Hayfield South Pasture fence rebuild

For a few weeks in May I rebuilt the fence between the hayfield and south pasture.  I did this when the cattle were still in the corral and before they were set loose into the pasture.  No more do I have to worry about the cattle breaking into the hayfield from the south pasture, like what happened several times last year.

I replaced the old galvanized gates with standard tube metal gates.  These metal gates were the first gates I installed 15 (?) years ago to replace a barb wire gate that was falling down.  They were the only metal gates I had at the time.

I redid the barb wire.  What was a five strand fence is now 9 strands between the north end and the gate, and 11 strands between the gate and the south end.   The old barb wire was patched in many places.  I removed most of the patches which took extra time.  Below is an example of one of the old patches.

I replaced all the old posts.  The wooden ones pretty much only held the wires apart.  The old metal t-posts were 5 and 1/2 feet long and I replaced them with 6 foot metal t-posts.  Every fourth post is a wooden post, the rest are metal posts.  As you can see a few photos above I added a few more railroad ties and boards around the gates.   North to the gate are 27 posts, for 216 feet.  The gate to the south side is 34 posts for 272 feet.  Add in two 10 foot gates and the extra railroad ties and boards for another 6 feet each.   The total fence length is 520 feet of fence.

The old fence had some field fence attached to help keep the cattle from breaking through.  The new fence of 9 and 11 strands is so narrow and tight the cattle can't get their head through the fence.  I still plan on re-attaching the field fence to this new fence anyway, and adding more field fence I have (to get rid of it sitting around) to make the entire fence have field fence attached to it.   I haven't done it yet as I worked on a few other things first, including another fence rebuild (more about another day).

This evening as I walked along the fence counting the posts, cow #7 (Maria) was near the fence.  She quickly moved away from the fence as I walked by.  She remembers how I shouted at her other years as she was along the fence sticking her head through and pushing against the fence.  She can't do it now so I didn't say anything.  But she remembered.