Bull

Auction day

Steve HardinLeave a comment

I got called into work on Friday night and managed to get out before midnight. As I was sitting in my car contemplating driving home I decided to read the paper and spotted a college farm surplus auction the next day at the local community college. I convinced Annmarie we should go in the morning, I think she really just wanted to go back to sleep. My argument was that by the time I paid someone to help me build a bull corral we could have just bought most of the panels at the auction for cheap. My only real fail in this thought process was that other people would think the same thing. We transferred money over into the checking account and drove the pickup and trailer into the auction on the off chance we would score lots of stuff. Unfortunately a lot of people came for the same thing we did. This made the bidding for some of the gates and panels steep. We had to bail on several gates and panels as they just sold for too much. We did score on the metal T fence posts and ended up getting over a 100 at only $1/each. I usually pay $2/each at the junk yard. We ended up with 244 lineal feet of panels, three corner horse feeders, 100 + T posts and a heavy duty welding table and vice. I wanted to get the welding table repaired from the machine shop but for $25 I got a much heavier table and another vice, which is way cheaper than I would have paid to repair the old. Annmarie got me signed up for the evening welding class this fall at BMCC , two nights a week. I am really looking forward to it as I am going to build our custom metal railings and back yard fence. I will just buy the material and weld it together myself.

The only real trouble with this is we stood around on the hot pavement in the sun for over five hours then loaded heavy panels onto the trailer and realized that this would not be a one trip show. When we got home I had muscles help me unload and then we went to get the second load. It filled the trailer and the pickup again. This time when we got home we unloaded and built a section of fence for the bull corral out of panels. We built it over the rock bluff portion of the enclosure. This is going to work out very nice. I will still need to build several rock cribs but it will be much faster than trying to dig into the rock. I have 2000 lf of 2×6 tamarack to pick up from the wood mill and 800 bf of 1×12″x16′ for the barn siding. I plan on doin this on Friday.

Mr Experience kept on working on floor trim while we did the outside work. I had a coworker come out and borrow my disc set. It went onto my trailer with some difficulty but it got easier after Annmarie made me remove the 400# of iron weights from on top of the discs!

Annmarie and I had to go get our bull from the neighbors place. He keeps sneaking over there to say high to the heifers. Unbeknownst to us he has had already been over visiting three times before we found out. The neighbor had been pushing him back through the culvert to our side of the road.

He was at the top of the hill and would not budge for Annmarie. We were going to push him down to the road then across it and over through a gate and into our property. He had other plans, first of which was not moving for any human being. He was a despondent rejected bull and he was not going any where. I had to drive back and use both dogs to get him moving. He ran right for the panel that was covering the culvert from the opposite side. I ended up wading into the creek and lifting the panel. Annmarie swore he would not go by with me standing so close to the opening. Once he figured out I was opening the gate he went right around me. I had brought some tools and extra 1/4 inch cable to install across our side of the culvert and then weave it into the panel in an attempt to keep the bull on our side of the fence. This whole process took about an hour to get completed. The best part of this was when we held the barb wire apart and told Zeke to jump and he popped between the wires but Mouse did the same thing with some encouragement. This was a first for him and he loaded up into the back of the pickup by himself and stayed in the back of the pickup! All of these are great accomplishments for a working dog.

If you look closely you can see the wall for the bull enclosure going up. I will need to set at least 3 rock cribs in place to hold the fence in place.

I am going to keep having Mr Experience and muscles come out and work on trim. Muscles stacked some loose wood in the barn and greased the tractor and fixed my truck exhaust also. I took him up on his offer to fix things. I even ordered new blades for the mower and as soon as they arrive I will have him install them also.

Bull fence

Steve HardinLeave a comment

Today I finished painting the downstairs! I even considered starting in on the wood trim downstairs but I really want to do the windows first as the bugs have started coming around. I have the caulk to seal the wood trim to the window and the walls so no bug can sneak through. But the wooden shims have not arrived yet. I purchased a box of them and they will be here this week. I wanted cedar shims and I am going to leave the cedar closet lining boards I put up in the windows temporarily in place and just put the trim over them. They have helped keep the bugs out.

So instead I went out and started working on the Bull Enclosure. It will house the rams also when we are not using them. We have decided to pull the male species off of their respective herds at least a month prior to anyone having a baby. We don’t want the mothers to be stressed or harassed. I marked of a pen in the barn lot that will allow us to use the old lamb shed and lean to out back as shelter. The shed will be off limits unless we allow access. I have set it up so I have opposing gates that will allow us to block off the shed or allow them access to the shed and no where else. I broke out the hot pink paint marker and a tape measure and put a T sign every 8 feet. I will need to dig 57 holes! I think if I reuse what is present and use the old cedar posts I think I can come up with 40 posts maybe 45. I will buy the rest. I want to use railroad ties in the corners and two next to each gate side. I am going to install a 10 foot gate near the shed and another 8 foot gate on the back side of the fence past the lean to. I am contemplating one more near the culvert, but I don’t think so. Each gate is a weakness to be exploited by the bull. I managed to get 11 holes started tonight. I was unable to drill a single hole down to the depth needed even as wet as it has been.

