Rodeo

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

img00003 20100724 1127

img00001 20100724 1127

img00002 20100724 1127

 

Fence Work

My brother has been helping me install the electric fencing while he is here, you can see him hard at work in the pic. It’s fantastic to finally be getting this up and running. So far we’ve installed enough of the high tensile to be able to power some polywire and start strip grazing the cows. I think they are a bit upset about not having the whole farm to wander but none have run through the wire yet. I can to say from experience that 10,000 volts will definitely get your attention… Don’t Tase Me Bro! 😀

 

Lewis and Clark Caverns

We all went to see the caverns today. A 50 degree cave is a great place to be on a hot July day! Our kids had fun giving their cousins the grand tour.

img00183 20100710 1240

img00186 20100710 1350

 

9 July, 2010 21:41

img00181 20100709 2121

img00178 20100709 2116

 

Hail Storm

There was a big time hail storm in Bozeman yesterday afternoon. I was at work when it hit. The sound of windows shattering could be heard throughout the building as large hail stones beat down. We lost the windshield on the Subaru and accumulated some more dents in the sheet metal ( We already had dents from the last big storm a couple of years ago ). The van also took a beating but no broken glass. Thankfully the farm was spared as no hail fell out in Belgrade. This was definitely the largest hail I’ve witnessed. Here’s a link to an article in paper about the storm. Hail Storm