Fencing old

Saturday morning I moved the cattle from the south pasture to the middle one. I counted and found all twenty cattle had survived their visit to the island the previous night. I didn't have to worry after all.

I had left the gate open to the middle pasture but only five heifers were in it and at the salt block. The other fifteen were moving in their clockwise routine through the south pasture and were moving away from the gate.

I thought if I went out in the middle pasture and spent time filling in the hole from a burnt out tree trunk the cattle would come over to see what I was doing. The five did; the rest didn't as they must not have seen me.

When I went into the south pasture the fifteen came to me and followed me towards the gate. That is until they noticed the five in the middle pasture who were not near the gate. The fifteen rushed over to the fence to join the five. As the five were eating and working their way towards the river and away from the gate so did the fifteen who were still in the south pasture.

*sigh*

I ended up herding the fifteen towards the gate. The cattle weren't used to me herding them and were confused by my actions but eventually I got them to and through the gate and into the middle pasture. The cattle were sure worked up for a while by my herding them.

I then noticed a few leaning posts in the south/middle pastures' fence. It turned out that one or more of the cattle must have earlier gone through the fence and not the open gate.

Of the three strand barb wire fence the middle strand was off for a section, a metal fence post was bent over and three surrounding old wooden posts were broken. The barb wire never broke - the fence posts did.

*sigh*

Why those cattle didn't use the open gate is a mystery. I spent the rest of the morning fixing the fence. I also used my fence stretcher and stretched the middle barb wire tight - tighter than before as I was able to remove a patched section where the wire had broken in the past. So, for a fifteen plus section of posts I tightened up the fence.

Eventually the cattle settled down and took their siesta spread out around the pasture near where the tree stump hole was that I was filling in. As I finished filling in the hole the cattle chewed their cud and pretended not to be interested but I caught them looking at me.