Let me tell you a little story about cow 19...
Cow 19 would let me pet her until she had this heifer calf. I went down to tag the calf the day after it was born and she ran from me until the calf ran right through the fence and down into the canebrakes on the river bottom and didn’t come back until sometime up in the night. I finally did get an ear tag in it when they came to a lot with the rest of the cows to eat but 19 lost all trust in me then...
When cattle moving day came to move all of the cattle to home 10 from where they had been born and raised we caught all of them except 19 and her calf...they were wild as a March hare and wouldn’t come in no matter what so we loaded the rest of the cows and took them to their new home...
I thought if we catch her calf we can get her...my plan was to feed her every day until we get her to go into the lot and then close them up...
This was Tuesday after the Saturday we moved the cows...
I moved the trough a little closer to the lot and this was Wednesday.
On Thursday I moved the trough into the lot and Friday afternoon the cow and calf went in and I called the previous owner and asked them to shut the gate as soon as these pictures came through...
19 paced back and forth all night and I had set up the move for Saturday and just before dawn she jumped out of the lot but her calf couldn’t get out so we still had it.
We tried and tried to get her to come up on Saturday but she was wild and would have none of it so I had her calf in the barn and it was bawling for her and I hid in some brush and waited for her. She finally came and went in the barn and I tried to shut her in but she heard me and busted out before I could get the gate latched...flung me against the corral and broke a post on her way out...
I tried the rest of the day to no avail and while waiting her out I contacted a cowboy and pleaded with him to come give me a hand...younger fellow but very accomplished. He agreed to meet me there at 7 am the next morning. The cow had been in the barn all night with the calf but went back into the trees just before we arrived. His plan was to push her into the open field and try to herd her into the corral using his horse and a dog...that didn’t work at all as she kept running straight back into the woods so he decided to rope her and we would drag her into the trailer. When he went into the woods to push her out she busted through the barbed wire fence and ran down into the river bottom so he trailed her by tracks until he found her mired in a mud slough...
He roped her and she got so mad all she wanted to do was kill anybody near her. The cowboy used that to our advantage and got her out of the mud and she chased him all the way to the truck and trailer.
We got 2 ropes on her head and one on her heel and we finally drug her into the trailer.
He told me she would destroy our corral if we unloaded her there so he said he would either take her to home 10 or the sale barn. He recommended sale barn because he said she would make all the rest of the cows wild...I hated to sell a cow I had just bought who already had me a real nice heifer calf but I finally told him to haul her to the sale barn. Unbelievably they sold fairly well and I didn’t lose any money on the deal and bittersweet I have her calf from last year still because I bought her as a pair with that year old heifer calf. Crazy cow...
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
