Where Corn Grows and Cattle Graze: Building Fences

When you have livestock you can guarantee that you will ALWAYS have fence to fix, rebuild, relocate, and tare down. As I am writing this right now I would bet there is at least 1 critter at our place plotting out which fence to break next!!!!! Even the most permanent and sturdy of fences will eventually need some TLC. The whole process goes something like this 1-build new fence, 2- over then next 5, 10 or 20 years you maintain the fence (few staples here, new piece of wire there, replace a broken post here and there), 3- after you can no longer fix the fence it is time to tare it down and start all over. We have a catch pen/load out pen at 1 of our summer pastures that was in dire need of some TLC. The past 2 years we have held our breathe every time we walked a group of cows up the ally way to the load out hoping that they would ignore the leaning of the fence and the holes that couldn't really be repair any longer (with out serious work).

The wooden part was so old and rotten that if a cow or calf even though about touching it the whole works was going to come down. This spring the land lord gave us some fencing supplies to rebuild the catch pen!!! After a bit of engineering and design. We came up with a plan to get the most use out of the resources given to us and create a loading pen that is functional. Not to mention compared to the old pen this 1 looks pretty darn good too!!!

Phase 1 Destruction... Our land lord, doing some destruction!
Notice the broken and leaning post
in the background it was not the only 1...

Not everything we do at the farm is 100% labor intensive work, Destruction is always a great way to blow off a little steam and make a mess. The guy we lease the pasture took his loader tractor and a portable post hole digger over to the pasture and helped us (or we helped him, not real sure which) and we spent 1 evening this week tearing down the old fence, setting the new posts in the ground, and laying out the new fence. Oh and we did clean up the mess we created during the destruction portion of the evening!! Not to mention he bought us a burger in town when we were done!!! All and all not a bad way to spend a really beautiful spring evening!!