Cattle and pocket gophers

I put up the protection and Thursday afternoon let Diamond, Maria and her calf into the backyard to eat the grass.  This has taken their mind off breaking into the hayshed.  Until Friday night I had irrigation pipes across the front yard and the NE pasture.  I am on my way back across the hayfield before ending irrigation for the year. (The hayfield is growing nicely again and will provide good pasture for the cattle later this Fall.)

So far they have behaved, other than a couple times I caught Maria rattling the corral panels across the yard.  She claims it was an innocent mistake and that she was not testing the panel barrier.

Protection around my large walnut tree.  There are signs they pushed against the bottom so as to eat what grass they could reach inside.

This morning I caught Maria and Diamond trying to break into the small walnut tree.  They had pushed and pulled against the wire protection.  They had removed a few wire clips holding the wire fencing to the metal posts and started to push in the wire fencing.  I replaced the wire clips and added another metal post.


I am back trapping pocket gophers in the south pasture.  I had put it off as the cattle are there, but I couldn't stand it and wait any longer.  The cattle self rotate between the middle and south pastures and it seems they make sure to visit the south pasture each day.  Often I find the traps or their marker rods bent. Today they pushed the dirt back into the hole and buried one trap.  I left the milk jugs off the marker rods so not to attract the cattle.  They still find the rods and I often spend extra time each day looking for my traps as I often forget where I last set them.

The other day the cattle stepped on one of my traps and broke it even though I had set the trap right against the south fence.  I had an old trap that had the inner trip broken. I was able to combine the two to make one working trap.  And it works. I already caught a pocket gopher with this trap.