The mistress was working hard and I had to replace one bolt on the auger and just as it was getting dark the shear bolt for the auger gave so tomorrow I will need to replace it before I can get started. My goal is to get all the holes started this week and then take a five gallon bucket of water and put it in each hole. I will do this every day and then drill it out the next day until all the holes are the right depth. I will start setting posts as soon as I can get a hole down to the right depth. I will set all the posts and put woven wire and smooth wire on the outside of the fence and I will line the inside of the fence with 2×6 boards. I will have to go 4 boards high to provide a sufficient barrier. So I will need to buy 2000 linear feet of 2×6 which also happens to be 2000 board feet. I want to buy 16 foot boards as I put the spacing at 8 feet apart, this means I need 125 boards. I will also need a saw and a whole bunch more wood anchors, another 500. This is the expensive part. That will cost me around $400 just for the metal screws.

I have the 10 foot gate, I will have to go scrounge around in my gate pile to see if I have another 8 foot gate. I may need to use a 6 foot gate.

The sheep have been hanging out on the back hillside. The gate nearest the creek is so badly damaged that it is not useful and needs to be replaced. I have simply not gotten to it and the sheep needed to go out on the back hillside anyways. We have had so much rain in the past few days that the back creek is up about 8 inches and running muddy.

Some days life chooses your direction

Steve HardinLeave a comment

I came home on time today after picking up groceries for Easter brunch. The sheep are “mowing” the front lawn so you have to be very careful as you make your way down the steps, across the bridge and onto the stepping stones to the front porch, there are a lot of sheep bombs. I had two loads of stuff to bring in and on the first load I failed to latch the gate securely. This caused a mass exodus from the front yard out into the car area in front of both houses. I managed to spot it and stop about half the herd from leaving. So now we only need to get 40 sheep back in instead of 80. I told Annmarie I would be right back and took the dogs to get them back. We wandered out through the ram pasture. I have been popping thistles all week with my pocket knife and spotted a few I missed so I got those. As I walked by the bridge over the ditch I noticed that it was clogged with tumbleweeds so I waded in and pulled all those out and an old piece of tin I found. I slowly started heading to the barn. I let the horses out and closed the front barn lot off and left the main gate open so we could push the sheep into a secure area. This is when my phone rang, Annmarie wanted to know where I was as she was heading out to help and the sheep were now down at her mother’s house and she was trying to push them toward our house because the alpaca were herding the sheep.

We had to push them around her house and back up to ours. Just as we got all the gates shut and were headed back to the house Annmarie spotted a ewe that was stuck in the orchard and her baby was in our front yard. She went to go deal with that while I snuck off to take care of chickens. After grabbing my second egg the cell phone went off, it was Annmarie there were two separate babies separated and where was I? I left the eggs and went and helped corral the last two sheep. All the sheep were behind the barn and we were getting ready to go inside when Annmarie looked up on the hillside and spotted the Bull outside his area. He was on the open hillside which means he had to have pushed through the creek crossing after I tried booby trapping it. This contraption had lasted for almost three weeks without him thwarting it. I was able to go up to the hillside and have him follow me up and through the gate. I even managed to find a coffee cup out near the fence that I had forgotten when I was building my contraption. The bull ambled down toward the other cows and all was good with the world. We headed back to the house and just as we got to the hillside gate we spotted the bull going through the ram pasture. He had gone down and pushed through the creek crossing behind the house and then went straight to the creek crossing behind the barn he tore up last year and up to the fence next to the heifers. It looked like he had spent a large portion of the day alongside the fence. It was pushed over in areas and there was a beaten path alongside it. Annmarie tried to push the bull back out with the dogs but this went no where as the dogs kept circling around and pushing the bull the wrong way. Annmarie had to be in to town so I took over. It took me another hour of pushing him around to get him to go back down to the other cows.

It was painful for me, the bull and the dogs. I then had to go up to the incomplete fence line and wire up the upper gate and wire up the two bottom gates. I then went and redid the creek crossing behind the house. Then I went and got a heavy metal gate and wired and tied it in place over the ram pasture ditch crossing. I used a lot of bailing twine to get it to hold. There is no flex in that sucker now so he cannot shimmy under it. I also cleaned out the ditch for about 30 feet while I was here. I wear rubber boots all the time now when working outside. It works for me and I can easily clean them off. I need to get in here and rework this fence crossing. I have just about decided that I need to string cable across the bottoms of the ditch so I can clip in the panels during the summer so that the bull cannot lift them. I need to do five separate crossings this way to keep him in. I really need to build the bull enclosure inside the barn lot so we can keep him separate from the heifers when we want.

Tomorrow I will be completing the fence running up the back hill and installing all the gates in that fence permanently regardless of what the weather is doing. I need two fences between him and the heifers.

Gizmo and Bo, the cat were keeping Annmarie company while she worked until eh home office today. They were sucking up a little extra heat from each other and the freestanding heater.