River fence

[Dave]

I finally got the river fence installed. The problem I had was cows going into the willows along the river to calf. Some of the wobbly leg new calves would end up in the river. They don't swim very well.. Trouble is there is about 4 inches of dirt and then bowling ball sized river rock. My 74 year old shoulders aren't driving posts into those rocks. It is flat and open so the guys who have been building up in the hills all summer were willing to make me a deal. I bought the material and they installed it.

 

[GoWyo]

I finally got the river fence installed. The problem I had was cows going into the willows along the river to calf. Some of the wobbly leg new calves would end up in the river. They don't swim very well.. Trouble is there is about 4 inches of dirt and then bowling ball sized river rock. My 74 year old shoulders aren't driving posts into those rocks. It is flat and open so the guys who have been building up in the hills all summer were willing to make me a deal. I bought the material and they installed it.

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According to @Brute 23 just let them die in the river and ship the cow. But I agree with fencing off the river and like your project.

 

[Brute 23]

I like the plan. River bottom with no cattle is excellent for wildlife. The cow deal is a bonus if it makes Dave's life easier.

 

[Dave]

Not much of wildlife area with the fence 10 feet from the river. The river is about 30 feet wide and fast moving with big rocks on the bottom..

 

[Brute 23]

Not much of wildlife area with the fence 10 feet from the river. The river is about 30 feet wide and fast moving with big rocks on the bottom..

You might be surprised.

Does the river come out of the banks much? Thats my big complaint with fencing next to any of that stuff. We had like 3, 100 years floods in 10 years. Kind of made most people a little gun shy.

 

[RDFF]

I finally got the river fence installed. The problem I had was cows going into the willows along the river to calf. Some of the wobbly leg new calves would end up in the river. They don't swim very well.. Trouble is there is about 4 inches of dirt and then bowling ball sized river rock. My 74 year old shoulders aren't driving posts into those rocks. It is flat and open so the guys who have been building up in the hills all summer were willing to make me a deal. I bought the material and they installed it.

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Get some hay rolled out on that graded area, with seed in it. Let the cattle on it to "halfway clean it up", best seeding you could ever have.

 

[Dave]

Get some hay rolled out on that graded area, with seed in it. Let the cattle on it to "halfway clean it up", best seeding you could ever have.

That is not graded. It rained pretty hard when they were working there. There is no sod over there. The irrigation water soaks into that old gravel bar before it can get there. Here in the desert if you can't get irrigation water to it there isn't much that will grow. The cows are on that field from early January until mid April. I always feed over there if it rains because there isn't much to hurt there. Actually I have some dry land grass seed I plan to try there. It is crested wheat grass, intermediate wheat grass, and slender wheat grass. Maybe it will catch and grow but it wont produce much.

 

[Dave]

You might be surprised.

Does the river come out of the banks much? Thats my big complaint with fencing next to any of that stuff. We had like 3, 100 years floods in 10 years. Kind of made most people a little gun shy.

Not much. What little that runs over you could walk through and only get your ankles wet. They do call it a river but to me it is just a big creek. I lived for years with a real river in the back yard. Back in 07 it ran 95,000 cfs. Normal summer low water was about 1,500 cfs. This river here might make 1,200 cfs in a high water. Right now it is about 10 cfs. There is a reservoir up stream and we are in the desert.

We have a list of all the different specie of wildlife we have seen here. About 50 different animals total. Beavers. river otter, mink, and muskrats are the aquatic mammals. But other than the beavers the rest are just sighted as they pass through.

 

[Dave]

This river gets real small by late summer. They say that before the dam and reservoir it would go dry by late August in some years. When the Oregon trail was active (1843 to 1870 ish) some years the wagon trains would use parts of the river bed as a road. I think that would depend on the size of the rock in the river bed. It is all rock but not what you would call gravel.