OOTAI

huuwi

Unfortunately you live to far away for me to be any help but I am curious as to what made you buy the Red hens.

I bought some to cross with our Thai chickens so I could get both eggs to eat and then sell any extra chickens.

The hens duly produced the eggs and for a while I had no issues selling the extra chickens but now none of the buyers around here want to buy the cross bred chickens they say they can't sell them as they are not "house" chickens and people reckon they don't taste as nice. As much as I try to explain that they free range all day and are only locked up at nighttime it doesn't matter so I have stopped hatching any more chickens. I will process the rest of them over time to eat ourselves.

Anyway I do have a couple of young half cross roosters that are about at the age where they chase the girls that if you were closer you could have for free if you came and collected them.  Good luck and I hope you find a rooster.

tagged

If you have the time just get some soil from the paddies delivered and spread then let the "grass" (weeds) grow and mow the area.  That way the tall grasses get their heads cut off and eventually disappear and the low lying runner type grasses keep growing.

At my house we did a small area with what Americans call "sod" and it eventually died but the yard is now full of flat grass if i water and mow it regularly enough.

of course if you want grass around your pond to stabilise it that is another matter all together and I believe the best for that is "vetiver" (spelling?) grass but I believe that would grow too tall for you to be able to walk easily around your pond but it does have extensive roots which are good for bank stabilisation.

khwaibah

If I understand what you are saying correctly then the stuff your wife is making and selling is avocado blended with cows milk to make a drink.

If that is correct what does it taste like?

Why is it selling so well?  Does it have some sort of beneficial effects(real or supposed)?

I would have never thought to blend it with milk.

I like avocado in a sandwich.

15 minutes ago, douglasspade said:

OOTAI, the setup looks simple enough and if it works for you it is worth me trying it out. Just a question... is that an AC or DC model?

 Its AC. The missus wanted some lights in there for the chickens when they are small so just plugged it in.

I am sure there are DC versions available if you wanted to run it off a 12V battery.

I didn't say before but you may have noticed that we haven't got it dialled right up so the shock is not all that great, I have been zapped a couple of times when I forgot to unplug as I climbed over the fence.  So in your case as the dogs seem to be more wild I would dial it right up to the maximum.

On 12/6/2020 at 10:04 AM, douglasspade said:

Had 12 ducks and 4 chickens savagely killed and eaten by a pack of soi dogs the previous Wednesday.

 

Does anyone have any idea if it these devices actually works as described, and will it also work to deter dogs specifically?

douglasspade

In my opinion the answer to your question is Yes the electric fence will work.

We have some chickens and they were attacked one night and luckily we only lost 2 so the missus went out and bought an electric fence and rigged it up straight away.

About 10 o'clock that night there was an almighty screech followed by another and then yelping as they run off.  They came back a couple more times and the missus said she heard them yelp and they haven't bothered us since.

This is the unit she bought

In these 2 pictures you can see how she rigged it up. The bottom wire is about 10cm above the grund and then about 15cm between the next 2.

Below is our other hen house that I built after the dog attack and I used the chain link wire and haven't had any issues so far.

below is the "raising pens". I have lately taken to letting the chickens free roam if they want to by opening the gate in the morning but I shut it every evening.

I was watching the "Dog Whisper" on TV the other night and he made the comment that there are only 2 things a dog will die for, the chance to mate and food.

So if the dogs attacking your chickens are truly wild they will be hungry and do almost anything to get food.  I don't believe the ones that attacked our chickens were wild so maybe not so hungry.

Good luck.

11 hours ago, baneko said:

I currently have a valid non O based on marriage from Savannakhet. Expires 17 Feb. I managed to get an extension to stay base on marriage earlier than usually permitted muti entry from Chonburi. When I left Thailand I did not get a re-entry stamp. Obviously that Extension is now not valid. If I come back from work early before 17 Feb can I still use the non O based on marriage from Savannaket to enter Thailand?  What an idiot I am.

ubonjoe said

"He does not need a re-entry permit since he has a valid multiple entry non-o visa."

When I read the OP I am not sure what Visa he actually has. Based on what ubonjoe says it must a standard multi entry visa which I always assumed you could use to come and go as often as you liked within the valid time frame of the Visa.

I have a non O based on marriage but it is not a "multi entry" and I need to get a re-entry permit if I leave and want to come back.

