What was the worst job(s) you had on the farm?

[Rick]

Not sure were this topic should go so if Mods have a better idea that would be fine with me.......

I had two.  First one was "bucking hay" meaning we had to lift an 80 pound bail onto an 18 wheel flatbed trailer and truck.  I hated it because we had no lift just pure muscle but the worst was the darn snakes.  It was high desert country in Washington State and the fields were just below the Rattlesnake Mnts. hence those damn rattlers would come down early morning to get under the bail that sat on small shallow ditches for irragation.  One learn to use a hay hook and first turn the bail on it's side toward you so the bail was between you and the snake.....but sometimes a snake was bailed right into the bail and dead but when you lifted the bail the snake brushed against your leg....pooed my pants more then a few times......

Second worst job was fence mending. Had to replace old barb wire with new....never failed that the wire would roll or come loose while trying to tighten it up and wrap around an arm....cut the dickens out of us.....hated that job always seem to be over 35 c on those days.....

These two job encouraged me to stay at Uni for 8 years.....

[tractorbob]

mucking out with a hand fork , used to hate that job  .. changing the liners in the milking palour ..got to be done though

[Simon]

Drenching sheep in the rain... hated that.... we used to run them through the race, treat with a blow fly pour on, through an in-line Formulin foot bath, and we'd drench them as the stood in it... hanging upside down over the rails trying to drench them was ok, but the fumes from the formaldehyde were like being CS gassed [i imagine  ] And then when a couple wouldn't run up and I had to get in the race behind to drive them out, they'd scrat and scrabble and kick formulin & sh** into my face...

We didn't run many sheep, only a few hundred, so we did them all in one hit.... We don't have sheep anymore   

[robbo]

Picking Brussel Sprouts by hand in the middle of winter, bent over all day, freezing cold with water creeping in through every gap in your clothing. Hands and feet like ice and unable to feel anything except for the chilblains on my feet and my hands that were chapped up to my wrists.

It was as good a reason as I could think of to give up farming, thankfully I was then given the job of carting the bags back to the farm and I got to sit on a tractor  and warm up a bit.

[jdc]

As above - most outdoor jobs in winter. Lifting and feeding turnips (swedes) by hand then forking them out the trailer to sheep on the grass.

Or moving electric sheep nets on swedes when wellies stick in the mud and the hoggs are so ravenous they get tangled up trying to get to fresh feed and the net is catching on the swedes, and it's snowing.

.... We don't have sheep anymore   

Strangely, neither do I. 

[Simon]

Strangely, neither do I. 

It's like and epiphany when the last one leaves the farm!  :laugh:

[1/32 farmer]

loading up chicken poo luckly i dint have to go in the sheds just load out side

o how i wished for air con

[BC]

Stone picking by hand

[Tellarian]

De beaking battery layers in the 70's - that and mucking out the sheds by hand,  this before the modern welfare ones.....

[tractorbob]

yes ,any sheep work , i still shear 4500-5000 every year,hard job on your own

[Lady Ferguson]

Cleaning up sheep with fly strike :'(

[Jdeere6910]

Any thing to do with sheep or dehorning calves.

[Fendt Fahrer]

castrating piglets......fixing stable cleaner on top of the chute at -40 and strong wind.....

[archtech]

Picking spuds on a cold wet November mornings.

[Gav836]

Pulling weed beet has to rank pretty high on the list for me as does levelling off the corn in storage bins in mid summer inside a oven like barn.

One other hated job is wrestling the webs back onto the potato harvester and de-stoner, the latter being the worst

[walsh35]

dehorning calves oh the smell always made me sick

[catkom3]

Cutting down thistle's and nettle's with a scythe  :'( :'(

Regards

Joe.

[Deere-est]

I love dehorning!!

For me, the annual grain dryer clean - inside an Alvin Blanch batch drier 

[Gav836]

De-horning is fun isn't it Tris, even if it does take 3 of us to do ours, one to push them in the crush, one to dehorn and one to sit on the neck trap, the joys of having limousin/limousin cross calves ;D

[FordTractorCrazy]

De-horning is fun isn't it Tris, even if it does take 3 of us to do ours, one to push them in the crush, one to dehorn and one to sit on the neck trap, the joys of having limousin/limousin cross calves ;D

somehow i am glad we have belgian blues now..    but cant really understand what the fuss is all about. We dehorn them when they are between 3-9 weeks old and still getting milk. We just sedate them, and burn the horns out with a hot iron thingy, violet spray the wound and wait a few hours until the sedation has stopped working. It is always fun to see them go drowsy and one by one topple over 

Worst job definately has to do with sheep. As more on here, we dont have sheep anymore, they are so much work. Shearing, manicuring them  , getting the sh*t out of the barns by wheelbarrow . But worst of all is getting the worms(meads?) out of the sheep when you were to late due to weather/rain for the fly protection bathing which the bottles always say should be repeated every 6 weeks, but experience tells me, better to repeat at 5 weeks precise..

[Deere-est]

 

somehow i am glad we have belgian blues now..    but cant really understand what the fuss is all about. We dehorn them when they are between 3-9 weeks old and still getting milk. We just sedate them, and burn the horns out with a hot iron thingy, violet spray the wound and wait a few hours until the sedation has stopped working. It is always fun to see them go drowsy and one by one topple over 

Worst job definately has to do with sheep. As more on here, we dont have sheep anymore, they are so much work. Shearing, manicuring them  , getting the sh*t out of the barns by wheelbarrow . But worst of all is getting the worms(meads?) out of the sheep when you were to late due to weather/rain for the fly protection bathing which the bottles always say should be repeated every 6 weeks, but experience tells me, better to repeat at 5 weeks precise..

Exactly, I used to do it this way on my own.  My friend used to wait untill they were 300kgs and do it with a wire  .. ..  Untill I convinced him to do it the easy way 

[masseyjack590]

either shoveling in stupid flat floored bins to get the last ton or so out or dehorning calves i hate the smell of burning horn 

[turbo22]

Agree on the corn bins, we`ve 32 of them

[Tractorman810]

used to hate cleaning out the silos once we had sold any excess we had, especially the big perma store, luckily it was something i only did maybe 3 times as most years i was back to school by the time we sold it

always felt so claustrophobic and hot ,spots for light and that small opened hatch at the top above you ,weird as i work in stuff a lot smaller and have never felt that feeling any time

[Manor Farm]

calves pens with a pick