Lots of crying

When Dan stopped by Tuesday night to pick up his branding iron I asked him to help me separate the calves into the south part of the corral so I can wean them.  The sorting process ended up being more of me herding the cows and bull out of the south part of the corral and leaving the calves.  It was tricky to herd Buddy the bull out.  He was standing and intently watching and trying to figure out what was going on.  Not a good thing to try to herd him along right then.  What made herding tricky is the cows would go stand by him when I was herding the cows.  Eventually the cows would amble towards the gate which Dan was managing.  Finally Buddy followed the last cow to leave.

Within minutes the calves figured out what had happened and were getting anxious.  I put out a fresh bale of hay in the feeder I built south of the barn to distract them.

The next morning lots of crying and calling.  Some of it was by the mother cows; mainly Momma and one or two other cows.  Beulah and the other cows seemed fine without their calves demanding milk.

So the day was filled with mooing, bellowing, crying and calling. I got to hear it over and over and over as I shoveled snow.  Each one has their own sound.  One calf varied between sounding like an elephant trumpeting or a bull elk calling a female.  He and another calf have piercing cries.

Rose was handling it better than the others.  Momma was more upset than Rose was.  The cattle can stick their heads through an area above the water trough.  When Rose was drinking water Momma put her head through the opening and briefly licked Rose's neck and head.

Last year thoee calves barely made a fuss when separated for weaning.  This year... it's going to be a long few days before they get over calling.

They get interested when I run the water from the pump.

As you can see, and I just found out today, this little steer calf is growing horns.  One can either cut them off, or put bands on them to make them fall off.  Once he is weaned I will try to remove his horns.  Not only can the horns be dangerous, the price one gets is reduced if they have horns.

Here is a video of the calves, then of Momma.  Of course when I took the video they were fairly quiet.  Later when I didn't have the camera the calves all started calling at the same time.

http://youtu.be/_w1_DtnPQO4
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Some snow and cattle

We had a little snow last night with more forecast this week. You can see the recent clouds trying to slip over the mountain tops this morning.

The cattle had been eating in the pasture the past week, but this morning I allowed them back into the corral and the hay.

This is Beulah's calf from last year.  Being a little smaller she got hay on her back from eating at the large bale.

Tarp and ice

A side effect of placing a tarp over the large hay bales is that water collects in the low areas.  Then freezes into blocks of ice.  This makes it harder to get new bales as I need to remove the tarp from the bale before moving it.  For the last bale I moved it was a challenge to get several sections of ice off the tarp as the ice froze to the tarp.

Saturday the temperature got above freezing so I spent a few hours removing more ice blocks.  I had almost 20 ice blocks to remove.  I got all but two removed.   Some areas where the water pooled was shallow and the ice easily removed.  Other areas were quite large and difficult.

After I got the ice off the tarp I removed the chunks from near the bales.  I didn't want them to freeze to the ground preventing me from dragging a bale and pallet to the corral.  Some chunks were so large I had to slide them across the ground as they were too heavy to lift.  I moved the largest blocks near my little pine trees.

The final two pieces of ice.

 
Saturday when I removed the ice from the tarp Daisy was inside the house sleeping.   Sunday morning I went out to take photos of the ice and Daisy was running around outside.  Of course she saw me outside and came over to 'help' me.

Hey!  What are you up to?

I'm coming to 'help' you.

Climbing up on top of the large bales: not a problem for Daisy.  She jumped up the side of the bale and hooked her claws into the hay.  Then she 'rock climbed' quickly to the top to join me.

Then Daisy walked around the tarp and found a few tiny pools of water.  To help me remove the water she licked it up.  Of course, her love of water outside her water dish had nothing to do with her helping me.

Any more water over there?

Nope.  No water over there.

Odd bird

The other morning I noticed this bird out in the hayfield.  It was out there for quite a while just standing there.  Daisy, who was in and out of the house that morning, never noticed it.  Or maybe the bird's size gave her pause about going after it.

