₦airaland Forum

SELECT AND STRIKER CANBE USEDIN MAIZE FARM.

kudos for starting. Also nice of you for separating them because of blackhead diseases that affects turk, whereas broilers are reservoir.
Turkey feeds are different from broilers feed so that the turkey might grow efficiently.

eezeribe:
I would suggest you chill at that 80,since it's your first time.then watch as the market operates.
By next season,you must have gained more experience and customers,then you can increase your quantity.
God bless our hustles.

PLS,I NEED THE PDF FILES TOO,
THANKS.

manya:
Bauchi. Animal care, 27 weeks, 60% I Can get wheat offal, maize offal, gnc, soya bean cake. Some in Bauchi while others from Gombe and Kano.

u also need fishmeal,bone meal,limestone etc. you need a hammer mill,mixer and weighing machine.

I contacted paga recently and one of their field rep told me that I will need to pay 10k for branding and 10k as working capital and 5k insurance.
She said insurance is optional, are these payment correct.

yes you can all depends on your capacity and what other things you have on ground other than the acre of land.

bigthingz:
Good morning house . pls my 7.5 weeks pullet have salmonella according to the culture conducted on them . we have been treating them for coccidiocis initially for 3weeks BT cudnt see improvement so we had to run culture test. The problem now is we are yet to administer fowl pox to them because of the mortality we are picking as a result of their sickness. Will delaying their fowl pox affect them...or should we go ahead and administer it to them as suggest by a vet. The medication prescribed to us for the selmonella is .....can't remember exactly BT starts wit flo..pls any advice is appreciated

Don't vaccinate sick bird.Treat them first afterwards vaccinate them.

ruggie:
Next Step : Water

My next step was getting a source of water. ( @alakara ... I do understand that ideally working on the layout might be next. However as you can see in this thread, I been working and revising the layout as I go, and as I learn new things.)

One option I have, and one of the main reasons while I decided to use this piece of land for farming, is that the land is located about 250 meters away from the Oshun river at it's closest point. This provided a potential option of actually getting / pumping water from the river to tanks on the farm. (There are others nearby that actually do this already.) However, I decided not to go with this option. My main reason was that since I am not full time on this yet, the pumping equipment would be out there in the river unprotected or I would have to find someone to watch it.

Another option would be the "do nothing option". That is, to just rely on nature. Of course that would mean that planting would be limited to just certain time of the year. The Business Administration side of me ( ... yes I have a Minor in Business Admin, in addition to Computer Science ... ) tells me there is no competitive advantage in that. Now being able to do year-round farming would be an advantage worth striving for.

That led me to the option of a well or borehole. I eventually decide to go with the borehole, as the expectation would be that the borehole would provide a better supply of water, and it would be secure right on the farmland.

Now the hard part... actually getting the borehole dug. After contacting four different borehole drilling businesses, I settled on one of them. (All of the rates they quoted to me were within 10% of each other, so I really could have picked anyone of them.)

Of course, the first thing the borehole people tell you is that a survey needs to be done. Unfortunately, I was unable to be at the farm site the day the Geologist / survey person came to do the survey. So, even though I gave specific instructions to the person I delegated to take the survey person to the site, those instructions were ignored. My instructions were for the location of the hole to be somewhere in the higher quadrant of the piece of land, as there is a gentle slope on the piece of land diagonally across. That any water pumped out would be coming out to higher ground and can easily flow to the low lying areas. Instead the survey marked the hole at one of the lowest points. Of course, the claim was, that was where the instruments found water.

When I was finally able to see the location that was marked a few days later, I was angry enough that I called the borehole people and told them to not bother coming to drill the hole, and that I will just shut down the whole operation or go with the "do nothing" option. Hey, people have been farming without borehole for thousands of years. But, of course they asked me to reconsider, and I did go ahead to schedule the drilling of the bore hole.

Again, another unfortunate coincidence, the day before the drilling was supposed to occur, I fell ill. (Malaria .... everyone believe I got in from the mosquitoes on the farm because of the proximity of the swap areas beside the river.) So, I missed the actual drilling. I was getting calls every 30mins or so from another person I delegated to help me watch over what was going on, and that person did take picture with my tablet... unfortunately, as I mentioned earlier in this thread, I lost all those pictures because of water damage to my tablet and phone afterwards.

