Moved the Bull, Found a Baby on Pasture (Again!)

You must be terrified. Your mom's probably off somewhere. She probably thought she left you somewhere safe, but, yeah, I'm sorry. Good morning, boys. Come on over here, I gotta talk to you about something. I got some good news for ya. Come here, Macho Man. Good to see you, pal. I got some really good news. So today is the day that you're gonna go get to go visit with your girls. Yeah, you're gonna go get to visit your girls. Are you excited? Yes, today is the day that I'm taking my bull, Macho Man Randy Savage, as well as my steer, Joey Ramone, and I'm gonna mix them in with the ladies. I've been keeping them separate pretty much since November, but now that we are at the exact time that I wanna start doing my breeding, it's time to mix the bull with the cows. This should be a fun one here today, but actually, before I move them, I'm gonna need to do some fencing work because I wanna create a lane to walk them down that-a-way. I think that's gonna make my job a lot easier today. And also, you guys might notice that I don't have Abbey Dog with me this morning, and that's because she's been a little bit rambunctious lately, and I don't want her to get into trouble. Now, the first thing I'm gonna have to do is actually take down this fence line here because I need the fencing reel to help guide my bull and my steer. I haven't been using this pasture down here, but I've created a system of about four different fences just to prevent any oopsie accidents if my bull or steer escaped or if the girls escaped. Luckily this year, I haven't really had any close calls or any major issues. I've had a few of my heifers actually jump one fence, but they've never been within two fences of the bull and the steer, and so that's a good sign. I'll flash up one of those affiliate links down below, but my favorite brand of fencing reel and fencing wire is actually from the folks at Gallagher, so you can take a look at that right here. And no, this isn't sponsored by them. And yeah, this might be one of my favorite farming tools that I got these days. So you can see the girls are down there, and here's one of those temporary fences that I was talking about. Again, it's just meant to discourage anybody who might wander off and be loose from trying to mix in with the boys too soon. But now that I'm mixing everybody together, I don't need to keep this up, which will make getting through the pasture much easier, which is kind of nice. So I'm gonna start by making a lane down to these girls down this way. So this is another type of fencing reel that's actually also made by Gallagher, but I don't like this kind nearly as much. So the white one that I was showing you just a moment ago is gear, meaning that it actually has gears inside of here, so it makes it rolling up your reels much easier. And the other thing I don't like is this little metal thing that's like the lock stop, always like falls out and gets stuck. So yes, these ones are cheaper, but I actually think you're better off springing and spending a little bit of extra money for the good reels because like I've been doing this for about three years now and all of my good reels are still in outstanding condition. And so I think you're better off spending the money and not getting the cheapos. Now let me show you another really cool thing about these fencing reels. You can just kind of clip them like this and then drive. Ah, shoot, I got it tangled. Here's one of the downsides of these reels. If you're not careful and you have too much fencing rope on there, you can get it tangled. Yeah, so one thing I am just noticing is I'm actually missing two of my cattle. So my two yearling heifers, actually two-year-old heifers, Bonnie McMurray and Belinda Carlisle. Can't find them, they're not with the other cattle. So I'm gonna have to take a moment and go to the air to see if I can find them. Oh, there they are. They're hiding from everybody else. See if we can use the drone to convince them to come back to the rest of the herd. Good girls, good girls. Look at that. They're doing exactly what I want them to do. They don't like the drone, so they get spooked and then they just go running. Of course, the electric fence is off right now, so I wonder if they're gonna slip underneath it. They probably will. Those two girls just do not respect the fencing. And there they go. All right, boys, are you ready to do this? Let's get this party started. Now, I'm hoping because of the alleyway I've created, I'm not even gonna have to do too much with them to coax them to go where I want them to go, but I could be wrong. So we'll have to see what happens once I open up this fence here. Come on, boys, come with me. Got an open alleyway. Right this way. There you go. Of course, if two major biological needs, it seems like food is trumping all else. Come on, fellas, let's go. Now, the one thing I need to be careful of is I don't wanna stand in their way and I wanna let them just keep going and walking as they're realizing they've got some newly found freedoms. There you go, boys. Just keep walking the fence line for me. They're like, oh, there's so many tasty bites right here, though. I know I say this in a lot of videos, but for those who are wondering what's the difference between a bull and a steer, you'll notice what's swinging between macho man's legs. Joey Ramone does not have that as an option, so in case you're curious, that's the truth. Whoa, uh-oh. This is the one thing I always gotta worry about. So there's a patch of clover right there and that's like their favorite. They just started to fight over it. I have some treats for them if I really need to use them, but I'm trying to do this without treats because I find that, particularly for these two fellas, they get more worked up when there's treats and they get really competitive with each other, which actually makes the entire situation way more dangerous for me. So if I can just coax them like this, patiently and slowly, this will be a much better situation, much safer. And one of the other trickier parts is gonna be, we're coming up to where they gotta make a left-hand turn to go to where the ladies are. That's always a little tricky, but let's see how they do. All right, here comes the turn. Oh, macho man just made it like a pro. And you can hear the ladies are excited too. You can hear them yelling for him. Go for it, man, those are your girls. Joey Ramone has less interest in the ladies. Uh-oh, macho man's getting cold feet. What's going on? All right, we'll just wait patiently here. So my wife just texted me and apparently she saw a fox heading into work, which is strange because how did she know it was on its way to work? Even the cattle are groaning about that one. I actually have other animal chores to do today. Come on, come on, Joseph, let's go, come on. Seems like if I'm not going ahead, they don't follow. So I guess I gotta keep walking ahead. They now basically have a