putting new floors in the chicken house & cattle barn 

Glad to see that you looked into something for the barn floor while also worrying about the health of the cattle. My Dad use to say "Trying something is better then doing nothing for a problem".

Hillary is your finest asset around the farm. She is pleasant to work with and always does her best without complaining (too much). She is a gem and I know you appreciate her help. Proper compaction is key to a good job. So many skimp on the base layer when pouring concrete and end up with a lot of cracks and failures in their slabs. Good prep is always important. Well done.

You and your wife work so hard. I have such respect for farmers. Thank-you so much for sharing.

“A good thing that I have a wife with a strong back” Now that should be on a tshirt. I love the way you both work together on your farm.

Looks like a good solution in both buildings. Funny to look into half a dozen options for the cattle barn and then circle back to bank-run. Agree with your logic and appreciate you doing that research so I don’t have to!

It's great to see how you put a lot of thought into your work and keep improving your facilities.

You hit the nail on the head with your comments about children and how to raise them. In general, I have found some people are not looking for correction or direction or advice when they share their actions with others. For myself, it helps me to organize my thoughts when I verbalize them. However when I want advice I usually ask up front with a question. Maybe the reason you get "self-proclaimed experts" telling you what to do is because you are reaching so many people and the numbers go up with the sampling base and they are emboldened to criticize from the safety of the internet. I enjoy hearing and seeing how you are making a living on your family farm and hearing your philosophical opinions on many different aspects of life. I hope you continue to produce your interesting videos. I especially enjoy your videos that feature restoring tractors and other equipment. I am impressed with your ability to teach how machinery works and how to maintain and repair or restore them. Your explanations and visuals are very well done from a training standpoint. I have a 1952 Super A that needs a little work. Your videos have given me a great deal of information on how this fine old tractor works. Many thanks for your detailed instructions on the Farmall line. Regards Don

Hola from Costa Rica! It's like when you finally finish something it's about time to start over on something new. Love your channel and your tractors.

The chickens and cattle really live good with your maintenance of flooring. You provide ideas for us small homesteads. As a retired army vet, I can catch up on better ways to do things at my age. I salute your ambition and Hilary who is at your side.

A brilliant explanation of all the resources and planning needed on a small farm should be required watching for all want to be farmers.

I give your wife a lot of credit.,... She's one hard working LADY !

Thank you Pete. It’s interesting to see how your mind works. I’m not a farmer; I own and live on 24 acres but have a “normal” job. I’ve always gravitated towards that way of life though. My Grandfather was a farmer in West Texas....I envy your life. I’m sure it makes your family closer.

I've poured a lot of concrete for cows, I just broom finish it when its still real wet. You may also put that old plastic in the chicken house pour, keep it from sweating. Great video

In the old days, farmers used sheep to compact roads. Nowadays they still call compactors sheep foot compactors...

Great Videos! Really appreciate the way you keep the volume consistent; especially with machinery! Keep them coming, us young bucks need the wisdom.

As always, so informative. I love how you explain your rational for what you do, along with the options you discovered. It really makes researching much easier for everyone who watches. You are truly a well that keeps on giving good water

I would definitely consider a skid steer for just such a problem. We had a real early case loader and it was indispensable. For floors and manure, there was no replacing it. Take care and good luck.

I have tried multiple different stone in my hay feeding area for the cattle, concrete is the only permanent solution, I put big grooves every 2 inches in the concrete similar to what they use on handicap ramps have very little problems with slippage.

Man, you do for a living what most guys dream of tinkering on the weekends.

We use wood chip (waste from sawmills) in New Zealand. It can be turned over a few times when it gets mucky, then composted when fill. Its easy on hooves and warm to sit on, the cows love it.

Great video Pete and Hillary! I subscribed a couple weeks ago and have watched all your videos since then and they are all well done, insightful, meaningful, and no-nonsense (name that relic notwithstanding :-)). Glad to see your subscriber numbers keep climbing. You've definitely earned it. Hope you get some rain and looking forward to a video on cleaning out the pole barn this winter and seeing how it holds up! Keep up the good work. Now I have to wait for the next video... sort of sad that I am caught up.

