Long Winter Already

Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas holiday with family and friends.  As always at this house the kids got too many presents and I ate too much!  I even bought myself something for after Christmas that I won't talk about now due to still feeling guilty about it! 

It has been a long winter already!!  The snow has been here for 2 weeks but it seems like ages.  I am so ready for spring to come.  All the seed catalogs have started to arrive, but I have decided not to look yet.  It only makes my spring fever that much worse.  The kids went back to school today and the hubby back to work yesterday which means that now I have to do all the morning chores by myself again.  This sounds unpleasant to say, but even more unpleasant to do.  This morning it was a whoppin' 24 degrees when I was out there. At that temp at least I didn't have to get the whole winter garb on to be out there less than an hour.

We did learn a valuable lessons with the snowstorm that came a few days before Christmas:  snow/ice covered electric fences do not work! I hadn't even given a thought to the fact they would get covered.  So, our wonderful electric fence I raved on is, until the ice melts, turned off.  The cows are stuck in the barn lot, which I think they don't like much.  I cannot imagine they would love being cooped up like that, but my husband says everyone's are in the lots right now.  Another tidbit of info: we are still last on the road plowing list!  I am thinking that list should change up each year for fairness?

It is about time to separate the calves from the cows and bump up their grain.  They never love this time of year.  Still not sure if all the cows are bred as I am hoping but won't know for some time.  (Wish I had my own trans-abdominal ultrasound.)  

With all the holidays past now I can get back to this blog like I should be and my new endeavor I am working on getting started.  I love to start new endeavors and get so excited!  My husband thinks it is part of my "illness" to be busy all the time!!!

HOPE EVERYONE HAS AN AMAZING 2013!!!

Parmak Solar Fencer



We have now had our Parmak Solar Pak 6 fencer installed for a few weeks and what a SUPER BUY!  We couldn't be happier with it.  Every day I check it and it's so easy to check with the charge gauge on the front.  All I have to do is look at it to know if there is a problem!

The installation was super easy too.  It took minutes to do it.  We did already have a ground rod in, but it would have only taken a few more minutes to put in a straight copper 6-8 foot ground rod with the fence pounder.  All we had to do was mount it and hook in the wires and turn it on.  Immediately the charge gauge went up to the green and a little beyond.  We even ran the fence about twice as far as we had planned due to the cows kept getting on another part of the fence in the pen they were in to eat lucious grass on the other side.  We figured this way any animal in there would stay off it.

The cows have been out pasture grazing once again (saving my hay for when its really needed) and staying away from that terrible south fence.  We used the electric tape with the fencer and that works great.  It is easily visible so the kids, or I, don't forget it's there.   Kudos to Parmak for making a fencer that works tremendously well, is easy to see if there is a problem and is pretty affordable!  Thank you also to jefferslivestock.com for selling it at a great price and shipping in a reasonable amount of time.  (I did see today that horse.com has it on sale right now for $157.)

Solar Fencers

After much time spent researching solar fencers I finally decided on one.  I didn't know much about them at all in the beginning.  Now, I feel a little better versed in solar fencers!  I had no idea when I began that there were so many brands and so many differences between them -it was a bit overwhelming.  I read tons of reviews and looked at the specs of many.  I do believe in knowing which item will give me the most for my $$$.  All the local guys told me Parmak was the best.  Only one of our local stores, however, carries Parmak.  I ended up ordering the Parmak Solar Pak 6 from www.jefferslivestock.com with a savings of nearly $40 even after shipping!  (I usually try to buy local but the savings was just too much to pass up this time)  I did buy all the fencing and stakes local, though.  This Parmak fencer says it will do 25 miles of fence.  There was only 1 bad review I came across when researching it, all the others were highly praising.  It really made the choice easy. 

The Parmak fencers seem to have a high range capability compared to some other brands.  This was a factor in our choice.  It also seems to be a quality built product that should last for years with minimal problems.  Some of the other brands I researched are Gallagher and Zareba.  I'm not at all saying these aren't good fencers, it just seemed to me that the Parmak would work better for us.

It took only a few days to get here and I was so excited to get it out there so the cows could go into the big pasture that still has much to eat and we could stop feeding hay so soon this season.  I unpacked it and saw a tag on the front "must charge outside 5 days in off position before using".  My excitement turned to "wish I would have known that" very quickly.  So, here I sit with the fencer outside charging and still feeding hay to the cows.

We will be able to put it up on Tuesday.  I also thought that we could get all the 1/2" electric fence tape up early so it would be ready to go, but got quashed on that idea as I was informed by my husband that the deer would probably tear it up jumping the fence and would make a mess of it.  I will be more than ready on Tuesday to get it all up and turn the thing on!  The cows will be so excited to go out there and eat like, well, like cows! 

Each day I have thrown around the idea that if we just put the cows out there they would have so much to eat that they wouldn't care about the almost non-existent fence at the south side of our property.  Then pictures of me chasing cows out of the neighbors corn field would fill my head and I just didn't want to risk it. 

When all of our pastures are reseeded and the south fence done this fencer will be used to run each of our paddocks.  Hopefully we chose wisely and it will work like a charm!