As a result of having such excellent weather last weekend there has been some great progress made with the final work on the new fencing.
After being held up by the recent snow here, the contractors finally came back about a week ago to put the finishing touches by adding the stock mesh to the fencing for the pig pens in the woods.
Unfortunately it turned out they hadn’t quoted for adding the (absolutely essential) bottom strand of barbed wire to the pig pens. Other than that the finished fencing looked really good.
Now that the snow is clearing I was able to get to grips with taking down the old fencing that was no longer needed. It was cheaper to do this work myself rather than getting the contractors to do it.
Of course it also gave me a reason to use possibly the greatest invention ever – fencing pliers. Is there nothing that this tool cannot do?
Since this older fencing included quite an impressive (and perhaps unnecessary) amount of barbed wire, there was plenty to be carefully salvaged and re-used on the pig pens.
While dismantling it I realised that most of the old fence posts probably wouldn’t have lasted much longer anyway. Nearly all of them just fell over soon after the stock mesh was removed.
Apart from a few extras like drinking troughs and feeders that still need to be bought, everything is about ready for the new arrivals. They are expected to arrive around Easter which I notice is just 6/7 weeks away now!
The intervening time will be used wisely though by reading up on keeping cattle and especially calving or maybe thinking about longer term plans like winter feed for example. Having had two lots of weaners before I’m far more relaxed about taking on the pigs though.