Well sort of… The cows got spooked by something the other night and ran through the polywire electric fence. I heard the ruckus, grabbed my flashlight and ran out to the paddock to find the cows tangled up in the wire and running about. I did my best in the dark to keep from getting caught in the wire myself and to cut them loose from the spools they were dragging all over the pasture. The next morning we went out to survey the situation and found that all but one of the steers had freed themselves from the polywire. That steer had the wire wrapped pretty tightly several times around his leg. Since we don’t yet have a corral or a squeeze chute we had to improvise a way to confine him long enough to get the wire off his leg. I remembered reading that you could use a gate to squeeze and confine an animal. We decided to use five of the old steel corral panels that we have and setup a small square corral with the fifth panel attached to one of the inside corners like a gate. It took some time and prayer but we eventually rounded up all the cows, sorted out the steer and got him into the corral. I attached a rope to the free end of the gate and handed it to Joy. I jumped into the corral, worked the steer into a corner and then shoved the gate against him and pushed with all my strength while Joy tied off the rope to hold the gate. The steer was not very happy about all this and was doing his best to get out but we were finally able to get him to stand sill long enough for me to reach under the gate a cut the wire loose from his leg. It was an eventful morning and we thanked God that we were able to help the steer and no one was hurt in the process. I think we both have a new sense of urgency to get the corrals built and we learned a lot from the ordeal. It’s never dull out here.
A few pictures of happy cows, afterward…
Craig
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