Everything about this drilling pretty much mad me angry or annoyed . For starters, the drilling started late, due to the drilling rig having a flat tire. Once the drilling rig and truck got to the site. They decided not to use the gates (remember, there are two gates to which they could have used either, or at worst, they could have pulled out 3 or 4 of the fence poles and chain link fence if they felt it was not wide enough.) Instead they drove their rig right over the chain link fence, destroying/bending the poles and the chain link fence. Unfortunately for them, that decision proved costly as one of the poles and some of the fence they drove over ruptured the hydraulics system for the rig. That proved to be about an additional 3 hour delay.

Once all that was fixed, the drilling started. The Survey said 60 to 80m. They got to 90m, no water. I got a call informing me of this and I just told them to stop. No use in continuing. I am a strong believer in "if you are losing, stop, re-evaluate & re-plan"... I do not mind taking a loss early on. Losses are learning experiences in my book. But of course the drillers want to get paid . But with my fever, headache and arguing over the phone, I lost focus, as the drilling was now at 110m, still no water, and it was now 6:15pm. At this point the head borehole guy/project manager got others involved to ask/beg me to let them continue because the rig was scheduled for somewhere else. I allowed and finally at 132 , they started to get steady water. In the end the hole was 140m. At this point , the extra distance has basically taken up the original money budgeted for the water pump, so now the borehole is sitting there with no pump to pump the water out. (And even worse, because of the distance, a regular low-end pump is no more an option. The pump would need to be a bit more powerful, and remember the hole is on a low lying part of the lot , so the pump has to pump up hill on land as well. )

When I was finally well enough to go to the site, I found out the hole was actually in a completely different location from the original area I wanted, and from the location the survey marked (but not that to far from the survey location).

And to wrap up this section of updates, the extra drilling put on hold my plans for the irrigation system, water tanks and stands, and delayed the planting a bit. But then the day after the drilling , it rained. and at least for the following 3 weeks it rained a little every 2 to 4 days.



[color=#FF0000]Next : Planting[/color]

I like your precision and accuracy.
Farming is both science and art.

Ibadan I know of.

ruggie:
So it is about 3 months in to investment/project/second job/hobby/activity for me.
For any one that is reading this, there are a few things I feel compelled to disclose before providing the updates.

1. My situation would most likely be different from others. To start with, I have a regular day job which takes precedence over this. This means that if I get to a point where I have to make a choice between the day job and this, 99% of the time I will pick my day job.

2. I have been told by many people I have dealt with and people that were observers, that the negative situations that have popped up along the way for me are as a result of item 1 above, and that if I had considered this as essential to my survival, that most likely I would have taken different steps.


With that said, here are some updates....

Step 1 : Security ...
As mentioned earlier in this thread, I am in the software engineering field, and I will try to somewhat of systems analyst approach to solving the problem of this problem. (i.e. cultivating something on the parcel of land.)
Well, when building software, one of the major things to tackle is security. It is usually easier to figure out security up front rather than trying to add security after you started building the software. So with that in mind, I searched for options. The options I came up with were

* Wall - blocks/cement
* Fence - chain link
* Security Guards - when plants are about to produce fruit.
* Tenants - Allow someone to rent out part of the area to raise some animal that would require that person to be there almost everyday.
* Ask or pay other farmers / villagers nearby to help be on the look out.
* Do nothing
* A combination of one or more items listed above.

After taking into consideration cost, effectiveness, time to put into effect/build, reliability,how far away from villages/towns, timeline of crops and what other people nearby are doing, I decided to secure the farm, for now, using a chain link fence.

I do need to mention that 7 out of the 9 people I asked (farmers & non-farmers, but all were observers i.e. I was not doing, nor plan to do any business with then future , said that security around the location was not needed and that it was over-kill to be doing something like that. 3 of them actually suggested that I am signaling to my neighbor farmers and the villagers nearby that I do not trust them, and that that will make my location a target because people will believe that there is more on that piece of land than what they can see.

For the 2 acre piece of land, it took 2 days to complete the fencing , with 2 gates. ( The installers did not reach the location till late morning the first day. I think they could have completed it all in one day, especially with the number of workers they brought the first day.)

I have another thread https://www.nairaland.com/3638961/request-estimate-chain-link-fence where hopefully I will be able to put in the details of the chain link fence. Unfortunately I lost my phone and tablet on the farm due to water damage from an unexpected rainstorm some time afterwards. (This was in the third week of March), so most of my records are lost as I could not revive both devices. But I still have some receipts and other paper that should help to partially re-assembly what I lost.

