Hi, I’m Mike and this is our Wyoming Life
The Devils Rope, or barbed wire, the invention that tamed the west came about in the late
1800s and as ranchers moved out on to the plains they needed to fence their land against
other farmers and ranchers, rail roads throughout the west needed to keep livestock off the
tracks and farmers needed a way to keep cattle from trampling their crops.
Joseph Glidden received his patent for what is considered modern barbed wire in 1874 and
began promoting it in Texas. Before the fences, the west was open range, cattle allowed to
roam freely, regardless of who owned the land. The invention and use of barbed wire brought
plenty of drama to the western rangeland. It made the fencing of huge expanses cheaper
than hiring cowboys to keep track of cattle. In the 1880s the government and large ranches
with government pull, began fencing public and federal lands without any regards to land
ownership or other public needs such as mail delivery or the path ranchers moved livestock
from one grazing area to the next. This led to fence cutting wars which broke out in Wyoming
in the early 1880s, until in 1883 when the court ordered a big cattle companys to stop
fencing public lands and remove fences they had built. None the less by the 1890s barbed
wire fencing was everywhere and the age of the open range was gone.
Wyoming is still an open range state; some call it a fence out state. Basically all that
means is that if you don’t want my cows on your property it’s your responsibility
to build and maintain a fence. Livestock still have the right of way, if an animal is hit
and killed by a vehicle the driver is liable for the price of the animal and the repair
of damage to the vehicle and if the county or the state doesn’t want a ranchers cow
crossing the highway or road, then it’s their responsibility to build and maintain
the fence, and in some cases the state has even built tunnels under highways for cattle
to move though. All this leads us to this week’s project.
Fencing off the dump. Every rancher around here has a dump, whether it’s spread over
the entire ranch or confined to one area like ours. The dump is full of old wood, old equipment,
and materials and because most ranchers and farmers never throw anything away. Therefore,
because you never know when you might need to salvage a part of an old mower it lives
here. But the dump is also a hazard to animals. Cows are curious animals and a cow or a calf
could get tangled up in old wire or cut themselves on a piece of metal.
This year we will be breeding our heifers or cows that have not yet had a calf in this
pasture, the pasture that also included the dump. Fencing off the dump will allow the
cows to be safe as well as allowing us to preserve the dump and its contents.
New fences always start with planning, thanks to tools that past generations never had we
do this quite easily, where in the past they had to measure on site we can use google earth
to plan our layout and figure out materials for the project.
Then we can go to the actual site and transfer the layout. T
he most important part and most time consuming part of a barbed wire fence is constructing
the corner and bracing posts. Barbed wire is under a lot of tension, often up to 1000
lbs. and the corner posts sole function is to resist the tension of the fence connected
to it and bracing keeps the corner posts vertical and prevents any slack in the fence.
After we finish this fence we will be moving our heifers into this pasture and a new bull
will be arriving within a few days to start breeding so we will be setting our corner
posts in concrete. This will allow them to be stronger faster. Posts are 6 to 8 inches
around and 8 foot long, using the bobcat and an auger attachment we can drill a hole in
the earth to depth of 3 feet and set the post vertically, making sure its level and straight.
We place another post, known as the brace post about 4 feet from our corner post and
add a horizontal compression brace, this one made out of 2 and ½ inch steel pipe connecting
the two posts. Then a diagonal wire connects the top of the brace post to the bottom of
the corner post. This wire prevents the post from leaning which then allows the horizontal
brace to the prevent the corner post from leaning. Keeping the whole corner square and
solid. Lines posts at then installed spacing them
16 feet apart. Our line posts at steel t posts that are 5 feet long and driven into the ground
using a t post pounder, a 40lb tool to drive them in.
This is a good time to introduce Mitch, Mitch is our hired hand for the summer, he just
graduated high school and will be leaving for army basic training in August. He has
helped out here on the ranch for about the last six months but this is his first big
project. Say Hi Mitch…. As luck would have it, I only own one t post
pounder. So Mitch will get the honor of pounding around 100 t posts that need to get put in
the ground for this project. Once all of the posts and the bracing have
been erected, the barbed wire is brought into the fold. The wire is wrapped around one corner
post, using a staple to hold the height and then reeled out along the span of the fence.
Then wrapped around the opposite corner post, pulled tight with a wire stretcher and held
in place with a few more staples. You repeat this process until you have 5 strands
of barbed wire all around the fence. Then you attach the barbed wire to the t-posts
using tpost clips, twisting them around and holding them firmly to the post. The sole
purpose of the t post is to keep the barbed wire strands spaced equally and off the ground.
As with most fences you need a gate to get in and out and we have found a couple old
steel gates, oddly enough in the dump, to make a 20 foot double swing gate to give us
access. These gates are mounted between two corner posts with lag screws.
With the addition of the gates our new fence is complete, ??? feet of total fence, 13 wooden
posts, over 100 t posts, ???? feet of barbed wire and a lot of sweat from both me and Mitch
have made a barrier to keep our new breeding heifers safe and sound during their stay in
this pasture. Now it’s time to introduce them to their
new home. For the winter they have stayed in the corral, getting a bale of hay every
few days to feed on. Now they will be introduced to the lush pasture grasses and room to run,
but first we have to get them loaded into a trailer and moved.
Cows never seem to want to go anywhere you want them to go, I wish you could tell them
how much more awesome their new home will be and convince them they want to go but when
it comes down to it, you have to push and shove them, but eventually they are on a trailer.
We travel with them to their new pasture and let them free. Don’t they seem happy?
In a few days the new bull will arrive and they will set to work becoming another working
part of the ranch, getting pregnant and producing calves and adding to the longevity of the
ranch and our family. In the end all the animals on the ranch are
our responsibility, with or without open range, you protect your herd from danger and sometimes
that means fencing them out of an area they would love to explore, You get a few cuts
and bruises, and even dropping a 30lb piece of steel pipe on your foot and breaking your
toe, but you also get to turn these guys loose, I’d like to think that green grass makes
a cow happy, I know it does me, broken toe and all.
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