Looks like this will be the
week of the cows.
Tuesday morning before work,
Chris, our neighbor to the south
called in a panic because there were
three small cows in her driveway.
By the time she got me on the phone
they had started to wander to the rear of
her property.
Which is good - since she has an open
pasture back there, with a gate into
our fenced back pasture.
They are Brock's cows.
His cows used to get out ALL. THE. TIME.
And we had to wrangle them.
This group was easy.
We have a large gate going into Chris's property on the south
and a small gate going into Brock's property on the north.
Brock was already searching for them, so he
brought over a bucket of feed and they
followed him across our pasture and back to
their own place.
Tuesday after work Kyle and I took
Spot down to the butcher.
He was a good looking steer.
And a good size.
Probably over 1200 pounds.
(He didn't want to get into the part of the alley
with the scales in it, so we just opened it up
and put him straight into the trailer...)
He was the friendliest of the three.
But also a feed hog.
I'm hopeful with him gone the others will finally grow!
Meeting the new neighbors.
Off-loading went nice and smooth.
AFTER we figured it all out on our own and got him
in a stall, a young man came out and apologized for not
being there to help, took our information and we left.
Wednesday (yesterday) we got up and met Brock in our
yard where he hooked our trailer to his truck,
Kyle and I hopped into his F450
and went back to Brock's where he loaded a bunch of
corral panels into our trailer and we headed up to
a little dairy farm in New Smyrna, to pick up
a new 24' stock trailer for Brock and a bull
and a show cow.
Good grief.
They got a LOT of rain from the storm.
The pastures were super wet - they had to traipse
all over the pasture to drive them into the one
that has a load-out chute.
We eventually got them into the pasture.
The cow went into the barn, so the lady locked
her in a stall.
Then the bull headed into the barn.
Instead of putting him in another stall and just
backing the trailer into the alley of the barn and loading
them from there, she tried to put them in the same
stall - so they both got out.
Never did get them back into the barn.
And neither one really wanted to get into the
little pen with the load-out.
We ran them up and down and up and down
and up and down... this silly pasture.
FINALLY got the cow into the pen
and went ahead and loaded her into the trailer.
And then used Kyle's truck and the trailer
as a catch alley to push the bull into the pen.
(NERVOUS that bull would kick out and
dent Kyle's fancy new truck... but he didn't. WHEW!)
Got him in the pen, and then he loaded into
the alley BACKWARDS and couldn't figure out
how to back into the trailer.
So she had to turn him around in the alley.
(We would have let him out of the alley, he was
IN the pen, and just re-loaded him, but he's not
our bull, not our show, not our call...)
Anyhow.
Eventually we got them all loaded.
Meanwhile, Brock hired a cowboy to pick up
6 more cows from another place and take them
to the butcher up there, so we didn't have to do
that as well. We took the 2 we had, along
with the 2 trailers and headed up the highway
to a farm just down the road from where we
go to get our feed.
(Wish we had our barrels!)
This is the "pasture" the next herd was in.
There were 6 of the lady's dairy cows
and supposedly 10 "yearlings"
(but actually weanlings)
that Brock had purchased.
Brock and Angela(?) put on their hip waders
and away they went.
Meanwhile Kyle did some amazing driving and turned
his 50' rig around on a very tight, very wet,
dirt road and didn't get us stuck or scratched
or anything!
We got all set up while they brought in the herd.
Luckily these ones are trained to feed so they
just had to go find them and then they pretty well
just followed them in.
We used the extra corral panels to create a pen out
in the little dirt road so we could sort off the calves
and load them in our trailer, and then she put her
cows into her trailer.
It went more smoothly than I thought it would.
Luckily dairy cows are more like big dogs.
VERY docile.
Anyhow.
We got them loaded up, turns out there were only
9 little guys - while we were setting up the panels
one of them wandered off, so we only had 8.
Brock and Angela put on their waders again
and headed back out to try to find the missing
calves. (We still thought there were 10 total...)
The wanderer wandered back.
They never did find another calf.
Anyhow, we took the 9 we did have,
put the panels all back in the other trailer,
and headed out.
The new trailer had REALLY low tires,
so we hit a gas station and aired them up
and then headed north to near Kyle's old ranch.
Met a guy in a field and let out the babies and the bull
into a nice big, green, lush, DRY pasture where they
will grow up. The boys will head to freezer camp
and the girls will become a new cow/calf herd.
The show cow stayed in our trailer to come back
to Brock's farm for his "petting zoo" thing he has
going on over there on Thursdays.
It was a LONG day.
We finally got back into town just before 8:00.
Kyle had to back into his pasture in the dark.
Brock helped guide him in.
I got out and walked home and fed out animals
and made dinner.
Whew!!!!!
Today it's a non-cow day.
(I hope)
Just working at the town,
Kyle and Rod are back at work at the airport.
And then.....
tomorrow is another cow day!!!!!
Stay tuned!
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