However I did one time forget to get a re-entry permit so what I did was re-enter on a 30 visa exempt permit and then went to Immigration office here and applied and was granted a 60 day extension. I then immediately applied for a new Non O based on marriage which was granted and which I have extended each year from then on. Because I had been in and out of Thailand for years and had non O visa's before I always kept 400,000 in my Thai bank account so maturity the money was not a issue.

Just make sure you check the land title because as far as I know if you don't have a full freehold title (Chanote) then you can't dig a hole on the land.

10 hours ago, Zeid said:

 

New holland designed more for cash crops, and hence the modified design on the TT3.5 where you have two options on front axle, to make it more wet field friendly

 

Zeid

I had a look on Google at this model and it says it comes standard as a 2 wheel drive so is the second option to have 4 wheel drive?  If yes did you choose the 4 wheel drive front axle?

Also does it come with a "blade" on the front as it seems most Thai tractors have?  I find the blade a nuisance most of the time and prefer to take it off when working in the paddies. In my opinion it makes the whole tractor lighter and allows you to drive closer to the paddy bank even over it if the bank is not too high.  The drawback is if you managed to get bogged and don't have the blade on you can't use it to lift the front up to put logs under the front wheels.  I have tried to think of a way to make and attachment that uses the blades ram to lift the front but so far unsuccessful.

If you end up like me you will be very happy with your new "toy". I have a TT4.55

21 hours ago, Gahn5 said:

Thanks all.

The family is currently rice harvesting for various farmers with two Kubota DC 70's. While taking the word from them about how many rai they want cut, they're charged a fee per rai.

The difficulty this year has been sodden rais, which makes the going tough (lost 6 hours one day when one got bogged) so slow going in one patch means we lose time getting to another job and upped the fee for the difficulty factor. T

Gahn5

My wife has been contract harvesting for several years now and so I think I now what is charged for the job.

A word of warning on the practice of as you said "upped the fee for the difficulty factor".

About 3 seasons ago the Prayut Govt instead of paying subsidies introduced several measures to assist farmers and 1 of those was to cap harvesting cost at 600B/rai. Part of their reasoning was that fuel prices have dropped.

Anyway if you get a disgruntled customer who you have charged a "difficulty fee" that decides to make a complaint it could get messy.

As for measuring the area cut her operator uses an App on his phone. If anyone is not happy with that then she has a Garmin GPS that they walk around to measure. I asked if it measured in rai but only got a growl as a response (she was busy cooking for the workers) so I didn't press it any further.

11 hours ago, kickstart said:

It was SIL that said 15K ton ,that was if the government  suberized the rice farmers ,they do most years , but with COVID and the fall in the economy this year  it might not happen.

 

I have wondered if a rice farmer kept his crop to say the New Year would he get a better price than ,as we used to say selling it off the back of the combine .

 

Some farmers say sell the crop to dry you will lose money ,with a low bushel weight , sell it at a  higher   moisture and get less per kg, swings and roundabouts .

 

kickstart

Unfortunately government subsidising rice production has caused a few people to believe in the tooth fairy.

It also got a few into trouble, ask a previous female prime minister how it went.

My Missus has quite often kept the rice hoping for a "better" price at a later date, I honestly don't know if it was ever successful or not. I suppose it was when the government paid a subsidy for people to store the rice rather than sell it straight from the paddy which was meant to prevent a glut of rice coming on the market.

I have had discussions with a few people about what "moisture content" actually means and I think it is less painful to hit your head on the brick wall.  Most of the time Thai rice farmers sell their rice straight out of the paddy to get some cash to pay some bills. My Missus does some contract harvesting and she tells me that she will get paid once they (the people whose rice she harvested) sell the rice. They also try and keep some for their own personal consumption throughout the following year and that can amount to quite a lot of rice.

IsaanAussie

Thanks for the reply. 

So as I suspected the only real way to make it pay is to have all your own ingredients produced on your "farm".

Even then there would be additives you would need to buy in and I don't think you could complete with the economies of scale the big producers have.

The expression "rock and a hard place" comes to mind.

On 11/13/2020 at 11:04 AM, IsaanAussie said:

If you are only making small batches at a time then you could do what I did and buy a motorised meat grinder to produce the pellets. You will have to dry the pellets. I bought a table with the grinder and motor and a few different size die plates for around 6,000 baht.

