Cattle through multiple fences

Yesterday was the last of a large hay bale.  The cattle usually finish the bale before noon.  Then near sunset I will take some hay from the heifer's large hay bale and put it in the wooden feeder in the main corral.  Then let the cows into the corral to eat this hay.  Then keep them in the corral overnight.  Then the next morning put a new large hay bale out in the north pasture.

Yesterday was busy inside the house most of all day.  Clean my woodstove.  Then talked on Skype with my friends in Germany.  I hadn't talked with them for a year so our talk was 3 hours long.  Then I had to talk with insurance agents to help my brother.  His house insurance company was canceling old insurance policies in that state that were in one of their "books" as they called it, and his was one of the insurance policies being canceled.

I finally got outside near sunset to give the cows some hay.  I discovered 2 cows and the bull were in the north pasture.  One cow in the middle pasture.  4 cows in the hayfield.  6 cows in the south pasture.  The cows in the hayfield and south pasture were all the way over near the far fence. 

To get to the other pastures the cows went through and/or over fences.  They went through the 5 strands of barb wire to go from the north to the middle pasture.   Then at the spot where the one cow had gone over the fence to the hayfield weeks ago, at least one did.  Then at the spot where the one cow had gone through the fence to the south pasture weeks ago, the 6 cows did it again breaking the 5 barb wire strands.   Near this spot in the middle pasture one or more of the four cows went over the fence into the hayfield.   I have another large hay bale in the middle pasture as a backup.  None of the cows went there.  They all headed south and to the other pastures.

What is going on?!

I got all the cows from the pastures and into the corral.   I also noticed that the top board in the corral fence between the north pasture and the corral with the heifers was broken.  The lower boards were fine.  The top boards are only there so the cattle don't get the idea of trying to jump over the remaining boards.  

This morning I put out a new large hay bale in the north pasture.  When I opened the corral gate to let the cows and bull out of the corral, they just stood there looking.  Always before they immediately started walking out to go to the hay bale.  I walked to lead them out.  They just stood there. I then got in the tractor and backed up towards the hay bale.  After a bit the cattle walked out and to the hay bale.

I then parked the tractor and got the tools to fix all the broken fence locations.  Shortly after I got to the first spot, the north/middle location, the cattle all walked back to stand outside the corral near the open gate and near the heifers.  Usually when I let the cows out of the corral the heifers will call out for them as the heifers want to join them.  The cows ignore the heifers.  I don't think they cows walked back today because the heifers were calling.   I let them be.  After a while the cows all walked back to the hay bale to eat.  A short time later all but one or two walked back to the corral.

What is going on?  There is nothing out there other than the hay bale.   After a while they all walked back to the hay bale.  This time they all remained there eating hay while I fixed all the rest of the broken or damaged fences.

When there is a large hay bale in the pastures I usually close the gate to the corral. When not eating the cattle will lay under the trees close to the hay bale.   This time I left the corral gate open.  This evening at sunset I checked on the cattle.  All the cows were in the corral.  Ok.  If it makes you feel safe, fine.

Something must have chased the cows that they would go through the fences, and the next day they were leery of going out there again.  Something overnight or during the day?  I didn't get a chance today to go and walk around looking for other tracks. Weeks ago when one cow would jump a fence I walked around the next day.  I did see a few dog or coyote tracks.  Or wolf tracks?  But not many tracks.  Donna says I should get a trail camera to try to see what is going on.   Maybe.   I'll see how the cattle are tomorrow.

North / middle fence

Middle pasture and hayfield fence close to the north pasture fence.  When I was moving snow for the hay feeders I also moved some snow to the fence so the cows wouldn't try to jump over the fence after doing it weeks ago.  The snow didn't stop them.

Middle pasture and hayfield fence at the spot closer to the south fence.

South pasture fence

Corral fence.  The board is too high to try to jump over. What broke the board?

One of the cattle's earlier walks back to stand outside the corral.

Tractor

Wednesday I got my tractor back from the John Deere dealership.  Before Thanksgiving my tractor started to act up.  The tractor is a stick shift.

