Once Upon a Time a Cow....

If you've never actually tasted the grass on the other side then maybe you have not really had an adventure. Tuesday morning one of our dry cows decided to try the grass on the other side herself. The dry cows are our pregnant cows that are within sixty days of calving and not being milked.

 
 222 decided she would step over the fence where a tree had fallen on it and walk into the hay field. She was like Cinderella having a wonderful time munching on hay until the clock struck "time-to-eat-breakfast-at-the-barn" which is usually around 5:00 am for them. While she was unable to find her way back to the hole in the fence she was able to walk around to the other side and, like Dorothy, follow the paved road to the barn.

Now all of this adventuring really made her hungry so she decided to stop for a bite to eat at our grain bin. With the obvious help of her fairy god-cow she was able to flip the switch that turned on a grain auger and let it run until it kicked the breaker off. Yes, she did.

She lay there in a slumber like Sleeping Beauty until we arrived at work. Luckily no one had to give her true love's kiss for her to wake up. She heard us coming, woke up, and we let her in through a gate to go back in with the rest of the dry cows who were ready for their breakfast.

Now that the fence has been repaired I think you could say that this story finally has a happy ending for farmer and cow.

Hitman For Ackbar

So I hired a hitman...... umm...this probably bears a good explanation.

After feeding Ackbar the suspicious heifer and her associates for two weeks in the corral we had still made little progress in getting them calmed down enough that we could load and move them. Then she left. I mean on her own. Ackbar jumped the fence and got in with the neighbor's cattle.

Okay, what sounded bad ended up being a little better when we found out he had a corral, too. The new plan was to wait for Ackbar to get used to the new cows and go in to eat with them in their corral. A week and a half later our neighbor called to say that Ackbar refused to go in his corral and was jumping back and forth over his fences. Please come and get your cow was the main part of his message. At this point we felt we were running out of options on ever getting her home. We couldn't catch her no matter how we tried. We needed help.

For those of you who have been waiting patiently, we're now to the hitman part.

So, I know a guy that knows a guy. Isn't that how the story is supposed to go? Actually in this case I know a girl that knows a guy, but you get the idea. The guy is a professional, or maybe I should say he has professionally tranquilized animals before. The new plan was for him to shoot her with a tranquilizer dart and then we could load her up and take her back home. The outcome of this plan ended up being best summarized by a refigerator magnet I saw once: Man plans, God laughs.

Ackbar, who seemed to have some sort of Spidey-sense to keep her away from danger, always managed to stay just out of range of the tranquilizer gun. She eventually jumped the fence and wandered around our neighbor's farm from one side to the other with us following by truck or on foot.

Eventually, and I do say eventually, the pendulum of luck swung mostly back to us. Ackbar walked into the corner of the fences and hopped back over into our field. No tranquilizer needed today.

We moved some new calves into the field with Ackbar and her cohorts and it has definitely helped. She has calmed down enough that we were actually able to touch her (really!) while she ate without her flinching and running away. Hopefully, and I do have hope again, we'll be able to move her next week to the field with heifers her age and size.