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Originally Posted by Rivertowntalk
Surprised at some of the responses here. I have had livestock nearly all of my life and we can get away no problem without a caretaker. We just make sure they have sufficient hay and water. In the summer, they graze and there is not really much to do. Check the fences now and then and make sure they are in good shape before traveling. We always gave shots our own animals. I work a job full time and would not consider having cattle being even a part time job.
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In what area of the country are you located?
If you’re in a mild climate zone riparian climate, your challenges to keep livestock ... like my cousin’s family 100 acre farm/ranch in northern FL ... are trivial compared to a lot of the rest of the country. She lives in Maryland and leaves her livestock for months at a time with little attention other than an elderly (90-yr old) neighbor “checking in” on the animals a couple times per week. She’s got 4-strand barb wire fences held in with t-posts that are at least 60-70 years old still standing, and some very sturdy wood pasture gates that I’m told were likely built shortly after the civil war when the family property still was a few hundred acres and the primary income for the family. Even their horses could be safely left out for months at a time without any attention because there is adequate water and pasture forage year ‘round, and they have ready access to some lean-to shelters if the horses want to use them. My Aunt (now passed on) inherited this property in the 1930’s and used it as an infrequent “weekend” retreat for decades while maintaining the family livestock operations there with the part-time assistance of their neighbors. She leased out the cropland for decades, selling off a few hundred acres over time for residential developments. Other than her interest in keeping a few horses for lawn ornaments (she didn’t ride) and breeding, she didn’t know squat about livestock. She just knew that the property could support a reasonable number of cattle and relied upon the hired neighbor help for everything ... from calving through taking the product to the sale barn that sent her a check from time to time.
For those of us in 4-season climates, just being sure that our livestock have adequate water, food, and shelter as needed can be a daily challenge for many months of the year. As well, our fences are subject to constant repairs from winds/snowstorms.
Right now, I’m having to rebuild a couple of water gaps on my perimeter fence because the “flood stage” of the creek going through my property has had some high levels of water coming through due to several intense rain storm cells in addition to spring snow melt into the creek. These aren’t trivial repairs, one area is 1/4 mile long and a couple hundred feet wide creek draw. In normal spring creek flows, the creek is only 40-50 feet wide and a couple feet deep. Most of the year, it’s not a foot deep. But when big moisture years hit, the flood zone can be the wider area and 10’ deep for a few days. That’s an intense demand upon the fencing, of which much of the normal fence is far underwater, perhaps being torn away. At the edges of this area, livestock can freely wander off our ranch while the flood is on. As the floodwaters recede, the areas of damaged fence are either no fence at all or so weakened that it will not withstand a challenge by the cows. Our ranch has two such critical areas ... where the creek enters and exits the property. These sub-irrigated low lying lands are especially productive forage areas for our livestock in an otherwise desert climate zone where it takes 100 acres per cow/calf unit for 6-7 month grazing each year.
I used to maintain the water gap areas myself, but with advancing years the physical challenge has gotten to be a bit much for me. My neighbor who does fencing says this year’s repairs are around $4,000 worth of work but he’ll create a more durable water gap than I ever built. No guarantees, of course. If the water gap washes out, he’ll come down and fix it again for T&M. Over the last two decades, I’ve had to rebuild these areas 4 times in addition to annual maintenance ... usually re-stringing some of the wire strands.
Add in the challenges of neighbor’s livestock damaging the fences ... we’ve one who won’t supplemental feed her horses, so she runs out of pasture every year, usually by June. Her pasture pet brood mare draft horses work the 1/2 mile fence separating her dry land from one of our irrigated alfalfa fields when they’re really hungry. The former owners here used to tolerate a horse or two breaking through as long as the neighbor retrieved her horses and fixed the fence in a timely manner. But when we moved in, she thought she’d get away with telling us that we needed to fix the fence because her horses were getting out. Nice try ... we were polite about asking her to fix the damage her horses were causing which allowed our livestock to get out, but she only did a minimal fence post replacement once to little benefit. After a couple of years dealing with the situation, I installed a couple of “buffalo” barb wire strands which have much longer barbs than normal on them. Her draft horses respect those wires and they don’t challenge the fence so much anymore. But given the lack of forage on their place and the attraction of a stand on mine, her horses have to relearn the fence sometimes and I’m the one who gets to fix it. Yes, legally they should pay for the repairs ... but they won’t and it’s not worth the hassle of small claims court for a judgement which she’ll just ignore. OK, I accept that this is a neighbor caused fence problem, but it still needs to be monitored a few times per week for months on end. Takes time to do this, adds about 20 minutes to check the fence via ATV when I’m out irrigating the fields.
Which perhaps brings up another difference in our farming/ranching from your operation: irrigation chores. Water is a scarce and tightly controlled commodity here. Just monitoring pivots takes me at least 45 minutes every day, without fail, during irrigation months. Again, it must be done every day. Minimal time if everything is working OK. Potentially hours to repair if it’s not. Not trivial to find a neighbor who can devote twice-a-day visits to our place to check on this aspect and can perform minor repairs if needed. The alternative is to shut a pivot down and call the dealer for field repairs. Portal-to-portal call-out charge is $325 and then their diagnostics and repair charges are on top of that. Something as simple as a broken wire at a tower motor connection can typically run $500 to fix ... which I can usually locate in a few minutes and fix within a 1/2 hour. A small leak at a tower section boot can easily run $850 by the dealer. Doesn’t happen very often, but when it does, we’ve got to be on top of the situation as quickly as possible. Again, it doesn’t leave much opportunity to get away from the place without finding reliable help that has the time to be there when we’re gone.
And so it goes. My hat’s off to you if your operations have such minimal time demands. Ours don’t.
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