WEEKEND OF RUNNING ELECTRIC FENCING!

Tim and I are out taking care of a few things this morning besides the chores. We finally got the mineral bucket up to the heifers. 

They look happy to have it.

Miss Piggy says Good Morning!!

With all the rain we had I noticed that Cosmo must love it.

He likes to roll around in it. Kaitlin isn't gonna be happy with him. She does all the brushing for him. He even has mud in his ear.

Silly horse!!

We got 4 of the 8 chicken tractors emptied. We got the tarps, nesting boxes, ropes and metal pans all removed. We are gonna store them behind the Silkie Coop for the winter. I guess we found the spot that might work.

Tim and I worked on getting the post by the gate ready for the electric line. First we tied the insulators on each end post then strung the high tensile wire between them.

This section is done.

Now to the other side of the gate.

Tying a termination knot

Tim is pulling the wire off of the spinning jenny. We are looking for any bad spots in the wire. Fix it before it becomes a problem later. 

Tim is putting the wire into the insulators and I am on the 4 wheeler going forward allowing the line to unreel. I had to stop a few times so we could repair the wire to be stronger. I went slow and it is going smoothly.

Willow even hung out with us.

We made it to the middle pasture gate. We used a come a long to pull the line tight and tied it off to the insulator.

We need to get the part that separates the front to middle pasture ready for the connecting electric line.

Oops Tim got hurt from the barred wire putting this wheel thing in.

Tim hooked this thing up to pull two wires together.

Stretching the wires close we were able to crimp them together.

Two crimps followed by three tight wraps is very secure. The wraps aren't necessary but they keep the ends of the wire smooth. The fence is nice and tight. 

It's really hard to get things done with all the chickens. They just don't move.

I keep telling them there is nothing in the bucket they want.

Anyway these noisy guineas keep letting us know we are in the field with them.

We are hooking a connecting wire between these two 90 degree runs from front to middle pasture.

A couple crimps and the wires are connected together.

Looks like someone is wanting Cosmo's attention.

Phantom really likes his attention. She is still mad at me since I brought home 2 new kitties.

Tim and I went and picked this up.

I turned away and Tim already had this dug out.

We are going to run electric underground at each gate. Starting at the gate that joins the middle and front pasture. Doing this will get power to everywhere we hooked the electric wire to.

Tim got the tube in place and is putting the dirt back.

Them chickens barely move. Tim is pushing dirt back into the hole and they are still in it. No chickens got hurt while doing this.

But, I am sure Tim was thinking of burying a few if they stayed any longer.

When we put the container next to the barn we moved the fencing. Tim just put a T post next to the container and wrapped the left over fencing to it. We knew we still needed to fix it but it was working until now. So today we fixed it. Tim cut the fencing and tied it off and attached it with staples to the wooden post. At some point we are putting up a small gate here. But for now it will remain open.

As you can see this fence wire is in pretty rough shape. Sometimes you just work with what you have.

Tim went with underground wire between the barn and container too.

This will work perfectly to go in this spot. The power box for the electric fencing is just on the other side of this wall.

Run chicken!

She barely escaped.

We put in pex pipe for two reasons. We had it on hand and we can replace the wire easily in the future if needed. We put the double insulated wire in the pipe and got it hooked up to the fencer in the barn.

It's all hooked up between the barn and post.

And all hooked up around the gate.
This gives us power to the front pasture and middle pasture all the time. 
We still have a few things to do but this part is done. We are waiting on a few parts to be shipped. Stay tuned for the middle pasture to connect to the back pasture. This project will take us a little while to do.