A Little Ice

   Low 30's for a few days here, night and day. 5 inches of rain in the last week. There was a big scare for a quite severe freezing rain & ice situation , mostly west of Nashville, last night. Many schools opened late in anticipation but it never really materialized. I took this "tiny icicles" picture Tuesday morning.

  That is Annie, the 18 month old heifer, showing off her jewelry.  I caught her last week as she was "sharing" nursing duties with her little sister Pandie. She did that once before about 6 weeks after she was weaned.  Hadn't seen it since, but she definitely is still bonded with her dam, Big Mama. So I ran her into the chute and  applied a weaning ring again.  She didn't like it!  The ring is very effective and low cost.  It has a screw that tightens it down without piercing the nose. It flaps around so the animal can still graze and eat hay, but when they try to nurse, the sharp prongs make the cow walk away.
   I moved the cattle into this south pasture Monday as the corral was just too muddy.  I'll need to do some reseeding this spring where the hay rings set. The hay bales are lined up on the edge of this field, so I pounded in a few posts and ran 5 strands of electric wire around the hay before I turned them in.  I didn't run electricity to it as I would have needed to shovel about 30-40 feet to put the insulated wire underground.  Thought it might fool them, but this morning the 2 nursing calves were inside the fence and a little later Buster was in there too and had broken some of the strands.  So I went out and made repairs, then did the shoveling to make it hot. After I went over to plug in the fencer, I counted about 30 seconds before Annie tested it and bellowed when I heard a loud snap.  About 20 seconds later, Mandie, one of the little calves, tried her luck.  Another loud snap, a beller, and she galloped halfway around the pasture!  With the ground so muddy and wet, the electricity almost jumps at them when they get close.  Hope that fixes the problem!