Fence Repairs

The dirt work for our new hoop building was completed on Thursday. During the construction the contractor was pulling a pan to scrape up clay from one part of the farm and move it to the construction site and they hit a cattle gate which pulled down the post and and destroyed the gate. So today's work will be to go to town to buy a new gate and to fix all of the fences. The other issue with the fence is that the pan hung too low some times and broke the wires that run underground between the gates to feed electric past the gate openings. These have to be dug by hand and have new wires put back in. Since bulldozers and giant equipment were running back and forth through the gates, digging the wires in should be a chore, but hopefully we get it done before the rain comes that they are calling for today.

Spring Fence Work

The ground has thawed enough to start working on some fence issues. Last fall we put in some new posts and replaced some others in our winter paddock areas. Thanks to our friends who were out pheasant hunting on the farm we were able to really expand our winter paddock area up into our front grove. Today we're digging up some electric fence wires that connect between gate openings for our high-tensile electric fence. Our high-tensile electric fence is based on an all fiberglass post system. This is how we're able to do rotational grazing for our pure bred black Angus cows. It has worked very well since it was put in several years ago and I would highly recommend that anyone putting in a new fence should consider it. We've had deer run into the fence at high speed and both the deer and the fence were shaken but not broken.