The comment about your wife's prowess reminds me of an old farm journal joke about a bachelor farmer looking for a wife that owned a tractor...asking to send a picture of tractor with the letter.

If you go to your local concrete maker you can ask for washout or rubble from them. It's usually cheap and packs unbelievably hard.

I enjoy your videos very interesting and informative I was raised on a farm in Missouri till I was 18 years old and then I went into the Marine Corp

The 504 always get a good workout in your videos

A friend of mine used pulverized lime, the same lime that you use on your pastures. It controlled bacteria with its higher pH and provided a dry expendable base for his cattle. He never had to pay for lime to be applied to his fields again because he was doing it himself with his manure spreader. Another idea is that maybe you could get water treatment lime for free and allow it to completely dry on piles before using it in the barn. Just a thought that might save even more money. Very nice videos!

Thank you for your content priceless.

I have poured a good amount of concrete in my life and would strongly recommend #4 rebar instead of wire mesh. The cement is guaranteed to crack, no matter what reinforcement that is used, but the rebar prevents separation. Most of the wire mesh I have encountered during demolition is at the very bottom, and does nothing to increase the concrete strength. The rebar needs to sit on chair to be effective. Good luck with your pour, thanks for the great videos.

Another great video Pete, and I now have 4 chickens I'm tending to, 4 eggs a day and it almost keeps me busy. As your final comments about learning things, it is the same for me!

Sir, you and your wife work hard. I hope you both find time though out the year to take a relaxing vacation. Luv the channel.

You should try prying the T-Post out with your hand post driver. I saw a video of someone doing it and it blew my mind. Just take your post driver and wedge it under the dimple on the T-post at an angle. Wedge it tight. Then Pull the T-Post toward yourself, thus lifting the post. Repeat by repositioning the post driver on the next dimple down until the whole t post is up out of the ground. NO TRACTOR needed!!! It works great.

In the interest of safety. Please block the front end loader so it cannot come down on you when working under or around it. If a hydraulic hose or seal should break the bucket will fall with out any warning and you could get hurt. Murphy’s Law always holds true! I worked in an underground coal mine for over 40 years in southwestern PA and if a supervisor ever saw a person working under or near a “suspended load” like that they would be fired immediately for doing an unsafe act! Please work safely! Enough ear beating. I enjoy all your videos!

Great video, liked this a lot. The thing about chickens outside is that they can get away from predators,, inside the coup they are basically trapped,, no where to run

Pete, you should look into getting a T-post puller. You can get one for 40$. I picked mine up at tractor supply, best 40$ I've ever spent. Saves you a ton of time removing post. - no tractor needed.

New to the channel, been binge watching the last few days, really enjoy it. Our dairy barn has concrete floors with grooves cut in them so they aren't slippery, and rubber mats in some of the high traffic areas. We don't have a ton of hoof trouble, most of it is caused by DD which is hard to get away from.

Pete your going to need rebar in the chicken house before you pour concrete, wire mess will not keep the concrete from cracking and buckling 👍

Amazing. Never seen someone be able to work a plastic tarp or hay tarp without the wind ripping it out of their hands. Haha we always fight the wind with hay tarps

The big round stones in the bank run gravel will come back to bite you over and over again. They will always be coming to the surface. Plus you will end up spreading them in your fields. Stones in manure are dangerous to spread too. Concrete that is grooved when wet is a great floor for a cattle barn and only expensive one time. Your thought process is good though, you clearly care about your animals and your farmstead.

thank you Sir for your insight on the flooring ideas. Good to hear your ideas on the different options. Keeps the work interesting, although its a lot of hard work on such a beautiful day.. Will pay many dividends in the long run.

You could use caliche my dad used that as a base for a driveway. When you compact it it's like cement. But it's soft all so. Check it out. It doesn't cost a lot in Texas.

Thanks for posting this. It is a great thing to come home to after a day of school!

Just a note I have a 544 and I use a handy piece called a Bucketeer it pins to the sides of the bucket and it works great for loose hay and manure you can even use it for bales it's cost effective and no more fighting bolts.

Pet, while your at it, put a roll up door at the end of the chicken house and buy a used skid loader or a small 4x4 compact tractor with a loader and save your back when you clean the chicken house out next year.

