One of my girls was bad

As a treat the other day I thought I'd let the cattle back into the NE pasture for a day or two to eat the grass down. There wasn't much grass since their last time there this Spring but what grass there was, was young and tender.

The pasture is pretty well protected except for a large tree I wrap in chicken wire only when the cattle are there, and a small pine tree that had out grown its cage fence.

I protect even my small pine trees as the cattle like to nip on them and taste them and often that is the crown on top which sets their growth back a bit.

I re-wrapped the larger tree and built a new fence to protect the smaller tree. In the midst of building the fence the guy who would like to bow hunt on my property came to check the land out for ideas on where to place his tree stand or blind. I went with him to show places and explain where the deer move. By the time I got back to the fence it was dusk. I finished it and that was it.

The cattle were in the NE pasture a little over a day. This afternoon I let them back into the hayfield. Tonight after I finished spraying more weeds I decided to use some of the water still in the cattle's water trough and water a few small pines trees I planted in the NE pasture including the one I had just fenced.

In the dark I noticed the recently fenced tree looked different. I looked closer and discovered the needles were gone. What?! It appeared one of the heifers got her head through the fence and ate the needles. The tree is a Scotch Pine with long needles and apparently it was like candy to one of the heifers that they made the effort to get through the fence to eat the needles.

It was fairly dark so I got a camera and took a photo to see just how much damage was done. It seems as if some needles are still on the tree, and the crown is still there... so maybe - just maybe - there is hope the tree can survive. I'll have to check it out tomorrow morning when there is light. I hope that since the crown itself appears to be intact the tree may continue to grow.

The fence I used was old and had a few loose wires and this heifer figured out which ones were loose and pushed them up and down and then got her head through. The fence did not look like it does now when I installed it.

I am just sick about this. Five years ago I had planted five Scotch pine trees and this was the only one that survived. I babied it along and this year it finally took off and grew and way more doubled in size just this year. And now this! Argh!