Cattle into hayfield

Saturday evening I put the bloat blocks out for the cattle.  Tuesday noon I let them into the hayfield with the alfalfa grass - hence the need for bloat blocks.

I waited until the cattle were in the pasture near the gate.  I want the cattle to know I opened the gate and have given them permission to enter a new area.  Will they learn this lesson... who knows!

Initially most of the cattle stood around looking at me.  Others pretended to not be paying attention and were grazing.  But when the first of the cattle decided it would be okay to go through the gate into the hayfield, the grazers quickly stopped grazing and came over and through the gate.

The two skunk back heifers were at the bloats blocks so I let them be.  My plan was to close the gate after all the cattle entered the hayfield in order to give the pasture a rest.   Later I found the two heifers still near the bloat blocks and puzzled on how to join their comrades on the other side of the fence in the hayfield.  So I had to herd them through the gate.

I found the fence line on the south side with the neighbor had some posts missing the staples holding the barb wire.  The last few years horses were pastured in the neighbor's field and they liked to reach across the fence into my pasture.  So I pounded new staples into the posts.

The cattle split into two herds.  One was the bold bigger and aggressive cattle.  They did what cattle normally do when in a new field: go walk the field's perimeter fence and check out the boundaries and anything else of interest.  The other cattle were content to hang around in the general area of the gate and graze.  The two herds didn't merge back into a single herd until that night.

Here is the adventurous herd.   Lots of grass for them to eat.

Even with all that grass I found one steer trying to eat grass on the other side of the NW gate. This gate was strands of barb wire.  This steer would get its head under the bottom wire and push.  To prevent the gate from breaking I had him move away.  Back again he put his head under the gate.  After chasing it away the second time the rest of the cattle came over to see what the deal was and they all wanted to check out the gate.  Eventually they lost interest and moved on.

Another concern was the neighbor's cattle across the road.  When the herd was two, the adventurous group was fascinated with the cattle across the road and hung around my fence across from the other cattle. Several good things happened.  First, the neighbor's cattle appeared to ignore my cattle.  Second, my old fence worked at keeping my cattle in my field.  By morning the novelty wore off and my cattle no longer hang around there by that fence.