Looks like some good ideas for the chicken run & cattle barn. Hope they work like you're wanting. Stay safe.

What we did for the floors to our 12 stall barn is we had a concrete isle with a drain in the middle that led to the sprinklers and the stalls had concrete then a rubber mat and we had sand and super fine gravel. Now the only difference was this ours was a horse barn but we used it for cows for a year or two. We had ramps with divots at the end of the barn so they could come and go as they pleased. That worked really well. With the concrete,rubber and sand,gravel mix. It costed about $110k for ours bust sense you have a small area it should only cost around $10-25k maybe less. I live in Texas so the price may vary from states but the concrete isle never iced over due to it being dry Bc of the drain and the stalls could always be cleaned. The sand was there for the urine from the horses and cows but is not necessary. Wood shavings from tractor supply or homemade works just as good and are very cheap to replace. Hop this helps a bit.👍🏼

Every one of episodes are so enjoyable

That is a seriously cool trick to pull them posts out

It seems like it never ends and there is never a final solution, I think that's part of the fun.

Some guys around my area they use quarry sand/class I sand it packs hard like concrete and it will lime the fields as manure is spread.

Pete, just have to say, as much as I love your videos, I love your wife even more, the strong SILENT type hahaha! Keep up the great work!

Love your channel. Like how you have broken down costs and pricing in other videos. I am moving onto a new homestead in the spring. Although I do not plan to farm commercially, I do learn alot from your experience. I worked as a concrete mason for several years in days gone by. I kept thinking " why doesn't he take down the pipes so he doesn't have to shovel all that heavy stone around ?". I believe it would have been more efficient and much easier on your wife's back. Lol. Awespme work here. Keep em coming. 🦅🇺🇸

Great video! It reminds me of what me and my grandpa do!!

In NY if you have a farm it will always have piles of little boulders in the pasture and by the barn! 😂

Being a engineer certainly has helped to to create things for your farm and cutting costs. Great job !!

Great stuff Pete we use kalichi here it packs hard like a rock.

I've got a copyright 1920 hardcover catalog from the Jamesway barn equipment company (still in business). If you can find one they are fascinating and contain blue prints for barns using all their barn equipment (mostly stalls and stanchions, manure and loose hay handling equipment). The floor construction they were recommending (although they had concrete plans) was cork. They sold cork bricks laid over a compacted sand & gravel base. I never saw one built but it sounded as though it would've been easy on hoofs like those hard rubber floors made from recycled industrial conveyor belts used today. Bet it would cost a fortune today and probably wasn't cheap back then either which may explain why they never caught on.

A simple solution to sieve your gravel after the purchase. Build a wooden frame, put at an angle and put legs to lift up one edge. Cover bottom of frame with metal wire fencing, called fencer wire on the Home Depot website. Choose your opening size to sieve out the stone you don't want, and either use bucket loader to toss gravel through, or use shovel. My father and I used it frequently on household gardens where rock and gravel was over abundant. Saves money on material as you can reuse the unit over and over again. The wire can outlast the frame, and the frame can be built with scrap 2x4 or 2x6, or whatever you have onsite. Edit - I thought I subbed. No wonder I couldn't see your vids unless they were recommended. Subbed now.

Great video, as always! I just hope you removed the green grass (from the ground where you had dumped the gravel load) which was mixed in with the gravel of the chicken winter house before pouring the concrete slab. When moisture reaches the grass, it will grow and is not very friendly with the concrete on top (I read that some can find little cracks in the concrete and spread through there and eventually make the cracks bigger or even crush the concrete!). But I guess that will be a long term effect and by that time you might have to replace the flooring anyways. Great work though, you are a man of action!

Wouldn’t a concrete floor which is covered with sawdust making it a compost barn which could be cleaned out using your tractor a few times during the winter, which would then have a new layer of sawdust applied several times during the winter period, the resulting waste could then be composted outside and spread on your fields in the spring time. The compost bed would be a warm resting place for your animals and not be wet and soggy from the sub base soils, just a thought.

I loved watching this. Thank you.

I love watching your videos.

