Jailbreak leads to fence work

When the hay gets down to the stemy stuff in the metal feeder some cattle get verbal and moo their annoyance at eating the stemy stuff.  That was going on a little bit this morning when  got up.  I went to the bathroom and washed my face before going outside to check on the cattle.  By the time I was out of the bathroom the cattle had started to loudly moo up a storm.

When I went outside I found eight cows in the hayfield by the yard fence.  What?!!! 

In the pasture area they have access to there is an old short section of four strand barb wire fence along the hayfield.  An old rotting wooden fence post had been broken off at the ground.  That gave a little more slack to the wire where the cattle could reach a little more of the grass on the other side of the fence.  The top two strands of barb wire broke and the eight cattle jumped over the fence.  The remaining cows and all the calves were in the corral very unhappy the other cattle were out in the tall green grass.

Donna had an appointment shortly and would help me after her appointment.  I shut the yard gate at the road and opened the yard fence to the hayfield.  While the cattle were just outside the gate, the grass was longer in the hayfield.  From past experience I realized that while the cattle were next to the open gate they would instead run out into the far hayfield if I tried to herd them through the open gate.  I needed a second person.  Curtis wasn't home but Calvin said he would help when he finished helping his wife.

Donna decided to squeeze in a few moments before her appointment and came to help.  I tossed a small bale of hay to the cattle in the corral to distract them and it worked.

The eight cows had taken off to the far hayfield when Donna showed up but quickly ran back to the corral fence when we walked out to them.  As I herded them they ran along the fence instead of going through the open gate.  They thought about running around me but then saw Donna behind me.  They turned and ran to where they had earlier jumped the fence.  Seven of the eight cows jumped the broken fence back into the pasture then ran into the corral where the other cows were eating.  The eighth cow - number 7 - didn't go over the broken fence.  She wouldn't go through the open gate.  I opened the small gate to Buddy's part of the corral and she ran through the gate just before Buddy was able to run to the gate.  I slammed the gate shut just before Buddy could reach it - barely.

Once in Buddy's part of the corral Donna handled a gate and I herded the cow to and through it so she could rejoin the other cows at the hay feeder.

Whew!  


In the afternoon I worked on fixing the fence.  Rather than repairing the broken strands of barb wire  I found four 14 ft pieces of board I had earlier rescued from the neighboring business's burn pile.  Using a railroad tie and a fence post I replaced the corner section of broken barb wire fence.  Once the fence was fixed I was able to use the six corral panels that my previous corral panel re-do had freed up and cover the area between my fence fix along the hayfield fence over to the other corral panels.

Now that should keep the cattle in place.   (I hope).


The broken barb wire is between the wooden post on the left and the metal post in the middle.  The broken fence post(s) are the two on the right side.

The fixed fence

Back side of the fixed fence

Here you can see how the cattle had been reaching through the barb wire fence to eat the grass on the other side.

Then it was finally back to my planned work for the day, what little I was able to do before dark.