Pasture!

Finally the time to get the first heifers out. We started after the boys were back from school (via barber's, it's summer hair time!). The first ones out were four older heifers who had previous experience of grazing. That went quite well.

There are many more who are about the same age as these, but as they will calve within three months, it's better to send them back home which will happen next week. Some others have been recently inseminated and we'll try to make sure they don't need to be inseminated again after getting out, so they'll have to stay in for a while now.

So, another group who could go out now was three 11-month-old heifers. The idea was that they'll spend some time in the small paddock to learn the meaning of fence. The first two seemed to get the idea, but the third one didn't. It ran against the same spot three times and got out, into the oats field across the ditch, a quick visit across the road and back to the oats. It was easier to chase her from there to the large paddock, so that's what we did.

I knew from previous experience with such cases that she'll probably break the fence once more and that's exactly what happened. We kept a close watch for quite a while after that, but finally it seemed that she started to realise what the fence means, and that the green stuff on the ground is there for eating.