Traversing muddy cow pastures
Now that calving season is about over, it’s time to get the cows in the configurations that they will be in for the rest of the year.
The first step in doing that this year was getting the two yearling heifers that wintered with the brood cows moved. My husband and I had been looking for an opportunity for well over a week. When we walked down to the winter lot this weekend, we saw the two heifers were hanging out away from the other cows.
We knew our chance had appeared.
We easily pushed them into our birthing pen and locked them in. Then, we asked our son to get the stock trailer and back it up to the pen so we could load the heifers into it.
We went on about our morning, figuring to go out after lunch when the heifers would be calmed down some. Before that could happen, my son came into the kitchen and waved for me to come out there, too. When I got there, he told me one of the heifers had gotten out and asked if I could please help him get it back.
I agreed and told him to get me a bucket of grain while I put my boots back on.
I took the bucket of grain out into the pasture where he said the heifer had headed. Knowing I couldn’t walk directly toward her, I cut up over the hill to try to get around behind her. Every few steps I took, she started to run further out into the field.
Further up the hill I climbed.
Pretending not to notice her, I kept walking far out into the pasture. Finally, I made it past her and could start cutting back down the hill.
As I began to get closer this time, the heifer jumped the fence into the paddock below the one she had been in. I got to the fence she had hopped and hopped it myself, praying it wasn’t electrified.
As I crossed that fence, she hopped the next, back into the pasture with the cows where she had been earlier that morning. I climbed over that fence as well and stepped into the creek to cross it. Gingerly, I climbed up the other bank and almost immediately became stuck in the mud. At this point, the entire herd of cows was coming after me, because I still held the bucket of grain.
I pulled the top of my boot free and began to climb the hillside back toward the birthing pen. I made it to solid ground just as the herd arrived, and I had to push my way through the snorting, jostling brood to lead them all into the pen.
Once I saw that the heifer I wanted was back inside, I handed the bucket off to my son and began to cull the unneeded cows back out of the pen. Finally, I was able to shut the gate and again had only the two needed heifers inside. Not wanting to take any other chances, my son and I pushed the heifers directly into the stock trailer and locked them inside.
Then we took them to the field where they needed to be and turned them out. It ended up with the result we wanted, but boy, was the method far from ideal.