Getting the cattle ready for going out to grass

In a day or two I will let the cattle out to the grass.  First they have to finish off the bull's large hay bale.

This morning I sprayed on the cow's and bull's backs an ivermectin medicine to help prevent worms, flies and other bugs that can affect cattle.  Donna came over to help me.  I put the cattle into the loading corral, then the loading corral's runway to limit the cattle's movement as they don't like being sprayed and will try to run away from the spray.

I had let the cattle into the loading corral and left the gate open as they made their way over to the loading corral.   While I walked over to open the gate to the bull's hay bale I had Donna go to close the loading corral gate.  Mama saw Donna walk to the gate and knew "trouble" was here.  She ran out of the loading corral and the next I knew she was over by me as I was opening the hay bale gate.  Maria also came out after Mama.  I had to herd both back into the loading corral.  They were really nervous about Donna being here and didn't want to go into the loading corral.  Finally I got them in.

Photos of the cattle before I got these into the runway.

Once they were all sprayed - I skipped the calves - I let them out so they can go over to the bull's hay bale.

Before I sprayed the cattle I noticed the bull had broken one fence rail.  He was reaching outside the corral to eat grass.  So I had to fix and replace the rail before I let the cow's into his part of the corral.  Fortunately the bull didn't decide to squeeze through the opening before I fixed it.

The bull prefers grass over hay.   Here are a few photos of the corral fence where he stuck his head through the fence to eat the grass in the hayfield.  You can see where I had nailed fence wire on the corral fence the bull couldn't eat as much hayfield grass.  I don't mind the bull eating this grass as the area is too close to the fence for me to cut hay.  I just don't want him to break fence boards.

The cows in extended corral also wanted to eat grass in the hayfield and reached through this corral panel.  The photos show the area on each side of the corral panel.  The electric wire was on the other side of this panel until the corner panel when Donna and I ran the wire on the inside of the panels. (I had taken the wire down before I took these photos.)

The corral panels separating the extended corral from the north pasture had electric wire along the panels. I had already taken the wire down where I took the following photo. The electric wire protected the panels from the cows damaging them. Still, the cows and calves learned to lay their heads low and eat grass as far as they could without touching the electric wire.  As you can see they didn't eat the grass as far as they had done on the previous panel photos.

The cows last night tried to open these corral gates. They didn't succeed.

By late afternoon the cattle were fat and happy from the bulls hay.