The Cattle Guard

I was driving on a back road near my house the other day and pulled in to a road leading in to a pasture.  There was a cattle guard that you had to cross to enter the property.  For those not familiar, a cattle guard is a means of keeping cattle from leaving the property.  It is normally constructed by a placing a grid of pipes welded across a grid over a ditch.  There is a fence on either side of the cattle guard.

The idea is that livestock walk up to the cattle guard and see that there isn't a way for them to cross it, so they stay in the pasture.  This particular cattle guard is constructed with railroad rails welded across some I-beams.  Cattle guards are a relatively old thing.  The first patent for one was issued back on January 15, 1915 in Nevada.  I read that you can even make a 'virtual' cattle guard by painting alternating dark and light lines across a road.  However, they say that once one animal discovers that they are being faked out and cross, all the other animals will as well.  Probably not safe to try to trick them.

You can drive across it with no problem.  Your vehicle's tires make a bumping noise as you go across.  Humans can walk across it with not much of a problem.  I remember as a kid trying to balance as I crossed a cattle guard.  Being small, I was a little scared that I'd lose my balance and fall, breaking my ankles in the process.  I made it across safely, however.

I vaguely remember a cattle guard somewhere at our farm, but don't remember where it was located.  It's long since been removed.  It may have been at the entrance to the old home place in front of the big live oak tree and pecan orchard.

Aside from keeping livestock from getting out, cattle guards are also great in one other regard.  If you are riding "shotgun" in a pickup truck, one of your duties is to get out and open the gate.  When the truck drives through, then you close the gate behind the truck and get back in the passenger seat.  Cattle guards make that job obsolete.  There's no need to close the gate.  You drive right on through.

Springing a Leak

This is the scene that greeted me Saturday morning as I walked out to the barn to milk Rosie and Clarabelle.  All this water was not due to rain.  Not good.

I milked as fast as I could so I could go assess what the problem was.  I began thinking, "Maybe a pipe burst?" or "Maybe the cows hit the valve with their heads, causing the water to continuously flow?"  The water covered the south pasture, flowing south then west, saturating the grass.  From the looks of things, it must have been flowing wide-open all night long.

I turned off the water valve to stop the flow.  As I walked up to the water trough, it became evident what the problem was.  The water valve was firmly in place.  As you can see, the level of the water in the trough was beneath the valve.  This told me all I needed to know.  I know what my problem is.

And there you have it.  Look at the bottom of the water trough.  The trough has sprung leaks, and this has flooded the pasture and made a huge muddy mess.


I'm drawing my line in the sand.  No more Rubbermaid water troughs for us.  This is the second one I've purchased and both of them sprang leaks in roughly the same place.  Rubbermaid is a fine company, and we've used other consumer products that they've manufactured with no issue.  But I will definitely stay away from their water troughs.  I've thrown $89 twice at an inferior product and won't do it again.

For the time being, I'll go back to using some mineral tubs as water troughs.  I will try to rig it up so that it has the water valve attached.  What I've learned in the past is that when the cows drink it down, they'll push the empty tub with their heads and break it.

If I get tired of using these temporary tubs as water troughs and want a more permanent solution, I'll opt for the oval galvanized water troughs.

Putting up a 5 Strand Barbed Wire Fence

At the farm in Oberlin where our family's beef cattle roam, the saying that "the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence," is often proven true to my Dad.  Cows are inquisitive creatures and even after we sold many of the cattle that liked to escape, other remaining cattle have taken up their bad habits of pushing their way through the perimeter fence to eat in the roadside ditches.

The older portion of the perimeter fence is constructed with hog wire.  Over the years it has rusted, deteriorated, and weakened so that the cows can poke their heads through.  Once their heads are through, they go ahead and figure how to get the rest of their bodies through to escape.  We planned a workday at the farm to replace the fence.  Russ came in from college, my nephew came with my Dad, and Benjamin and I drove in from Jennings.

The first order of business was to unhook the existing hog wire from the T-posts and corner posts and then roll up the wire.  Benjamin chopped the weeds in the way with his machete.  The cattle were right there in the pasture, so once the old fence was down, we were committed.  We couldn't leave for lunch so Dad went to town and picked up some big fat burgers and we sat under a tree and enjoyed our lunch.

Russ & Conner rolling up the fence

We opted to replace the hog wire with a 5 strand barbed wire fence.  According to This Link, Barbed wire was invented in 1867 by Lucien Smith of Ohio as a great new technology for restraining cattle. It is still widely used today.  We anchored one end of the wire to the corner post and put the spool of wire on the back of the All Terrain four wheel drive vehicle and unrolled it.

Unrolling the barbed wire

We started on the bottom strand and once we had it unrolled, we stretched it tight with a "Come Along" and once we had the desired tension, we fastened it to the corner post and used clips to anchor the wire to each T-post.

Working on the third strand

We repeated that process until we had the full fence completed.  Here are the workers admiring the finished product.  This fence is tight and secure and will keep the cows within the pasture.  However, cows will search out the next weakest place in the fence to break through.  We took a tour of the next portion of fence that needs to be fixed on the south side of the pasture on another Saturday.  Fence mending is a never ending job.

The completed fence

It was a blistering hot Saturday and the work crew was hot and tired once the day was done.  We drank lots of water to replenish liquids lost during the workday.

The Fence Menders

The fence builders got the job done.  There's more work to be done, but we'll schedule that on a cooler day.