Thursday, April 11, 2019

Hayfield harrow and 'appaloosa' calf photos

I have started harrowing my hayfield and pasture this year.  It is later than usual due to the late snowy Spring.  I have been harrowing off-and-on the past week working around the rain.  This afternoon was dry and I was able to get more work done.

It took me longer this year to assemble my six harrow sections. That is because several harrow pieces had missing bolts and broken bars from my harrow work of last year. I re-bolted the missing and broken items together to help prevent further breakage.  This all worked fine for harrowing the hayfield.  But when I started harrowing the south pasture today I apparently snagged the harrow on several tree roots and caused two bars to break on one side.  Tomorrow's repair job before further breakage can occur.   The goal is to break up cow manure and unfortunately the cattle leave lots of manure around some of the trees, and those trees have roots near the surface extending outward from the trees.

Because my alfalfa hayfield is still young and the roots are not deep, I didn't extend the harrow spikes down.  I usually always have them down.  One harrow section was rusted and/or stuck and it took lots of effort to retract the spikes.  That section didn't retract 100% and I ended up digging up some dirt with that section.



I had the cattle in the corral today while I put out a new larger hay bale.  When I was done with the hay bale I found that Speckle's little 'appaloosa' calf was in the loading area part of the corral.  I think he must have laid down next to the gate (not the gate in the following photo) and then rolled under before getting back up.  The calf wanted to get out of the loading corral but couldn't figure out how to do so.  I let him out to re-join the other cattle.





Here is a 28 second video of the calf in the loading corral before I let him out to go back to his mother:  https://youtu.be/x5G_OteUjFo

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