Preparing to Rescue More Cows

Since some of our beloved cows have passed away, we have room to rescue more. We estimate that in about two weeks, we will have a few more cows. But first, we need to improve our infrastructure, like fencing, water access, and pasture maintenance.

Building New Fencing, Repairing Old Fencing

Due to the rambunctiousness of some of our male cows, the fencing has received a beating in various areas. We hired David Lindsey and his crew to repair those areas, fix and tighten old gates, and install new gates and fencing where needed. Nine years ago, David fenced the entire property. Then and now, his crew dug all fence post holes by hand with a post hole digger, which you can see in the front right of the photo below. They secured the poles in the ground by tamping the ground around the poles. You can watch the video of the sun sale installation which shows this process (link in this e-newsletter’s third image).

When we rescued babies Surabhi and Vaishnavi last year, we set up temporary fencing to build a separate corral within the hospital pasture. David and his crew have permanently fenced that area, made it larger, and divided it into two with a gate. This arrangement allows for more efficient corralling of cows into the cow chute area, where the vet can more easily control them for examination. It also provides two pasture options for newly rescued cows.

Improving Water Access

We now have new and repaired automatic water floats in all the water troughs. When a cow drinks water from the trough, the float automatically refills the water. Previously, the cows would play with the float, which made it inoperable. Now, their access to the float is blocked.

Sun sails have been built over the water troughs in the pasture to shade the cows while they drink and minimize algae growth in the tank. About one-eighth of the tank is blocked to the cows to prevent them from disabling the automatic refill float.

Cleaning Up the Pastures

When we bought the property in 2015, the previous owner did not maintain the pasture for some time. In the last year, we have stepped up our program of manually removing the Prickly Pear Cactus from the back pasture, a labor-intensive activity. We thank Acyutananda Das for his help in ridding the pasture of this nuisance plant. We have noticed far fewer cacti in the back pasture now. Recently, we found Soda Apple, an invasive weed, in the side pasture, which we are removing by hand.