I already had a concrete mixer to mix ingredients. I also had a concrete floor under roof to dry them. I produced about 300 kgs of pellets each batch, taking less then a day.

 

IsaanAussie

Did you think it was financially viable to make them yourself?

If Yes what sort of cost saving did you think you made? 

22 hours ago, kickstart said:

 

In another thread I said they were looking at 15 000 baht/ton for their  crop ,they harvested they crop, and got........9100 baht/ton what the moisture was I do not know, and I am certain they did not know either must have been 35%,hence the low price

I said why did they not wait for a few days ,for the crop to dry out ,they said they would lose their  place in the combine queue and would have to wait for a while ,then the crop would dry out and shed the seeds ,which I think would not happen for a while.

like most rice farmers in this area ,they harvest today and sell the crop tomorrow ,even if they were a dryer I do not think they would use it ,they just think of selling they crop soon as it is combined .

Wife said son-in-law has spent the last 4 days drying  about one ton of rice he is keeping back for next  seed year's, just using a  concrete  pad and a rake to turn it over, steady .

 

 

A couple of years ago I did some tests (very simple ones) on some of our rice because I just wanted to do a bit of a check on the moisture content because the rice mills deducted the moisture when we sold it direct tot hem from the paddy.  I thought that they were taking a bit too much off, anyway I came up with a loss of around 23% in between straight from the paddy and sun dried rice. the rice would have still had some moisture in it so 30% is not unreasonable for the Mills to deduct.

Kickstart as for your comment re 1500B/tonne, I think that would have been wishful thinking on someone's part. The Missus said that the mills were paying between 8B and 9B per kilo this year but that has now gone down to 7B/kg so if your wife's SIL got 9.1B/kg he did OK.

End result is the Missus is paying some of her family to sun dry the rice on nets on the ground and then storing it to either use later or sell later.  The only good thing I have to say is this year seems to be the best crop for quite some time.

I honestly don't know why anyone would dry rice if they intend to sell it straight away, just take straight from the paddy to the mill.

Cashboy

Here's some pictures of one we built. It was put together by a couple of Thai guys that do work for us so can't be too difficult. Originally we bought the generator and put it on a frame and used an "iron buffalo" to drive it. Had to do a bit of experimenting to get the pully sizes right and match with the speed of the driving motor but worked well. We wanted it to use a welder off of when we put together the farm house. The generator is 5KVA.

Later they adapted it to be put on the front of the trailer hitch of the trailer we use to transport a rice harvester so they could use the PTO of the towing tractor and use it to do repairs in the field.

In this picture you can see the PTO connection bottom right

In this one you can see that they have incorporated a pulley on the drive shaft that would allow it to be driven by a stationary motor i.e. "iron buffalo".

If you are interested you could buy this one if we can agree on a price as I now have a portable gas generator. I live in Buriram not far from Nang Rong.

44 minutes ago, douglasspade said:

 

I have found a link to a Thailand site you posted in 2010 http://www.eurotrac.co.th/ Here's a pic on their site, she looks pretty mean with those rice paddy tires on.

 

 

That badge in front of the tractor looked so familiar to me. After some general tractor browsing I have found out that it a Foton Lovo Tractor.

I have no idea about the Foton Lovo name so i can't argue with what you have said and I was going to say that I like the "paddy tyres" and wish I had them on my tractor/s. At least that was until farmerjo pointed out that they wear out pretty quickly. The last few years the paddies here have been pretty dry so those mud tryes really aren't needed right now.  I was thinking about getting dual tyres put on the New Holland but couldn't work out how to get the plough or rotary moved over to go along the edge of the paddies. 

I also thought about trying to make some steel wheels to put on the outside of the rubber tyres which were maybe 3-4 inches smaller in diameter than the rubber tyres so that they only engaged when the wheels actually sunk into the mud a little.  Again the problem is they would push the tractor away from the edge of the paddies.

Just wondering if you had a look at the auction site I mentioned earlier on and what you thought. I have seen hay rakes and balers on there a few times which if you are doing baling or straw or grass they would be handy.

Let us know what you eventually decide to do and good luck in all your endeavours.