Final miscellaneous fence build stuff

After more than a week of temperatures that have stayed below freezing it looks like my fence rebuilding is over for the year.  The ground is definitely frozen solid.

All told, for my various fence re-buildings in 2014, I put in 41 railroad ties as posts.  I swapped two gates with two different gates and put in four more gates. I rebuilt 600 ft of the fence along the road, and about 132 ft along the southern border when I put the corner posts and gate in that fence.


I used a good number of my salvaged boards on my corral rebuild.  I collected these boards over the years and the piles were a mish-mash of lengths, widths and thicknesses. I spent a fair amount of time looking for the right boards - no sense cutting boards to length when I may have the right sized board in a pile somewhere.

As you can see I have also accumulated lots of barb wire.  My old fences were 3 or 4 strands and my rebuilt fences are 6 strands so I have need of barb wire for the extra strands and to replace the strands that are old, rusted and brittle.

Daisy 'helped' me with many of the railroad ties.  What a cat!

There is plenty of fence to rebuild next year!

Split corral fence rebuild

Once I finished rebuilding the corral's perimeter fence I started rebuilding the fence that splits the corral.  As you can see below the fence needed a lot of work.

I only got a little of the fence done before other chores/events took me away from fence work.  I did get the hard part of the fence done as I put in two gates, one at each end.  The old fence between the barn and the west corral fence did not have any gates. The only way between the two sides of the corral was via a gate east of the barn.  Now, with three gates herding the cattle between the two sides is so much easier.  Especially when the cattle want to stay on the west side of the corral.

I had hoped to get back to completing the fence this year but the recent cold weather put an end to that as the ground is frozen very solid.  In the meantime I am using corral panels to make a fence for the 60 ft I have left to fence.

In the time between completing the south corral fence and starting this fence, I got a few more log cuttings from the timber framing company.  I wish I had more of these exact log cuttings as, even though Tammy didn't like them, I think they look so cool.

The back side of the log cuttings.

I put in a gate at the west side of the fence.

When I took apart the old fence I had a few nails that were very hard to get out of the post.

Here you see why these nails were so hard to remove: long and ribbed.

South corral fence rebuild

This past Spring, after I completed the west corral fence rebuild, I continued on and rebuilt the south corral fence.  This was a longer section of fence with 17 railroad ties and a gate.  The old south corral fence fence was straighter than the west corral fence so I ended up taking the old fence down as I rebuilt the new fence.  I kept the cattle on the north side of the corral so I didn't have to deal with them as I rebuilt the fence. 

I didn't have any log-like boards left to make my fence look "ghetto".  Tammy actually came out several afternoons and kept me company as I built the fence, and usually helped me when I needed an extra hand with longer boards.  Of course Daisy 'helped' me too every day.

While I had fixed this section of the fence earlier, it is an example of why I needed to upgrade my fence.

How the old fence looked when I started the rebuild.

 After the rebuild. A more solid fence.

Before...

After...

This fence should last a long time.


The yellow rope kept my fence straight.

When digging holes for railroad ties I dug up an old chain.

I also dug up the remnants of an old tree stump.  Western Larch tree.

I put a gate in the fence.  Here I am drilling a hole in the railroad tie for the gate's latch.

The gate and the hole for the latch.

Beulah's newborn calf decided to lay nearby while I gathered railroad ties for the fence.  This made Beulah nervous which made me nervous.

When moving the railroad ties a mouse jumped out and ran under the pile of ties. I called for Daisy and she ran over. The mouse got away.

But then Daisy found the nest the mouse had built out of grass and cattle hair. Daisy started to pounce up and down on the nest and tearing at it.  Huh?   Then she uncovered baby mice.  They didn't survive.

Tammy sat in the chair a few days to watch me work on the fence.  Sometimes Daisy sat in the red feeder to watch me.