Snow, Snow, Snow Oh Yeah and Cold, Cold, Cold

It's been a while since I updated the blog.  There hasn't been much going on around the farm unless you count moving snow for hours at a time.  With the tractor in the shop for an overhaul, moving snow has been reduced to using a skid loader and I have literally spent whole days moving snow.  The last bout with the snow took about 9 hours just to clear the lane and that didn't include the time that George spent clearing the snow down to the cattle.  I did sell some hay at auction that brought great money and I've made some individual deliveries too.  But in general the snow and cold have dominated everything from equipment maintenance to setting up bunks for the cows.  We've lost a couple of small steers this winter and to make sure that everyone is getting enough energy to get through the winter I dropped a couple of large wooden feed bunks into the cattle paddock area.  We've been supplementing the cow's hay with oats that I held back from our oat harvest in 2009.  The cows and especially the horses love oats and eat themlike candy, which is why I can't pour it too them too fast or they can actually make themselves sick from over eating.  A challenge has cropped up however.  Keeping the cows from crowding the calves/steers out of the feed bunks.  The first thing I tried was to pull a hot wire off of the electric fence.  Knowing that the snow is insulating the ground and knowing too that the fence charger is weak from the snow pulling the wires down and covering them, I ran both a + an a - within inches of each other.  Turns out that the cows like oats more than they mind being shocked.  I haven't tested the wire to see what the volts are, but I can occasionally hear the snap of the shock, so it has to be some volts, but obviously not enough to deter them.  I also put one of the bunks right by a set of small trees but the cows weave their heads through the trees and still pinch the calves.  I guess I can try building some wood fences to the bunk, but I'm pretty sure the cows will push against anything I build hard enough to break them loose.  We're still thinking, but suggestions are welcome!