2 hours ago, 473geo said:

If he has kept his 'nominated beneficiaries' up to date on his private pension then once you have contacted the provider should fall into place

In my understanding this statement is not entirely correct. When you nominate beneficiaries to your Superannuation fund they are only a guide which may or may not be adhered to by the Fund when deciding where any money should go.

The only way to ensure it goes where you want it to go is to make a "binding death nomination" and this is simple to do and all funds have a form for doing it. The nomination only stays valid for 3 years so you need to keep it up to date. 

On 9/3/2020 at 9:19 PM, douglasspade said:

My apologies for the translation, I guess in every country there is a different way to say something similar in English.

 

"plow and rake"

A rake attached to the rear of the disc tiller to rake the material evenly. It assists with the leveling of our area's clay and silt based material. This give the tractor with rotary tiller a more even work level, it prevents the tractor to run the furrows. I think this step is very overlooked in Thailand, if your land is disc tilled with furrows and windrows remaining, the rotary tiller hides that, but after the first rains you tend to see washed off rice in ow spots and high spots with no rice growing at all.

 

"mulch it after I mist it"

We rotary till after we have 'casted' the rice with a blower machine. This was my first year using the blower. It is more work than just throwing by hand.

 

"machine rental to get rice planted"

I pay over 30000 Baht on tractor rental to get the our rice paddy planted. That is plow, disc tilling (raking) and rotary tilling.

 

"just to get a cover crop on" 

After rice harvest and baling (baling only happens partially), we throw long black bean beans (seeds) on our land and run a disc tiller very shallowly through. Getting a tractor willing to do a few days of difficult (careful and responsible) work for a relative price is a major struggle. We can not seed in just one go, on some areas we disc till 2 times to get rid of the layer straw and muck.

 

"re-establish the soil to support pasture"

After about 40 days we disc till the bean plants in to the ground. Grass seed is thrown by hand immediately after. From April to June my land compared to others looks very good with excess grass cut weekly and baled manually in a tote, or to trade off to family for rice straw bales.

 

Grass seeding need to complete before mid February, else the grass will not grow as it gets too hot and dry, the cattle need at least 5 months of relatively good pasture. The bean cover crop need to happen as soon as we can pull a disc tiller through.

We have done the beans and grass for 2 years now. Honestly we struggle without our own tractor, and I have made some rookie mistakes.

We have reduced fertilizer drastically with absolutely no change in rice tonnage. I believe the cover crop and the grass tilled into the soil is will be improving my soil after in the next 3 years.

Next year we might swap the bean cover crop with Sunn Hemp. If we can get in our land sooner dependent on the shifting monsoon timetable as the hemp needs 50 to 60 days before it can be worked in.

 

I hope this clears things up a little.

 

No need to apologise as it is easy to use words that convey different meanings to different people that's why I sought clarification.

Anyway you used "rake" I would use "harrows". Is the rake rigidly fixed to the rear of the disc tiller/plough?

I had wanted to be able to use a harrow behind the plough but have never been able to work out how to reverse with one on the back of the plough. The harrows I have seen used in Australia are not rigid and are just dragged around behind the plough.

I now understand what you meant by "mulch and mist" as we do the same i.e. spread the seed using a backpack blower and then we rotary till to bury the seed a little. We spread the seed onto the roughly ploughed paddies. I personally would like to disc plough then rotary till before seeding and then rotary till again after seeding. However if hiring someone else to do the work the cost goes up.  I just think the if the paddy is disc ploughed and then left a while so the weeds/grass turned over dies and some re-germinate then these new weeds/grass would be killed by the rotary tiller then once the rice is spread again use the rotary which not buries the seed  but again kills more of the re-germinating weeds/grass. I think it should help reduce the weeds in the rice and the use of weed killer.

The biggest thing I have noticed in recent years is due to the lack of rain the paddies are more likely to be drier than in the past and this allows the weeds to grow. Before when there was standing water in the paddies the weeds were drowned and not so prevalent.

When you said "machine rental to get rice planted" I didn't realise that you were speaking about the whole process I thought you just meant only planting and I wondered what machine you would be renting.

 As for the "cover crop" I would love to do it as I think the soil here needs all the help it can get. We tried growing Mung beans one year and even bought the required attachment to fit to our harvester to harvest the mung beans. However there was very little rain so the crop wasn't great.  We still have several bins of seeds stored but whether they will germinate if we try again to grow them again, I don't know.

