Sunday, September 25, 2016

Fruit tree and garden day for cattle

I hadn't planned on letting the cattle into the fruit tree and garden area; I just planned on letting them into the NW corner where the ground clover was thick.  But after I moved the corral panels to block off that corner for the cattle I decided to move the panels to around the two apple trees and also protect the rhubarb and strawberry plants and the buffalo berry shrub in the NW corner.  I then opened the gate for the cattle.

They found the open gate in the early afternoon after their morning siesta.  The first few cows sauntered in and started to eat.  Then the others noticed the first few were in the fruit tree and garden area and they came running across the field to join in.

By evening the cattle had eaten the grass down and left.  I closed the gate.  It appears they behaved.  I did see that they moved the fence from over the strawberry plants and bit part of them off.  But they must not have liked the taste as they left the bitten piece on the ground.  Several times I noticed number 7 pushing against the corral panels around the apple trees.  Since the cattle weren't going after the apple tree leaves - that I noticed - I only chased number 7 away from the corral panels once.  I'll see tomorrow if they snuck in some mischief when I wasn't looking.

The cattle mowed the grass well.  Now I don't have to mow it with a lawn mower before Winter.

Buddy spent the day in the corral.  Before I prepared/protected the fruit tree and garden area I nailed several temporary stout boards on the fence where Buddy broke through yesterday.   In the afternoon when I opened the gate for him he preferred to stay in the corral and eat the grass & weeds there.  Later I decided to keep Buddy in the corral for the rest of the day rather than have him go into the mostly eaten fruit tree and garden area for a few hours and potentially push or break something.

Dan and his son stopped by very briefly this afternoon.  Dan hadn't seen Buddy since last October and he remarked on how much bigger Buddy is.  Dan agrees that Buddy certainly weighs more than 2000 lbs , or 1 ton.



Siesta time in the fruit tree and garden area.

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