I’ve started off the week a day in the hole and the slow postings are a testament to just how much my ass is dragging today. Oh yes, yesterday started off idyllic enough; sitting on my back porch with my two Border Collies listening to the creek babble over the falls in the small valley below. Coffee in hand…..counting the big red and white Hereford’s as they passed slowing across the meadow on the other side of our electric fence……until I realized not all of them were on the other side of the fence!
So off I go to see how it is that had happened and how many had made a break for the greener grass that grows in, what is for them, the forbidden zone.
One lone calf had made it out. It being on this side of the fence was a symptom, not the problem. The problem became apparent when I approached it and it scurried back through the fence to the side she should have been on all along. Then I noticed this about the cows that were still on ‘their side’ of the boundary:
Notice the heifer in the center of the photo. She has her head out of the wire with her neck pressing against the 1st and 2nd strands of the electric fence. I walked up and grabbed the wire: our electric fence was no longer electric.
So I called my son-in-law and got him started this way. While he was wiping the sleep out of his eyes I walked the lower fence-line and found that we had a good number problems with the fence itself….deer (or godzilla) had been running into the wire and knocking the insulators off of the T posts and in several spots drifts of wood had pushed up out of the bottom during a storm and covered the bottom strand. Other areas needed to have the foliage cut back to keep the charger/battery from ‘discharge caused by a thousand small conductors’.
We ended up working until roughly 5:30 yesterday evening; fixing conductors, clearing the fence lines (might as well do them all while we are at it), putting in a new solar charger. All of this was along every foot of fencing on both sides. My ass was dragging when I got back to the cabin.
The phone rings about 6, it’s my son-in-law and our ‘cow guy’ is coming by sometime around 8 to pick up two of the cows that are having problems. He’d like me to get those two cows into our corral (of sorts). Now it would be no problem to get all of the cows into the corral…..simply throw a couple bags of sweet-feed on the back of a 4 wheeler and the cows (trained to the sound of he 4 wheelers) will come from wherever they are for their favorite treat. It’s another thing altogether to get two specific cows (and those two cows only) into the pen. Here is my rough approximation of how we have this set up.
The cows were in both pastures so I opened all of the gates and spread the feed into the trough. Once all of the cows converged, I closed off the chute and the gate that adjoins the electric fence. Now came the chess game: I had to work the cows out of the remaining open gate without letting out the two that we wanted to remain. Where it really got tricky is that the cows that I ‘pushed’ out of the pen didn’t want to stay out.
The darkness didn’t help.
Without making this long story any longer, I did manage to get the two cows put up by the time the ‘cow guy’ arrived, and back to the cabin I go. My border collies were glad to see me; it was a late dinner but they gobbled it up with the certain knowledge that as soon as they finished I’d take them on a walk.
So, ya my ass is dragging today and ya my cell phone takes lousy pictures. On the bright side I was out doing heavy lifting that left me with a feeling of having accomplished something. No NFL and no talking heads on 246 channels (Dish Network) telling me I should be outraged for one reason or another.
Life is good on the farm!