As to planting grass to re-establish pasture I think kickstart asked whether you had access to irrigation water as I would think it would be needed. Around here we would require water for anything to grow beyond about November.

Finally I can see why you want to have your own equipment as trying to organise Thai contractors to do that work would be almost impossible and then there is the need to get it done to the standard you want not what they think they can get away with.  As for tractor hire costs I don't believe 300B per rai is unreasonable as it costs about 50B/rai for fuel alone then there is money to pay for any other maintenance, the cost of purchasing the tractor and then wages for the driver. If you ever do buy a tractor don't even worry about the return on investment calculations as you would be turned off, just think about being your own master in terms of when you do the work and how you do the work that is the payback.

I don't know if you have said where you are located but if you don't mind send me a PM and if you're not to far away I would love to come and take a look at your farm.

4 hours ago, douglasspade said:

Not familiar with this tractor brand. Are they still available in TH? Parts and specs?

1 hour ago, kickstart said:

 

What I can find from Google they are made in India?   under licence from Valtra an AGGO brand.

I would be worried about spear parts . 

douglasspade

Regarding the Euro tractor I assume they are still available in TH but not sure.

We bought it from SPT Tractor, they have a dealership on Hwy24 near Non Bun Maak west of Nong Ki.  We also bought the New Holland from them but from their Nang Rong dealership also on Hwy24.

They also run a John Deere dealership just north of Buriram city and that is where I got parts for the Euro last time I needed some. The guy there spoke very good English and ordered the parts from wherever they had them in Bangkok.

My understanding of this brand name is that it  came to Thailand as parts in a container and was rebuilt here and sold as a "used" tractor, it had 4 hours on the clock. I believe this method was/is used to avoid import taxes.

So "Euro" as a name might be a made up one for Thailand.

Also thanks for the detailed reply post#32 to my questions I appreciate it. I will no doubt post again asking more question about what you are doing as it sounds similar to what I wanted to do when I first came here.

Unfortunately I then went to work in Indonesia and things got left to my wife and everything reverted to doing things the "Thai way".

douglasspade

In your original post you said:

kazoo55

If you wanted to strengthen the block wall add some steel between the the 2 courses.

Use some vertical steel rebar and add some horizontal ones and tie these to the vertical ones.

Will cost extra for the steel and a bit more concrete will be required between the blocks around the steel but would make a solid strong wall.

Remember the pressure on the wall from the outside will only matter if the tank is empty, when it is full the outside  pressure will be matched by the inside pressure.

29 minutes ago, DarrenSpencer said:

Ok thats sound very useful info thanks.

So no need to have my UK Embassy involved, as i just found out they dont offer this service any more.

Also, for clarity, it has to be Ministry in Bangkok, there is no local office who can provide this service?

As far as I know it is only able to be done in Bangkok (the certification that is) but when you go there get your wife to apply for the certification as when I did it and they rejected me and my wife had to start from the beginning again and get in the back of the queue. They said I didn't have a valid visa to be able to apply. Not sure why but can't argue if those situations just have to do as you are told.

Once again I emphasise that if you get Isaan lawyers to translate try and get someone to check their translation before you go to Bangkok. The translation has to match exactly what is written on the certificate. Maybe your wife is proficient in written English (mine isn't) and she can check it.

Good luck

DarrenSpencer

I had our marriage certificate (Australia) translated and certified about 4 years ago.

I initially used Isaan Lawyers who are located in Korat, however they made a couple of stupid mistakes with the translation which resulted in my Missus getting someone at the Buriram University to translate it to Thai.

I personally wanted to go back and get Isaan Lawyers to make the corrections but my Missus as usual knew better and it took a whole lot of time to get the second one done. The mistake/s they made were, on the marriage certificate it says "Bridegroom" and I had signed underneath. They instead of writing my name wrote " write your name here".

Once you have the translation you will need to take it to the Ministry of Foreign affairs in Bangkok to have it certified. We did that and had them post the certified document back to us rather than wait in Bangkok for a couple of days.

Once you have the certified copy you will need to go to your local Amphur office and have your marriage registered there. They will then be able to provide you with a TM?? (sorry can't remember the number) which you will need to present to Immigration. I have heard that some Immigration offices like to get the TM?? dated the same day as when you apply for a Visa/Extension.