The difference is that the stick shifts are different gears for different speeds.  But it is not for forward or backwards. There is no reverse on the stick shifts.  Forward, Reverse and Neutral is controlled by a lever on the steering column.  You can also see a "N" on the console display.  When the lever is in the forward position a "F" appears on the console. And "R" for reverse.

The tractor has a clutch pedal, but one doesn't need to use it to go forward or backwards. All one needs to do is to move the lever.  My problem was that after 10 seconds the tractor would automatically go to Neutral mode and the tractor would stop moving even though the control lever did not move.  A flashing "N" would then replace a "F" or "R" on the console.  One would have to move the lever back to the neutral position to reset it.  Then one could move the lever back to forward to backward.  After 10 seconds, the same thing happens.   Kind of hard to move the tractor when this happens.   And hard, and time consuming, to put a large hay bale out for the cattle.

Initially after numerous attempts the control lever would work and keep the tractor moving.  Then when one has to shift to move the other direction, the same problem would happen again.

The tractor is so new it is still under warranty.   I called the John Deere dealership.  Of-and-on when the repairman could come out to check the tractor.  Toss the Thanksgiving holiday in and Jack the repairman didn't make it out until December.  He spent hours working on the tractor.  He had a laptop to connect into the tractor as things are more electronic now-a-days, especially the control lever.   Maybe a connection was acting odd.  Looking at the connection it looked fine, but he said he would order a new connection to replace the one the tractor had in case the connection was the problem, and then come out to install it.

In the meantime, after he had checked the tractor out, now the tractor control lever consistently would go to neutral.   Never would it start working non-stop.  Moving bales got slower.  Then I realized that if I didn't let the clutch pedal out all the way, the problem wouldn't happen.  If I let the clutch pedal out all the way the problem happened.  I didn't have to use the clutch pedal to move the tractor, but I grew up driving stick shift and always press the clutch pedal when shifting gears.   Riding the clutch pedal is not good for the vehicle.  Fortunately I didn't have to drive that much when moving a bale.

Weeks passed.  I called the John Deere dealership.  Now Christmas and New Years holidays got in the way.  Finally earlier in January Jack came out to work on the tractor.  He had the new connection.   Opps.  It didn't match the connection the laptop complained about.  Finding the right connection is difficult as there are multiple connections.  They are located under the cab of the tractor.  To find them one lays under the tractor, or looks and reaches from the back of the tractor and under the cab.

He also downloaded a software update to the tractor in case that was a problem.  Nope.  He found a connection that matched the new one and replaced it.  Nope.  That didn't fix the tractor.  Each time he came out he spent three to four hours working on the tractor.

No fixes meant the tractor had to go into the shop.  Then I had to work around that.  I need to put out a new bale every three days.  I worked it out that I put a bale in the middle pasture and a bale in the north pasture.  That would give me six days.  I had to work it out that the six days would be Monday to Saturday as I imagined it would take more than a day to fix the tractor and I didn't want the six days to be over a weekend as they don't work, or get parts delivered on Saturday or Sunday. 

So this Monday was the start.   They had to come get the tractor and haul it to the dealership which is located on the opposite end of town.   The delivery guy told me when he picked up the tractor that he already had another delivery to the Seattle area on Friday, so Thursday would be the day of  return delivery.  I hoped they could get the tractor fixed by Thursday. 

Finally things went right.  I went for a bicycle ride late Wednesday afternoon and when I got home there was my tractor.  Jack was able to find the right bad connection, replaced it, and the tractor is now fixed.  Finally.  And this was on a new tractor with less than 100 hours of use.

Now that the tractor is working I spent some time clearing snow in the pasture before giving the cattle a new large hay bale today.  I don't like setting a hay bale on the snow.  Prior I used a shovel to clear a spot for the hay bale.  Using the tractor I cleared a larger area that is good for three or four hay bale placements as I like to move the hay bales each time.  This spreads the manure placement and reduces the hoofs from messing up the ground when the ground is not frozen.

You can see Fritz around the hay feeder.  He is the smaller one in the middle of the photo.

Another cow through a fence

What is going on with my cows?   Several days ago no cows through or over a fence.  So I thought I was done with this behavior.  Today I found a cow in the south pasture.  A different cow than the previous one.  And a different pasture.

