Cowpocalypse

So we let the dogs out every evening to let them do their business and stretch their legs. We're out in the back yard hanging out, and I look out into the field and see the cows swarming the well. And I mean swarming like bees. They're moving in circles around it, agitated, and moo-screaming. So I grab the snips and head out there to see what's up.

I had just put a fence around our new well yesterday. And cows being the curious creatures they are, had taken quite the interest in the new fence. As I got close, I found that a few cows had gotten behind the fence (tore the door off and trampled the opposite side), and were now basically in a small fenced in area completely terrified and freaking out. I quickly cut down the back side of the fence and opened it up, and she saw the new way out and took off like a rocket. Then I started mending the fence, cutting a new panel off and twisting the ends around each other (like you do).

There are a few baby cows in the herd, and baby cows are the total embodiment of innocence, walking right up to you if you're still enough. So they were coming thru the entrance area where there used to be a door, and getting all confused when they saw us. I applied pressure to the little cows to push them back, and that triggered the bull who must have thought I was messing with his kids and came over and put himself between us and the babies in that "I will mess you up" sort of way.

So slowly backing down, de-escalating, staying behind the fence from him, giving him access to the little ones, we managed to let things get back down to normal. Now the fence is mended, we hung a new door out of scrap material, and headed back to the house after dark. Hands shredded from the fence, jeans covered in cowpies, we get back home and find that the dogs had celebrated our departure by eating my laptop bag.

I was frustrated for a few minutes, but after cleaning up a bit, crating the dogs, and sitting down, I couldn't help but smile. I'd rather do this than deal with office drama any day.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nearly done moving

Boy what a month! Wait... It's been two months. Moving is really hard when you do it on a shoestring budget. It takes a ton of preparation and fitting packing and sorting in the evenings so you can move stuff in the weekend. In the mean time, you now have 2 houses to deal with, contractors to schedule, repairs to be made. At some point, although you have 2 houses in 2 different cities, you are effectively homeless living out of a backpack for a few weeks. The internet situation in the new place leaves much to be desired. I am not really sure if I can upload youtube videos on this 1.5Mbps farm internet. We shall see. I have been upping my book reading though, crossing off another 3 books from the list. One day, we need to learn how to harvest the energy in reading lists. I finish a book and cross it off in the list, only to see it has grown with new books to read. The cows on the land are pretty much all Angus cows. The breed originates from Scotland where they have summer tem...
Read more

The Journey to Chickens

Chickens are supposedly the easiest animal to husband. Perhaps I'm not cut out for this farm life. We started with 50 straight run heritage reds. I have a justin rhodes style chick shaw built for the ladies, and a small bachelor pad built for the dudes. From the beginning it was rough. They shipped at 5pm on the day they were supposed to hit the mail (which means they were likely already pushing a day old),  they took 3 full days to get here after that. But they did arrive all alive. They were the cutest things in the world. Little chicks are like tiny anime heros, full of gusto and bravery with a frame completely to small to backup of all that inner fire. They arrived in early February, and I stuck them in my Ohio brooder. The next day, two were dead. Then 3. Then 6 died when they got out and couldn't get back to the pen and another 5 by morning. Within a just 3 days, I had 15 dead chicks.  I switched immediately to an intensively managed brooder in our shed with 4 large ...
Read more

Merry Fencemas

Winter time is a pretty crazy time in Texas. It's warm enough into January to work all day, but the sun disagrees with that. I suppose it's nice not to push till 8pm every day. We tend to celebrate family Christmas before the actual event so that we can get the most attendance from far off relatives, so the actual day is fairly low key. Banana pancakes, coffee, pig ears (for the dogs) proceed a small gift exchange. I got a spare tire carrier for my trailer, and Laura got some pottery tools. In a few days, I'm taking a mini-trip down to  Hog Trap Ranch  to get a little bit of dairy goat training as well as some general info on the little ones we'll be getting in January. I'm a little nervous of goats to be honest. I'd like to extend calf sharing to goats, but I'm not sure how to do it. I think we'll have some time to figure this out though, as I believe we're getting babies and I'd like to keep them a year before breeding them. That will give m...
Read more