Quote for the Day 5/16/2008b
The rogue cow-calf plot thickens.
Several hours after Lowell triumphantly hauled off the cow and calf that had spent a lonely night here while all their compatriots had gone off to the Salt Creek pasture over a mile away, I looked out the living room window in time to see an Angus cow cruising off the blacktop into our driveway. I promptly called Lowell.
She headed in the general direction of the stock tank which is roughly straight ahead of where she turned in, but when she veered to the side and began to take an interest in the rose bushes at the edge of the front lawn, I went out to greet her. I asked her what in the world she was doing here. She turned tail and shouldered her way through a narrow space beside the catch pen into the big cattle pen. I swung shut the catch pen gate through which the cattle had passed on their way onto the trailer, and looked for the electric fence wire gate that normally spans the entire opening when the cattle live here. It was unaccountably cut and couldn't be closed. So I rolled a barrel over to the space where the cow had entered the pen and set it in the gap.
Lowell soon came back with the big cattle trailer and shooed the cow inside it.
Later he called back to tell me what really happened. The cow and calf that stayed here overnight were apparently a mismatched pair, something which Dad figured out after they had been together for a little while and he noticed that the cow still had a very full udder. That meant that there was another mismatched pair in the Salt Creek pasture. So the errant cow that showed up here had come looking for her calf--the one that had stayed here all night with a cow that was not its mother. That was very sweet of her, but the calf had already been hauled off, so the cow's heroic effort was in vain.
Meanwhile, a very lonely calf spent the night in the Salt Creek pasture while its mother was confined to the trailer here. The two calves look very much alike, so the confusion happened easily.
The families are all happily united now, and we're expecting a quiet night here on the farm.
Several hours after Lowell triumphantly hauled off the cow and calf that had spent a lonely night here while all their compatriots had gone off to the Salt Creek pasture over a mile away, I looked out the living room window in time to see an Angus cow cruising off the blacktop into our driveway. I promptly called Lowell.
She headed in the general direction of the stock tank which is roughly straight ahead of where she turned in, but when she veered to the side and began to take an interest in the rose bushes at the edge of the front lawn, I went out to greet her. I asked her what in the world she was doing here. She turned tail and shouldered her way through a narrow space beside the catch pen into the big cattle pen. I swung shut the catch pen gate through which the cattle had passed on their way onto the trailer, and looked for the electric fence wire gate that normally spans the entire opening when the cattle live here. It was unaccountably cut and couldn't be closed. So I rolled a barrel over to the space where the cow had entered the pen and set it in the gap.
Lowell soon came back with the big cattle trailer and shooed the cow inside it.
Later he called back to tell me what really happened. The cow and calf that stayed here overnight were apparently a mismatched pair, something which Dad figured out after they had been together for a little while and he noticed that the cow still had a very full udder. That meant that there was another mismatched pair in the Salt Creek pasture. So the errant cow that showed up here had come looking for her calf--the one that had stayed here all night with a cow that was not its mother. That was very sweet of her, but the calf had already been hauled off, so the cow's heroic effort was in vain.
Meanwhile, a very lonely calf spent the night in the Salt Creek pasture while its mother was confined to the trailer here. The two calves look very much alike, so the confusion happened easily.
The families are all happily united now, and we're expecting a quiet night here on the farm.
posted by Mrs. I at
5:22 PM
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