a herd divided

Farmer Jon here - Well, we finally started the weaning process with the calves. I had to beef up my fencing to (hopefully) keep the calves and cows apart. The actual sorting of the cows and calves went fairly smoothly. I did it by myself, in the pasture. I ended up with one calf that is still with the cows but the rest of the calves have all been sorted off. I left the two bulls, a heifer and a cow that was open last year with the calves to help calm them down. After a few weeks, I'll pull the bulls out so there aren't any shenanigans. The heifer calves won't be a year old for another 45-60 days so I'm not too concerned.

Of course, many think we're crazy for waiting so long to wean. And many think we're crazy for waiting so long to leave the bulls in. And many think we're crazy for waiting so long to castrate the bull calves. But, so far, the cattle are all alive and well. Crazy...

(sorry, I was taking pictures with my cellphone again...)

Read more...

good fences

Our neighbors could care less about our fences but good fences do make for happy farmers.

I put up some hi-tensile fence this weekend. It took me a little longer than I had hoped but not bad considering it was pretty much a one man operation. And I took extra time to make it as straight as possible.

It's a two wire, hi-tensile (electric) fence using fiberglass posts. Right now the bottom wire is the only one hot (electrified). I haven't decided if I like the wire heights but they'll do for now.

Here's a glimpse of the first fence Jamie and I put in, almost a year ago. It's probably 2-3 times longer than the one I just put in. And, in all fairness, it has tons of corners and curves because we were trying to work along existing boundaries. But you have to see it in person to appreciate just how ugly it is. Boy did we learn a thing or two in the process of putting this up. I ruined a brand new roll of hi-tensile wire for one thing and this was one of the times that Jamie ended up in the E.R. One of the times...

Read more...

fencing

Fencing has been the word lately. When Jamie started going into labor, we were actually at a farm supply store picking up fencing supplies. The electric fence has been lacking and many of the cattle have lost respect for it. Which has resulted in the polywire being knocked down everyday.

When we got home from the hospital, we were greeted by all the cattle being out and in the yard. The power was out in the house and the generator was out of gas... So now that things have settled down a bit, I have gone about checking the fence with my new Fence Compass. And it is AWESOME! It tells me the voltage of the lines and helps to identify faults that are grounding out the system. With the help of compass, I believe I confirmed an earlier suspicion that the connection from the battery to the charger was not a good one. I messed with it for a while and was able to almost double the voltage of the system getting up to 9500 volts. Taking the advice of my fence distributor, i put peanut butter on some pieces of tin foil and hung them on the electric fence. The intent being that will investigate the peanut butter and get hit hard with shock which will help to re-educate the cattle on electric fence. It's been over a week and no cattle have gotten out. (Correction, I just watched a heifer walk through a one wire fence. I haven't checked the fence yet this morning so I need to see if the battery connection is off again). It's doubly important to get this corrected now as it will be harder to contain them as their winter coats come in and the ground freezes, as they won't feel much of a shock.

 Here is the new Fence Compass. As you can see my voltage is at 9.5kV and I have 8 amps of resistance coming from a small fault somewhere to the right of the compass.

Here is our fence charger setup. This was put in right before we put the cattle out in late February. Since we weren't sure what the power situation was going to be, we opted for a solar setup. 

I also threw together a rig to hold my step-in posts and other tools. This is just a prototype. I already have a bunch of changes I need to make when I take the time to build a final product.

Read more...