Dealing with the chain link fence folks was a really annoying experience. The short of it is that it just does not make sense to me trying to sell by the acre (which is a unit for area) instead of the perimeter length of the piece of land. However, I was somewhat glad that they went with my suggestion of hiring some of the villagers near by to help move the materials.

The one immediate benefit I gained with the fence was that about a week after it was installed there were traces of cows coming through the area, and one can see that they went around the fence. Now, my claim here is not that the chain link fence protected the farm, as anyone determined enough could climb over it or attempt to pull it down. My claim here is that any living thing that sees an obstacle on one path, and a clear way on an alternate path, will more likely than not choose the alternate clear way.

I think eventually I will actually put in a block and cement wall around the location, but for now, the choice of a chain link fence satisfies my needs.

[color=#FF0000]Next : Water ...[/color]

Good step in the right direction.
Securing your property is the first step,afterwards is the layout.

acehood907:
bros can I use super starter for the 3 week instead of the mash?

Yea

FirstCounsel:
I just got a soft copy of the book this evening. Tomorrow public holiday I hope to feast on it all day God willing

Pls how can I get the soft copy? Thanks.

You should buy starter mash which you will feed them for 3 weeks, after 3wks you feed them with finisher till you sell them.

For the starter feed assuming you have 200 birds, a bird will eat 987g for 3 wks so, 200 birds will eat 987*200=197400g
197400g= 197.4kg
A bag of starter feed is 25kg, 197.4 /25 = 7.9 which is approximate to 8 bags.


For finisher,
a bird will eat 5397g from the 4th week till the 8th week.
Therefore, 200 birds will consume 5397 * 200 = 1079400g
this will give us 1079.4 kg
1079.4/ 25 = 43.2 bags which is 44 bags

smellingmenses:
Obi was a bank CEO. Don't get it twisted.

How many bank CEO dey stay for the Osborne flats?

Turkey nutritional requirements is different from that of boilers or cockerel , but since there is no commercial feed for turkeys, theres uwhy people are improvising

bigprince2010:
I am in need of cheap Acres of Land for Agricultural
purpose(livestock) needed
for buy in Ibadan,Contact me for further details

I told you to contact me.

Tazdroid:
Hehehe, still waiting for the ID of the woman.... She looks like Onwenu and Ezeks joined together

The woman is Hon Idiat Babalola, a commissioner nominee/ sa to Gov Aregbesola she's from Ede.

contact me through my signature. Thanks

Senator Sheu Sanni had paid his due.

pat077:
what about the cob

firstly, your farm needs to be neat, also you need crow scarce.and if your maize don't stay too long on the hills before its becomes dried to the certain level the birds will starts eating it.

pat077:
OK. But, what can I use to prevent them as a precaution

if it's seeds make sure that the seeds planted are mixed with appropriate chemicals
hybrids seeds are usually mixed.

pat077:
someone advice me against planting maize in the land I got because the place is like a forest, he said wild birds will finish the maize. That's why I want to know if there's anyway I can prevent or minimize birds from causing havoc in the farm.

bros don't let naysayers deceive you go and start your farm.

doncamaral:
Pls can a caterpillar engine be used to power a palm kernel crusher as against the use of electric motor?

Diesel lister engine can power it also.

pat077:
how do one stop or prevent birds from maize farm?

are they eating the planted seeds or what?

Fumbaby:
Good morning Dr gawab., please I need herbs for EDA. thanks

check the thread, the answer is here

lilly400:
pls are you sure or you are making jest of me pls I am a novice here I really need help

yes,change it to charcoal so that cold won't kill them ooooo.

lilly400:
pls I got my day old cockerel yesterday about two is dead now and about 4 is looking very weak and can't even move pls and pls what can I do now I added antibiotics to their water today and pls note I am using candle as the source of heat the room that I put them pls kindly lemme know what is wrong and measures to take to stop them from dieing ASAP thanks IN advance

Candle as source of heat,pls change it to charcoal.
Thanks.

Snow84:
How will they have confidence in a stranger? Is there a way of building customers?

you start and build your confidence.

Gheritage:
WHEN ARE WE TO START THIS FARMING SEASON?

Already started in some places

start a thrift collection business, thank me later.