They Do It On Purpose

Last Thursday through Sunday were very long, difficult days at work.
I was physically and emotionally spent.

I'm pretty hard on myself if I mess up or something goes wrong, because I know I'm better than that.
I work really hard because I would like to do this 'farm-thing' forever..and because I would go crazy if I didn't.

Lots of bad things happen that tug at my heart or make me second-guess myself, but then miraculously something always happens that takes my mind off the bad and occupies my thoughts.

Enter The Dry Cows.....

If these expectant mothers aren't stealing each others babies they are finding some other way to keep me on my toes.

I have two lots for them:

1. Close-up: Within 30 days of calving.

2. Far-off: > 30 of calving.

It's mind-boggling isn't it?

The names also coincide with the proximity of the fields to the dairy barn.

We try to keep things fairly easy 'round hur.

In a perfect(alien) world:

I would move the cows from the far-off lot to the close-ups about 2 weeks from calving to keep my eye on them.

Then one cool morning, the birds would sing and the butterflies would dance through the air as the mother's welcome their newborns into the world.

Beautiful, perfect little bundles of joy..

In my(typical) world:

Things would go like they went yesterday...

Due to the events and craziness of last week I had not been to check on my far-offs in a few days.

No biggie, seeing as I had already put the 2 closest-to-calving cows in the close-up lot.

After lunch I decided to walk back to the pond field, home to the far-offs, and take a looky-loo.

Something happens in the pond field...could be the water..but after about a week of being out there, a cow will forget that she is domesticated and what people look like.

This normally results in a wide-eyed look of shear terror and all you see are hooves flying in the opposite direction, when you happen upon one of these 'wild' animals

So yesterday I got alllllllll the way back to the pond and found two cows with two calves.

Super.

Oh, and these two cows were from my close-up lot.

Told you they're sneaky.

OK, no problem if the calves would walk....

But they wouldn't.

One of them did, however, kick me in the knee approximately 6 times in less than a minute.

Then I turned around and walked eight thousand miles back to the barn, got the front end loader, and drove back to the pond.

When I got there I put both calves in the bucket and used the tractor to drive the cows to the barn...

Just so you know when a cow sees a tractor TheyDon'tRun.

They do, however, want to smell and lick it.

Problem number 2.

Luckily I found a sorting stick on the tractor and used it to whack the fender, while I drove, in order to try and scare the cows enough to get them headed toward the barn.

It worked!

The next ten-twelve minutes were spent flying through the field on the tractor, with two calves in the bucket threatening to abandon ship, yelling "LET'S GOOOOOO" and whacking the fender with the stick.

So the procedure might not be textbook, but then again most of the situations I find myself in aren't either.

They do it on purpose.