I’ve just returned from the U.S. Southwest, and have encountered, several times, something I’ve never seen before. Cattle guards. They’re basically a metal grate that runs across the road, with a sort of triangular metal contraption at each end (at each side of the road). It feels like speed bumps when you cross one. I assume its purpose is to keep cattle from going where they don’t belong.
But how does it work? Is it electrified? And they weren’t all connected to a fence, so what’s preventing the cow from simply walking around it? (or are they really *that *stupid?) And what happens to small animals that encounter one?
It strange not to be connected to the fence, maybe their new but the general idea is to cattle are afraid to cross the grate, I suppose the fence is due to be installed.
Cattle won’t step on the grate due to fear of getting their feet injured or stuck. If the cattle guard is not associated with a fence it is not serving any purpose. Could be the fence was taken down, but there would be no need to take up the cattle guard, as a car can still drive across it, or else the fence has not yet been built.
Small animals usually just walk across, or walk around the cattle guard and go under the fence.
I grew up in an area with lots of them around. They really do work very well. I have never seen a cow cross one. Their 4 legs just don’t work very well negotiating something like that and their dumb little brain knows it. They are handy for farmers because you can just drive right across them but installation is a little more involved than putting in a gate. Reportedly, you can paint a cattle guard pattern on some surfaces and cows and horses won’t cross that either. We have had some recent threads on those and they are supposed to work. Cows (and horses) are especially sensitive to obstacles that might hurt their legs and tend to avoid them like the plague.
I have experienced this, leading a donkey through part of the city for a Palm Sunday event. There were some sidewalk areas that were solid, but had a striped appearance. That donkey would not walk on them.
This was recently covered in this thread, although you wouldn’t know it from the thread title. In post#11, t-bonham@scc.net tells you all you need to know about cattle guards.
Actually Freddy, t-bonham made certain assertions about cattle guards regarding which he was asked for cites and never provided any. Which doesn’t surprise me because at least one of the things he said (that cattle don’t like them because the bars hurt their cloven hooves) goes against everything I’ve ever heard on the subject. For a city boy, I’ve had quite an amount to do with rural activities and I’ve always heard that cattle don’t like them because their hooves tend to slip on the steel bars and their legs fall between, causing them to be trapped at least and to break said legs at worst.
I was involved in litigation recently which, well it’s a long story but suffice to say the sheep-proofness of grids was an issue. The consensus of expert opinion was that they are not fully sheep proof: a determined or scared enough sheep can get across them, either by stepping very carefully or by leaping. But they are good enough in general, because anything but an extremely motivated sheep won’t even try.
No, but cattle don’t step on a real cattle guard as a test, feel something funny and decide not to cross. If they did the painted ones wouldn’t work. The cattle see the real one or the painted one which look different somehow from the rest of the ground and they just plain ain’t a gonna step there, no way, no how.
Which, of course, brings us back to your original question, “Would painted cattle guards work in the dark?” If the cattle can’t see them they don’t work whether real or painted. Both do work in the dark. Ergo. either the cattle can see them, or cattle remember them, or cattle sleep in one place all night.
I don’t know whether it’s memory or sight but I do know that in the winter when it gets dark early milk (or milch) cows still find their way without human help to the milking shed morning and evening in the dark.