We use crushed concrete it actually packs almost as hard as solid concrete it works quite well although I'm not sure if it would be available in your area

I love you and your family, l enjoyed your story about the farm, in your SPARE time. You could be a story teller for books and other things people read, , You can say one day ( l have run my course and enjoyed every minute of it )

Thank you for sharing.

Great video Pete!

you deserve a reality show in the biggest network cable

*YOU HAVE UTTERED THE MAGIC WORDS :* Farm work is repetitive (boring).....but a challenge to always look for improvement keeps one occupied (challenged)!!!

very interesting projects Pete...

Good video again. Well done . Just a little thinking material. In Ireland sometimes we use peat as bedding material. At lasts forever and when you clean it out ,put it to the side and let the dungs decompose.you can use it again and again and again. You need to have a couple of different piles so your not bringing harmful bacteria into the shed. But if your cleaning it out 3 times a year that should be manageable( I think it was Joel who said harmful bacteria take 6 weeks to colonize a shed and stock should be rotated after that period) Everybody who uses peat here prefers it to straw or wood chips. Any updates on 'just a few acres' merchandise? 😊

Omg!!!! I would love one of those rocks!!!! 🪨

I just did something similar with one of my goat sheds. Great job by the way!

Nice block of instruction! Thank you! My question is: if the surface is as hard as you indicated with your foot, what's going to keep the cattle from slipping on this surface similar to a concrete surface? Concrete is very expensive. However, you made great points about gravel. Concrete that's grooved would be less slippery but more difficult to clean.

Nice job Pete! Keep up the good work sir

On the four occasions when I was not driving a tractor or caterpillar, there were fish to harvest (a painful experience), flagging for a crop duster, moving irrigation pipes and stirring chickens. Chickens, it seems are afraid of everything and will pile into a corner. If not stirred, the ones on the bottom will suffocate. Acting like a bulldozer, you shuffle your feet and scoop the chickens into the air. Ten thousand chickens needing to be vaccinated for Newcastle’s disease.

I love your show!

Thanks

All your videos are great 👍 as I know nothing about the complexity of farming.

a handyman jack works good for pulling posts if you can not get the tractor close to them

Hi Pete how are you and family Hope all is well x

Watching here from, Maine

might be too lare now,but did you lay plastic under your concrete?it helps keep moisture from wicking up through cement,makes for less condensation in the building.

i love how polite the driver was on the second load. this is always nice when the driver can prevent a loud bang next to your ears

You all work so hard xx

Layers! Opinions and bank rock Has LAYERS

there is permeable concrete now then again you can buy a lot of gravel for the cost of concrete

You may evaluate the chicken house expansion, while you are laying the concrete...

As always, great video Pete! 👍👍👍👍👍👍

what a team❤

Curious if you thought about using wood chips? That’s what we use for our pigs and goats. I like it because it Doesn’t smell. The carbon offsets the manure load and creates compost at the same time. We also can get wood chips for free from local tree services dumped in the driveway.

😂🤣😂🤣😂 "a wife with a strong back. " I need to do that to my chicken 🐔 coop, unfortunately I'm single 😩.

Thanks for the informative video Pete

I really enjoyed this video. You’re a wizard on that tractor!

I love this channel, I watch every one right when it comes out. I wonder if you could get Joel Salatin to make a visit to your operation?

Good job

so thats where all the "old tractors" went ? they went back east, dont find them old work horses around here much if any more, just the newer ones,, never thought about gravel and concrete floor for the hens, always used 1/4" to 1/8" wire for the floors and up the walls 4 feet then covered the floors with the sawdust from sawmills once in spring then fall and winter same with the dirt floors in the horse and cow barns,,, great video

Pete, new to your channel and new subscriber. Great content and great commentary. Glad to be onboard.

Super impressed on how hard your wife works too. Saw your son riding bike... dose he not enjoy the farm work? I enjoy your stories so much, just thinking that he may not have as many stories... forgive me if I missed an episode that you may have stated why your children not on camera. Just curious.

cement first for those mice then layer of compacted sand for the chicken to scratch to ! what you think?

That sheet plastic would make a good vapor barrier under the concrete.

Cheers