Cattle work, fence work

Monday was a decent day weather wise.  I got more fence work done but did not complete the fence.  The weather forecast insists we will have a Winter storm on Tuesday so this may be the last I do on fences for the year.  We'll see.

First, time was taken up by cattle work.  In the early afternoon I saw that Mama was in the south pasture by herself. Earlier half of the cattle herd were at the river to drink and Mama must have then crossed into the south pasture. She headed to the fence with the south neighbor and I was concerned she would do something bad.  She wanted to join the rest of the herd who were in the other south neighbor's field south of the hay field.  I tried to herd mama but she didn't want to leave the fence and was getting annoyed with me.  She was near the part of the fence I had rebuilt to have more strands of wire and was higher but I was concerned she would go west to the four strand part of the fence which was lower, and then jump the fence.

Then I got the idea of also opening the gate to the hay field in addition to the gate I had opened to the middle pasture.  Mama watched me, and once I opened the gate and called for her, she came over and trotted through the gate into the hay field where she could go and join the herd (who by now saw me with Mama and were coming back into the hay field from the neighbor's pasture).

Since snow is in the forecast, and the cattle have pretty much eaten most of the grass, using the tractor I carried a large hay bale out to the metal feeder in the north pasture.  I'll open the gate tomorrow morning and let the cattle in eat the bale.  Even though the cattle were at the southern neighbor's pasture, they saw me working around the hay feeder and came over to watch me.

The rest of the afternoon I worked on my corral fence.  The railroad post I put in the previous evening was good so I nailed boards to it.  I got two more railroad ties and put them into the ground at the other end of the opening and then nailed boards to them.

Of the 60 foot opening I now have fenced about half of it and have 30 feet left.  Too bad Tuesday won't be like Monday; I would have gotten the rest of the railroad ties into the ground for posts.

'New' 14 ft gate and the back side of the new fence.

'New' 14 ft gate and the front side of the new fence.

Here are the other two sections I built on Monday.  The left darker section was built last year.   This is, as Tammy had called it before she left, my 'redneck ghetto fence'.  The boards were salvaged from a building business's burn pile.

Monday night's sunset as I worked on the fence.