We needed a more reliable way to thaw and heat colostrum, so I took a 15-gallon plastic barrel and cut it to the correct height so the heating element wouldn’t touch the bottom
On our silage bunkers, we bolt 2-foot pieces of 1” by 4” boards using concrete anchors every 12 feet to hold down the vapor barrier plastic. This way, the wind can’t get a hold of it,...
It was confusing figuring out which valves needed to be turned if we wanted to shut off the water to a certain part of our dairy barn. We took blank ear tags and wrote on them which part of the barn t
When putting up alfalfa and stacking it into our hay shed, I always like to know which cut the bales are from. I spray paint the whole face where the first cut ends and now I know when to change the r
In the cold weather, I wanted to plug in my pickup truck’s block heater, but I didn’t want a plug-in hanging out of the hood, so I made a bracket to screw the plug-in onto the front bumper....
I took a used container that originally held ice melting salt and now use it in our shop to put down Floor-Dry. The slotted top works very well for spreading this product. Shaun Coyne, New York
To find small leaks in tires, make a mixture of water and liquid soap. Put the mixture in a squirt bottle and spray it all over the tire. The air leaking out will create bubbles with the soapy mixture
I always had a mess with my drills lying around, so I made this metal holder out of a 1/8 inch plate. It is strong, and now everything is cleaned up. Ken Wipf, South Dakota
This classic hint is super easy and inexpensive. Cut a gallon jug to make a scoop that can be used for grain, lime, or anything else.Melanie Sinan, Pennslyvania
When baling a heavy windrow, sometimes hay would get caught on the draw pin, which eventually created a slug that the baler didn’t appreciate. To keep hay from getting caught on the pin, we cut down
The stickers our milk haulers use to label their sample bottles were getting wet just sitting in our milk house. I used a recycled sour cream container and slit a hole in the side so that the paper ca
I installed a job site 12 volt radio inside our skid steer. This is much cheaper than an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) radio and only took 20 minutes to hook up. I wired it into the fuse panel
If you have any barn doors that don’t stay closed, here is one solution. I took two eye bolts and attached one to the door and one to the trim of the door
After birth, our calves are moved to individual pens with heat lamps. With four pens next to each other, it was a struggle to determine which cord went with the heat lamp for each pen
I didn’t have an adequate place to keep my syringes, so I took some 1 3/4-inch pipes and fastened them to the wall by the sink. As soon as I’m done using a syringe, I clean it and hang it up