Building a Fence

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…