Daniel and I were riding the quads around Saturday on arrival at the farm, checking out the lower areas, and got a txt message from Jonathan who was out walking to say that there were cows up top. Sure enough, two cows and their calves were up on the plateau excitedly munching away at all the fresh grass. Not as bad as the 60 or so we had from Johns a few months ago, when they got in whilst he was away!
Whilst Jonathan tried to track there prints to determine where they had come from, Daniel and I rode around to John with some photos on my phone, who reckoned they might be Gary’s from over the back. Had a long chat with him, as we sometimes do, about the farm and pasture and cattle. He’s spread a heap of lime across one paddock to see how that goes (soil is acidic in our area). Kangaroo’s have eaten to the ground a heap of the wheat he’s recently sown, which is interesting as I haven’t seen that issue in the mix I’ve sown (but have noticed some minor grazing of some tips, which I thought might be deer). He’s also got a paddock of Angleton bluegrass that is in full seed – I plan to manually harvest mine very soon, and spread the seed around.
Sunday morning we went up top and had a good look along the back (southern) fence – walked the whole length. It was only a few weeks ago I’d had my first look in that area, and had noted some fence problems in that blog post!
Figuring they had likely come from there (Jonathan had tracked them as coming from the western plateau too), we slowly herded them in that direction. They were very difficult and reluctant to go in that direction initially, but after a while they must have decided they had no choice, and went racing off quickly. We couldn’t keep up, but with the recent rain and soft soil it was easy to trace exactly where they went – straight to where the tree was down over the fence – the exact location I had photographed a few weeks ago…..!
So back with the chainsaw and basic fencing equipment we chopped the tree, and stood the fence up again. A couple of rotted off posts were tied up to nearby trees to keep them upright. Some broken wires re-joined. We went westward and improved a couple of other locations too. I won’t say ‘fixed’ as still about half the posts were being held up by the wire, rather than the other way around… Seems it doesn’t need to be a great fence to keep them out though, as it’s pretty old and been in poor condition for a while. Perhaps we’ll need to go back with some star pickets sometime…
When walking the southern boundary we found a proper vehicle trail I didn’t know about (from eastern end of western plateau down to southern neighbour). Can even see it in the overhead imagery now that I know to look for it. Also went to the very south west corner for the first time, which is quite a nice extension of the western plateau with some good soil, but overgrown.
I’ve been planning to go to electric fencing, but haven’t got around to doing anything yet. Being on holidays this week (at the beach) I finally did some more research and actually placed an order on an energiser! Its JVA brand, which are locally designed and made. I was looking at Thunderbird, but found these ones who where a little cheaper and also are wifi connected. That will be useful for remote monitoring by a farmer like myself – mostly away from the property. Will also be able to turn it on and off with my phone when doing things on the property. Got their largest, the JVA MB16 with 16J output and a 160km fence rating, though those standard distance ratings all manufacturers advertise with are for perfect conditions, not real life.
This all means I’m going to have to actually install wire now. Initially it will be added as an additional barrier to the existing fencing, but will add various internal fences over time. Will also have temporary electric fences to assist with rotationally grazing my cattle to different small paddocks each week. Will also need to upgrade to a bigger battery system to drive the energiser, and a better solar charger. And set up permanent internet on the farm, and put in a heap of wifi repeaters. All of which I’ve been wanting to do, so can set-up IP cameras, soil moisture monitoring, water tank and trough monitoring, etc etc.