straight shot down this alleyway to get to the ladies. I think we're in good shape. Now macho man knows he's close, so he's picking up the pace. He's singing his bull song saying, these are my girls. I'm gonna do this orderly fashion. Now what you can see is the boys went down to that side and there's a lane in between the boys and girls. Now what we're gonna do is open up the lane so that the ladies can cross over into this space that I wanna call the neutral territory. So like this area right here, it's actually a bigger grazing cell than the ladies. All right, girls. Hey, girls. Come on, girls, fresh grass, fresh grass, come on. I'm opening up this area for you. You're free to go over there. You three are hanging back, huh? All right, that's cool. Meanwhile, we have Annabelle and Betty Rubble hanging out here in the shade, getting a little drink of milk. So it seems like everybody's acclimating pretty well to each other. So I think now it's time to actually take down the final barrier and officially mix everybody together. So that means I gotta disconnect this barrier right here. Start reeling up this reel. You found your way over to the ladies. Now it's only a matter of time before Macho Man also figures this out and he makes his way over here too. Here you go, buddy. Hooray. Oh boy, he's already checking out the new girls. Now Astrid right here, she is open, technically. She probably needs a couple more weeks before she's gonna actually end up getting pregnant. This is Macho Man's first time interacting with her. There he is checking out Anna Green Gables who was actually the first to calf and is completely viable and she should actually be going into heat, I think next week based on my schedules. But if you watch Macho Man, he's just checking them out, sniffing and saying hello. What do you think, Annie? Are you excited to see your boyfriend back? Hey Joey Ramone, what are you doing down here? Looks like he is in the process of reconnecting with his mother. Annabelle here is Joey Ramone who's over here. That's his mom. Little Betty Rubble who's getting a drink of milk, that's actually his new half sister. They've never met before so I'm excited to see that happen. Now I don't mean to disappoint anyone who's expecting something crazy to happen here but this is exactly what I wanted to see. Everybody just kind of reconnects, checks each other out, gets settled and situated and then very soon what you're gonna have is basically good herd cohesion. And then when the girls go into heat, Macho Man's gonna be at the ready to get the job done. I know Joey, that water's not very good. I was gonna dump the trough and move it so if you mind stepping away, I'll take care of that right now. Just installed a new water flow. They keep breaking everything I have mounted like this so I'm trying one of these tank mounted ones that screws in with like bolts. You see this version is actually built by Rubbermaid and it works pretty much the same way as this one. But let's see how it does. Hopefully the cattle don't abuse it too much. You know one of the biggest lessons I've had to learn with cattle is they're very hard on equipment and infrastructure so unless you build it tough, you're gonna have to replace it a lot. You know Macho Man, now that you're here in this pasture, you can end up being a better dad to your kids. Like here's your daughter Belle. She doesn't even know you. Be good if you spent some time with her, did some activities. Maybe join like a parenting group or something. I don't know. Well I feel like everything's in pretty good shape up here. I've got other chores to do so let's go. It looks like Macho Man's already putting in the work on Anna Green Gables. I've got more grass than cattle so I think I'm gonna have to come through and mow here today. Hey Abby Dog, hey Toby Dog. How's it going guys? Good to see you both, hi. You gotta go pee on Allison's garden fence, huh? I understand. It's important to make sure that dogs have good fresh water today because it's gonna be a hot one. It's already 90 degrees outside and it's only like 10 a.m. You know Abby, I think that bucket would fill up a lot faster if you just waited a minute. Uh oh, looks like we have an escaped chicken. Whoa, whoa, she's on the run. She's one of the chickens from out in the new coop. I think she probably snuck out to go back to her old laying spot. Actually that chicken specifically is the one that was always going broody on me. Like if you guys remember in past videos. So yeah, she's probably looking for her old nest. Hey pig, pig, pigs, look what I got for ya. Here's some grain and here's some slop. And I'll even mix some slop in with your grain. Enjoy. I swear they will always fight over the same trough. It's hysterical. You know last year I only had three piglets and so they could fit perfectly in one of those troughs. This year, even though they have more food and more trough space, they fight a lot. Let's just do a quick check of their fence line to make sure nothing's shortened out and everything stays nice and hot. So I set up a new watering system inside the hoop coop and I have my pumpkin seedlings planted. So fingers crossed very soon, very soon as in like September, October, I'll have a whole bunch of pumpkins. There's that escaped chicken again. Here's why I do fence checks. Looks like we got this branch that just fell over in some thunderstorms we had last night and it probably wasn't doing too much harm to the fence but you wanna keep everything off your fence. Everything else in the pig forest is looking pretty good so that's a positive. And it looks like the currents are getting very close. Very, very soon I'll be having currents and in a few more months we'll be having plums. Probably next week we'll start having mulberries. These are getting very close. Mulberries are one of my favorite berries but they should start ripening next, maybe next end of this week, next week. And then from there we'll be eating mulberries for quite some time. Of course I do need to prune this fall. I've just been kind of letting it grow wild, which is good but it's getting so mature now that it actually hurts it by letting it grow crazy like that. And so I'll cut it down once it starts to go dormant. And I don't mean cut it down, like chop it down. I mean like cut it down, like trim it. And now it's time for some brush hogging. Oh my gosh. I just saw a little fawn pop out through the grass. It's okay. Where did it go? It was so tiny. Oh, there it is. I see it. You see it? Oh, poor little one. Hey, it's okay. I'm sorry I was mowing. It was just something I had to do. You must be terrified. Your mom's probably off somewhere. She probably thought she left you somewhere safe but yeah, I'm sorry. I will stop mowing for the rest of today and give you a chance to reconnect with your mom. Oh, I'm so sorry, little one. It's okay. I know you're terrified right now. So I'm gonna leave you alone. Woof, woof, woof. Come on. Yip, yip, yip, yip.