Two Ends Of A Barn

We are slowly beginning the barn remodel in the bull pen and still getting the clean-out phase under way. It amazes me just how much stuff can get jammed into a space in the course of a few years and then once stowed cam be completely forgotten.

There have been broken pitchforks (plans to repair evaporated after they had been stored in the old manure spreader). Bags and bags of old baling twine (carefully compacted and secure from getting where the bulls can chew on the dangerous twine yet the corner where they are piled has molded and the twine is no longer in bags or secure at all). Splintered boards (why in the heck are we keeping those around?). And a myriad of other no longer usable and generally unwanted items with that old manure spreader that broke a very important gear about 20 years ago and has never been repaired (the hitch is little more than 2 x 4’s twined together with rope, four flat tires and remnants of a long ago mummified varmint with the dregs of an unsuccessful dumping of the last load of manure). Bitter? No, I am to blame for many of those items taking up room in the barn just as well as the other farm occupants. But it is high time for a clean out of al of it.

The hay we harvested and brought into the barn this year is more neatly stacked than in previous years so that it as compact as possible for a wall will be built to keep the bull part of the barn separate from the working space. We have two yearling bulls and two newly weaned bulls in their section during this transition and while they have access to their area and the large outside grazing area they still get to come and go as they please just like normal.

The bulls decided that the neat stack of hay was in the way of seeing what we were doing, or that they were just ready to break into some new bales and were stretching their necks in beyond the manger to pull bits of the sweet grass hay. They ended up breaking the boards of the manger that were an added barrier just below the strong steel bars of the head openings and the tallest bull could stretch his neck up to tug at bales between the front barrier of slatted wood until he had a few tumble into the manger. It was good eating for the four animals until we found what they had done.

Mike reinforced the boards at the neck height for the bulls with lots of twine (he happened to find a mother-lode of it in the old manure spreader, go figure). A temporary fix was assembled to strengthen the barrier until the load of new wood for the remodel arrives and the mix-match cobbled mess can be fixed properly.

The bulls seemed saddened that their game of pigging out had been cut short but was soon forgotten as some apples were chopped up for their next meal.