This was a bigger cow so it didn't make it over the fence.  And this fence doesn't have an additional wire fence.  So the top three barb wires were either broken or pushed down by the cow as it went over and through the fence, and one metal fence post pushed to lean.  I had partially straightened the fence and post when I took the photo.

The cow was standing near where it had gone through the fence.  I opened the south pasture gate so the cow could go and join the rest of the cows.  The rest of the cattle were in the NE part of the middle pasture by the gate to the north pasture.  They weren't near the hay bale I had placed in the middle pasture on Sunday.

Before dark I fixed the fence and tightened and reattached the barb wires to the fence posts.  By the time I was done it was too dark to go walking about to see if I could see other tracks in the snow.  Tracks other than one made by cows.  I'm starting to think something is chasing these cows through and over the fences.  A dog?  A coyote?  Something else.  Maybe even Bigfoot as Donna is fond of Bigfoot.

Cow on and over a fence again

What is up with this cow?  The end of December I posted about a cow that jumped on and over a fence into the hayfield.   Days later she did it again.  The second time she did it at the fence section next to the one she jumped over before.  Also that day another cow broke a fence wire and got into the north pasture.  By the time I went out there everyone was near one another in three fields.  I got them all into the corral and gave them some hay.  I fixed all the fences.

Today I found the one cow back in the hayfield.  She went over the fence section she last went over even though when I repaired the fence I made sure it was high.  A metal t-post was bent, two strands of barb wire were broken, and the rest of the fence was a little bent.  This time I let the cows in the middle pasture go first to the corral for more hay.  Then I opened the hayfield gate to let that cow join the other cows in the corral.  That cow just stayed in the hayfield and followed the other cows along the fence toward the corral.  I called and called for this cow.  Finally she came over to the gate where I was standing and holding it open.  As she started to step through the gate area her front foot slipped slightly in the snow and she quickly turned around and ran back into the hayfield.  What?  Knock it off and come through the gate.  She stood and stood and stood and watched me and the gate area.  Then looked over to the cows in the corral.

Okay.  I'm not wasting any more time.  I left the gate open and went off to dump my fireplace ash out in the pasture.  I then shoveled some snow to clear an area where I will put a new hay bale tomorrow for the cattle.  A few days ago we had about 5 inches of snow, and last night maybe another inch of snow.

Then I went back to the hayfield gate.  That cow was still standing out in the hayfield.  What is wrong with you? Go through the gate and join the other cows in the corral.  So I had to go out into the hayfield and through the snow and herd the cow to the open gate.   The first time she turned and ran away from the gate as she got close to it.  Again I went out, and after some herding around and around, the cow finally went through the gate and then to the corral.  By the time she got to the corral a lot of the hay had been eaten by the other cows who had been there a while by now.

Tomorrow I will have to repair the fence. I don't know why this cow is making such an effort to get over this fence.   The hayfield is covered in snow and there is nothing there for this cow to eat.

Gate down

Yesterday I saw something odd out on the hayfield / south pasture fence.  The area around the gate looked odd.  I got out my binoculars and saw that half of the gate was down.  I thought I had installed the gates so this wouldn't happen.  Nothing like this happened over the years.

I have lag bolts up and down.  So the gate wasn't lifted off the bolts.  I guess the hinge on the top part of the gate must have slipped down.  How?  Who Knows?  No cattle are in the south pasture.

I put the gate back on the bolts and readjusted and tightened the hinge.  The gate should stay in place.

2024's bicycle miles

I rode 6540 miles in 2024.  My goal was 6000 miles.  Last year the milage total was only 5770 miles.  Since Na Nina was predicted for this Winter, and that usually means colder and snowier for us in the NW U.S., I tried to make the 6000 mile mark earlier than usual as I didn't want to ride many miles if it was cold and snowy.   Been there, done that for cold snowy bicycle riding; and I'm getting older.

I made 6055 miles by the end of November.  Goal accomplished.   Since La Nina now became somewhat late and milder than predicted, we have been about average to a touch above average for moisture and temperatures.  Cold enough I couldn't do much ranch work outside but decent enough to keep riding my bicycle.  That is why the yearly total was 6540 miles.