These fences were not in as bad condition as the middle pasture fences. And I have no fence along the river as most of the river bank is low to the river in the south pasture. I ended up adding 10 new posts and also added boards to a gate to the hayfield. Tomorrow I will add three more posts to some weak posts.
In a couple of spots barb wire strands were stretched and bent around one another's barbs to make an opening in the south fence. And an unusual number of wire strands were no longer nailed to fence posts. Probably caused by the neighbors who crossed my land without permission to fish in the river until I caught them and put a stop to it.
Some of the western salsify (goat's beard) are opening to seed balls.
I ended up spending a fair amount of time in the south pasture gathering these seed balls into a plastic bag. I also plucked the unopened seed heads I found. There were quite a number. I noticed the deer had been eating a number of them. The cattle will eat them also, but with the number of the weeds that opened to seed balls already, I decided to pluck the ones I found instead of counting on the cattle eating them all before they open.Earlier when I started the fence work the cattle gathered in their favorite siesta spot under a very large pine pine and also near some of the salt blocks. A number of the cattle stood by the gate and looked at me in the south pasture and moo'd at me telling me they wanted to come into the south pasture also.
By the time I had added all the fence posts some of the cattle were again approaching their siesta spot and the gate. I decided to let them into the south pasture and opened the gate. The first few came over, and after a brief hesitation at the gate and tall grass, almost leapt into the south pasture. Usually the cattle slowly mosey through gates when I open them. Most of the following cattle did the same thing when passing through the gate: leapt. Quickly all the cattle were in the south pasture except one of my steers who looked puzzled by what was going on. I moved away from the gate and went to get the salt blocks and wooden holder and this last steer went through the gate to join the others.
The cattle quickly went to business eating the "new" grass. There is still plenty of grass in the middle pasture, but to cattle "new is better".
After moving the salt into the south pasture I removed the three gopher traps I had in that pasture. Two traps were empty but the third trap had a live gopher. This was from a hole I had trapped two other gophers from the past week.
Darn! I didn't have my shovel with me to use for a quick kill. Even with one leg trapped the gopher was very lively. How to kill it? This trap was close to the river so I put the gopher in the river and drowned it. Thankfully it was quick. I do what I have to do, but it doesn't mean I like doing it. No way was I letting the gopher go.
I moved the three traps back to the middle pasture / hayfield fence. The gopher holes I attempted to trap a gopher from were now open again today. The past week the holes with traps were either ignored, else the hole was filled with dirt. Then no activity - so I had moved the traps. Now today a burst of activity with large mounds of new dirt outside of the re-opened holes, and some new holes. *argh!*
I guess the nearby pocket gophers didn't chase the gopher away. I hope the newly set traps will catch the gopher. No way do I want gophers in my hayfield!!Before and after of my gate work. Think it looks more impressive to the cattle now? Ya, I know - a poor man's gate. I should have bought the gates at that auction.
The cattle in the south pasture eating the "new" hay. The grass is a nice length. This should make the cattle happy for a few days.
The salt box before I moved it to the south pasture. This is not the siesta tree, but a smaller tree next to their siesta tree.
No comments:
Post a Comment