yesterday, woulda been 110 degrees.   It's 36° outside and foggy this morning. My grandfather was always cold unless it was 85 degrees in the house. Funny, in his younger years the house was never that hot unless you was standing over the stove. You could see your breath in the living room watching TV.    Dad and mother always kept the heat around 70 degrees at their place on heat pump/electric furnace. Saved on the electric bill. Never froze.  In fact the real estate lady wouldn't believe the electric bill was so low in winter until we showed her the bills. :D :D