The Cows in the Backyard

Of Course this picture is not of the current situation, but it's the best I had of a cow and the backyard in the same photo, so I'll use this one.

My brother raises Red Angus cattle.  This winter and last I have fed out some of the yearlings of the herd.

This winter has been quite a challenge, simply because it's winter, nothing more than that.  The cows are quite well behaved, don't cause trouble, don't try anything fishy - just eat, drink and sleep like good cows should.

The problem this time is that the hydrant at the corral, 100 yards plus from the house, has frozen or otherwise become inoperable.  Reasonable attempts to correct the situation have been fruitless at solving the problem.  Therefore, we resulted to "Plan B".

Plan B has been to run hose from the faucet at the back of the house to the watering trough and fill it once a day.  Problem is, it's cold outside.  Draining the hose is a must, and then for a month or more I would have to take a torch to the faucet because the section sticking out of the house into the cold winter air would freeze up.

This added a lot of time to the nightly efforts of watering , and a bit of aggravation when something wouldn't go right and the hose wasn't drained well enough, and it froze.  That meant a trip to the house with the offending hose for a soak in a warm tub, then back out to the yard to connect and finish the job.

So on it goes.  It's been a bit better this last few weeks because I don't have to use the torch to un-freeze the tap, the warmer afternoons take care of that for me.  It will be really nice when the hydrant out at the corral thaws or is fixed, saving the extra time.

There are some other challenges to the job that I will likely discuss in another post.

There is a bright side to every challenge, my son just loves having the cows with us, he comes out as often as he can and helps me feed them.  I really enjoy the times when he comes out, and that makes it all worthwhile.