Calf jailbreak, and more fence repairs

I woke up to mooing Tuesday morning.  And then I noticed a few calves in the yard along with the cows.  Four calves in fact.  Some mothers, or Haynes, pushed a rail away from one fence post, and the gate out, and some calves figured out how to crawl through the fence.  Big calves, and the littlest calf.

I partially moved the rail and gate close to the post before I took the photo.

I had planned on herding the cattle out of the yard in the afternoon as much of the grass was eaten down.  But in the morning I herded (enticed them using apples) the cows and Haynes and several calves out of the yard and into the NE pasture.  That way I could open the gate to the road so Donna could come and help me sort the calves.  Before then I was able to herd two calves back into the corral.  With Donna's help we quickly got the last two calves back into the corral.  All four calves had to start weaning all over again.

 After the cows and Haynes were out of the yard I took most of the protection back down.  I see the cattle messed with the fencing protecting the caragana trees.  I let it be for now.  I'll fix it later.

I let the calves out of the south corral so they can also eat hay in addition to the grass.

The cows and calves are still mooing.  But they take breaks now and then to rest between the times they moo constantly.

We had some rain this afternoon.  Afterwards I fixed this fence between the hayfield and the middle pasture.  Monday I saw it this way.  The fence is barb wired. Years ago after I had seen Maria the cow stick her head through the barb wires to eat from the hayfield, I added wire fencing to the barb wires so the cattle couldn't get their head through the fence.  Sunday I had seen Haynes stick his head through the fence.  His head went between the top barb wire and the top of the wire fence so he could reach the hayfield.  Well... here is the result.  The post was rotting at ground level only and he broke it off.  Some metal posts are leaning and the fencing is lower.  Haynes didn't get through the fence thankfully.  You can see the hayfield grass is lower where Haynes could reach.

So I kept the cattle out of the middle pasture until I could fix the fence.  I put in a new wooden post.  I straighten the metal posts upright. I also redid the barb wires and wire fence from here to the tree.  On the remaining posts Haynes had pushed the wires down a bit.  Now the wires go up high.  I added small wires connecting the top of the wire fencing to the top barb wire in spots between the posts so the cattle can't slip their heads through that area.  Maybe this will stop this from happening again.

My irrigation guy has a piece of equipment that could lift me high so I could trim my tallest box elder tree that has dead branches near the top.  He was going to come over after work Tuesday.  But a last minute request came in as a friend needed the equipment to unload and move logs for a log house he is building.  That will take a few days.