Avoiding a loss

[Hpacres440p]

We had storms Thursday, which apparently spooked one of my cows into, through, and on top of some poly wire electric fence, which of course wound tightly around both back pasterns just above the hoof line. Got the hobble effect removed Thursday and one section a little loosened, but couldn’t finish with what we had available at the time. She wasn’t limping, no bleeding, so let her go.
Had to wait until today to get her in an alley to get the rest of it off. Little $5 ear tag knife saved the day, thankful also for a relatively cooperative cow.
A $1 piece of wire potentially would have sent her to burger land, and left us with a 2 month old calf to manage. Cheap problem, big potential consequences, cheap solution.

 

[bird dog]

I hate electric fences. I had a cow bust through mine into my hay field. She got the wire around her leg and drug 500 yards of wire around the property for a number of days before I found her about a mile from where she went through.
I got it cut off to where she was only dragging about 5' and started working her towards the pens. It amazed me how much was behind her when I started winding it up.

I started building permanent fence a week later.

 

[TCRanch]

Good save! And I'm always thinking outside the box - because you have to.

 

[Dave]

Years ago I had a cow get that 16 gauge electric fence wire wrapped a couple times around her leg. Putting her into the chute she kicked me in the knee. Got her locked up and she kicked the wire cutters out of my hand 3 times. Before she hit my hand instead of the cutters I tied her foot up. This cowboy up stuff is not nearly as much fun as it was when I was in my 20's.

 

[kenny thomas]

Not saying it couldnt happen but the 1" poly tape doesn't wrap as bad.

 

[Hpacres440p]

Not saying it couldnt happen but the 1" poly tape doesn't wrap as bad.

That would make sense. More visibility might prevent some destruction also? Really glad it was polywire though-was easy-ish to remove once she was contained

 

[RDFF]

Not saying it couldn't happen, but high-tensile wire for electric fence would be pretty hard (pun intended) to get wrapped around a foot. And in 20 years, I've only had ONE wire get broken by deer... OR cattle... and that was by deer. And it didn't really "break"... I use those Gripple "torpedos" to splice when adding a new roll... and it had pulled out of that (I probably hadn't properly ensured the wire was "set"well in the torpedo when I installed it). All I had to do was let up on the ratchet tightener, pull the wire up by hand and stick it back into the torpedo (and ensure it was properly "set" this time), and tighten up the ratchet again. As long as that wire can stretch all along the whole span (in my case, often 1/2 mile), it's not going to break. I generally only use polywire for my break-wires, to limit access on daily moves.