Wednesday, April 30, 2008

All in a Days Work

Sometime its really easy to tell which calves belong to which cows and other times its just not that easy since they don't "mother up" all the time. For instance, last time we were moving cows we had an little calf in the rear of the herd - he was less than a week old. He was having a VERY hard time climbing this steep hill, he was frightened, scared, shaking - in such an instance we usually turn back the momma and leave them behind and come back for them at a later date. We had a big debate on the side of the hill over which cow we thought was the mother - the calf was balling for its momma but none of the cows seemed the least bit interested. It was decided that we thought it was Cow #317 - well Hollywood2 turned the cow back to the calf but #317 wasn't the least bit interested in this little balling calf - she actually ran back up the hill with the other pairs. Then it was thought maybe one of those four cows that wouldn't cross the blacktop before we started up this hill could include her mother so Hollywood and I went back to herd those cows to some corrals and haul them to where we were driving the herd in an attempt to reunite the pair. The four cows that wouldn't cross the blacktop had already caused a great deal of trouble and we'd all cursed their bad behavior. As we herded them towards some corrals that Hollywood and I were unfamiliar with - it really didn't help that people kept stopping on road and take pictures of us which in turn would cause the cows to turn back on us. We got the cows corralled and rode back to the trailer. To be cont.