The Big Cow Adventure

This past Saturday morning was an interesting day for Clay and I. At 7:15 am, this is what our cow pen looked like:

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We don\’t keep a bunch of cattle, only approximately 20 yearlings, to help with the training of our cow horses. We feed them every day and this is how we are able to keep close tabs on the health of the herd – or in Saturday\’s case – the total number of the herd.

By 8:00 am on Saturday morning, we could only count 9 head…

Yeah. NO BUENO.

I didn\’t take a picture of the reduced herd, because there wasn\’t much to show you. Plus, I was running around like a madwoman trying to locate the quads, gator and our most suitable ranch horses. Of course, those horses were at the far, far end of the pasture.

So, we decided to track the missing yearlings first. Locate them and then we\’d saddle up our horses and go out bring them back to the farm. The problem was, this is what the land outside of our farm looks like:

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To me, it\’s incredibly beautiful, but once you get beyond the fences…

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It\’s wide open. And that\’s what more than half of our herd discovered. At around 8 am, we realized that some of our yearlings had busted through their fence and got past the second electric fence. Don\’t ask me how. All I can say is since Saturday, we are in the process of adding a 3rd  barrier…

Some days it seems like it doesn\’t matter what you do to try and protect your animals, they find ways around it.

We scouted our surrounding land in vehicles for over an hour and by a sheer miracle, I was able to catch a glimpse of 2 little black heifers bouncing happily through one our mustard fields. It was only for a second however and it happened so quickly, I wondered if my eyes were playing a trick on me. After all, my glimpse – or mirage – was 6kms away from the farm.

So Clay and I walked in on foot and found the missing bunch nestled quietly in some tall grasses. We decided the girls would probably stay put for the next 15 minutes, which would give us enough time to bring back some horses and round the yearlings up into a trailer.

We were wrong.

The wandering bunch of heifers must have sensed something was up. They got up and got a move on… We didn\’t have time to bring the horses in.

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Using only quads, a gator and several people on foot at key places, we were able to bring all 11 heifers back to the farm, to water / feed and to safety. But it took a couple of hours and a lot of human adrenaline.

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It was a bit of an exciting morning.

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The reason for these pictures is because I got quite a kick out of my husband\’s laughter as he stood watching the herd get a drink.

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And I would like to say that my husband was laughing out of sheer relief. But I would be lying if I told you that… As I came around the corner to take a picture of the now safe-at-home heifers, I spooked them accidentally. Which in turn, spooked me…

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Clay thought that part was hilarious.

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1 thought on “The Big Cow Adventure”

  1. Mary Deiter

    Great pictures, and nice to see you can laugh at yourself. Made me smile. The sky is beautiful in the second picture from the top. I love your photo-blogging!

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