No, this is not a blog post about a means to curb illegal
immigration! It is actually about our 7
month old bull calf named Chuck. With
five Jersey cows on our little homestead farm all going in heat at different
times, there’s a lot of hormone action going on.
Chuck |
Chuck has hormones of his own and when he’s not using his
head to destroy things such as water buckets in the stall and corral, well… he
wants to be closer to Daisy, Rosie, Amy, Clarabelle, and Luna. The other day he successfully breached two
strands of electric fence and ‘got with’ one of the calves.
In 1973 Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn teamed up to sing
a song called, “Louisiana Woman – Mississippi Man.” It was a catchy tune and contained the chorus
below which suggested that when you’re in love, an obstacle like the Mighty
Mississippi River (or an electric fence, in this case) is an ineffective
barrier to keep them from getting together!
Louisiana woman
Mississippi man
We get together
Every time we can
The Mississippi
River
Can't keep us apart
There's too much
love
In this Mississippi
heart
Too much love
In this Louisiana
heart
Yes, there is too much love in that Louisiana Jersey
Bull’s heart. Fortunately, Chuck is not
fertile yet and when he broke through the barrier, he was not successful in
impregnating the calves. I read
somewhere that a bull becomes fertile beginning at 8-10 months, so I knew that
fence construction must jump to the top of my priority list. He is a good looking little bull and he’s only
going to get bigger and harder to contain as the months go on. Our plan is to use him to breed all of the
cows, but on OUR time frame, and then get rid of him. Despite the fact that Jersey cows are docile,
gentle animals, Jersey bulls are crazy and will hurt you.
There's too much love in this Jersey bull's heart... |
So we must build a fence.
We assembled all of our supplies and each afternoon after work, Benjamin
and I would work until the sun dipped behind the horizon erecting and
stretching the East-West length of a permanent bull/goat pasture within the
perimeter of our existing pasture. This
area was always grazed, it was just separated by a (porous, for a bull at
least) electric fence. Now it will have
4 foot tall, 4x4 goat fence, with a strand of barbed wire on top.
Pulling the fence tight |
After
some additional hard work, we squared off the bull pasture. You can see this below. You can also see the two strands of electric
wire in the foreground.
We put a 12 foot gate in the pasture that will enable us
to drive through, when needed.
Chuck is an elitist and lives in a gated community |
And finally we added a 10 foot gate at the opening of the
chute that connects the barnyard corral to the ‘bull pasture.” It hinges so that it contains the bull safely
in the pasture as shown below, or it can be opened to allow the bull into the
barnyard corral when needed. I must tell you that it was nice to work on the chute as it afforded me the opportunity to work in the shade. Building fence in the July sun is a hot job.
The Shady Chute |
This set-up will allow us to effectively manage the segregation of the bull from the cows, or the segregation of calves from momma cows when weaning, or keep the trouble-making goats in their own place. We should have done this a long time ago, but better late than never. It was a hot job to build this fence and I’m glad that work is done! Now to the next item on the project list…
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