24 May 2011
In case anyone didn’t notice, the world didn’t end at 10am on Sunday. A bizarre prediction by some religious weirdo in America
It’s not like any of us thought it would but it’s an interesting thing to think about. What would happen if the entire human race just suddenly dropped dead? What would happen to our animals?
The animals on this block would be sweet because they can pretty much escape whenever the fancy takes them.
All of them, every last one of them would and could find an escape route if they wanted to. This would be very reassuring if I thought there was a risk that humans might all drop dead on mass. It’s not so reassuring when you live on the edge of the country’s main highway and share a driveway with 2 neighbours with no animals and virtually no fencing.
I mentioned to Aaron yesterday that we have spent 5 years trying to have control over our animals and at this stage they are still pretty much controlling things 50% of the time.
Does anyone else have this issue??
Good fencing, according to various animal husbandry articles I read, is apparently what it’s all about.
This is great if you live on a flat block and can afford to spend thousands of dollars on deer fencing sunk at least ½ a metre into the ground. We’ve got good, 7 wire fencing, we’ve got good post and rail fencing, 1.8 metre tall chicken wire fencing and 1 metre high chicken fencing, we’ve got electric fencing (battery operated and mains), we’ve also got some really dodgy fencing which we weave numerous tree branches into to create impenetrable walls and we’ve got a taranaki gate.
I can tell you right now that despite our best efforts, none of it works 100% of the time.
7-wire fencing just provides a piglet (and even ducks!) all the encouragement they need to dig exit holes beneath the bottom wire.
It may take several days but what’s that to a pig or duck with time on its hands?
It used to be that Aaron and I would spend hours filling in and blocking these doorways but it got to the point that it became more of a joke on us than an effective blocking technique. In some paddocks we put electric wire just inside the fenceline, and although this acts as a deterrent for a while, eventually the pig decides it will start digging further inside the fenceline. This pretty much always results in great big clods of dirt and grass landing on the wire, effectively shorting it, and in no time at all the pig is free (again!).
The 7-wire fence is great for sheep, except the feral breeds it seems. In a panic (and I’ve no doubt if they were desperate) they just jump right over it, and if there’s a convenient pig doorway somewhere, apart from the rams with big horns, they have no issue with wriggling underneath.
Post and rail fencing is good until a pig discovers you dropped a piece of cheese on the other side by mistake, and then 1 or 2 good head butts and pop, the nails release easily from the post and the rail hangs limply to one side.
But it’s not just pigs. A good flood will, as we discovered in January, pop those boards off the posts just as easily as a full grown pig can. At least the pigs leave them where they fall. A flood on the other hand takes them away never to be seen again. Even the cows will show utter contempt for a post and rail fence.
Aaron shut 36 in the stockyard a couple of months ago. As he waited for the butcher to arrive, she flipped out and a well placed kick or two saw not only the boards snap in half but also the mains electric wire on the other side. Note to self – never, ever be on the receiving end of a kicking cow!
Chicken wire, you would think would hold in chickens. For the most part it does, except a) if a possum looking for fresh eggs, or the dogs looking for rats decide to push against it, b) if 2 roosters should meet either side of the wire and develop murderous thoughts toward each other or c) if some of it’s low grade Chinese stuff which turns out disintegrates as soon as a chicken or duck so much pecks at it.
Actually there’s also a d); add a pig to the mix, who decides it’s spoiling his view and well, you have to ask yourself why you even bothered in the first place.
I spent hours fixing chicken wire to the inside of the post and batten fencing in the duck paddock and the adjoining orchard. I attached it to the wire fenceline with fencing staples, laboriously bent into clips with pliers. It was neat, tidy and perfect for keeping ducks in. Or so I thought.
When the grass gets long in the orchard, its extremely hilly contour makes it dangerous to cut with a scrubcutter, so we bring in Arthur the boar for a week or 2. He happily devours the grass down to a manageable level. But what I didn’t realize was that in his spare time, he found what was surely a great pastime; he systematically went from batten to batten, pushing his snout under the chicken wire and then lifting upwards until all the fencing staple clips popped and the wire was neatly scrunched into arches, between every single batten(!), just perfect for a duck to walk through.
The beautiful, huge chicken run we created below the shed was what we thought, the ultimate in paradise for bantams. The 1.8 metre high fence was surely high enough to contain little chickens? Alas no. The bantams had no problems flying over it, doing so every evening so they could roost in the manuka on the other side, and then flying back in every morning.
Not only that but rats and stoats took to digging holes underneath the wire, making perfect doorways for bantams to come and go. And let’s not forget escaping piglets, who faced with such a wonderful challenge, would happily rip out the fencing staples pinning the wire to the ground and then push through, creating even bigger doorways for chickens to walk through.
We gave up on the bantams and they now free range in the bush and at mealtimes around the shed and drive
We clipped the wings of our Sussex
Electric wire works wonderfully with adult pigs and cows until it shorts. And you never know when it’s shorted until you see an animal where it shouldn’t be.
Some cows, like our boy 40 seem to spend much of their day trying to identifying weak spots in fences or shorted wire.
40 can’t tolerate short grass if he can see long stuff on the other side of the fence. Twice during our first week back from holiday 40 (we didn’t see him do it but we just know it was him) led the others to freedom, and onto neighbour G’s drive. It just so happened Neighbour G was home for 2 weeks.
Neighbour G has been quite emphatic in the past that if we are to graze his land then we are to keep our cows contained. Rightly so. 40 had other ideas though.
On this occasion it wasn’t until the dogs were being walked that the escape was discovered and Jay and Bex found themselves running through the bush trying to round up and herd our steers back into their allotted paddock.
2 or 3 days later 40 and Co. repeated their antics. This time the steers had all wandered off in different directions and Aaron, Jay and Bex had to collect them from up neighbour G’s drive and in the bush.
Aaron asked neighbour G if he’d realized the cows had escaped. Apparently so. They’d actually got out the evening before and G had discovered them wandering around his house and in his garden, however G didn’t want to disturb our post-holiday high and so let them be.
It’s fair to say that Aaron, myself, Jay and Bex were all stunned by G’s response. We have State Highway One along the front boundary and acres and acres of Conservation land at the back boundary and both boundaries have non-fenced areas through which curious livestock can exit.
There were numerous possible disasters that could have occurred, including that those free roaming steers were free to munch on anything, including Gary’s plants, trees and shrubs, and that they could easily have disappeared and with it a sizeable financial interest on our part.
Fortunately the steers stayed within G’s boundary and were eventually returned to their paddock, where a freshly charged truck battery was quickly connected up to the wire.
No comments:
Post a Comment