Holy Cow!!!
Sunny, 61/24 Fair to Fair. Busy around here as I've decided to get into cattle. Picked 'em up a couple of weeks ago and finished the cross fencing with electric wire to keep in certain areas. Well, I stood back and looked at my work Saturday, and it looked real pretty. Then I decided to turn out the calves.
Well, theycame out of the corral slowly, then started kicking up their heels at their new found freedom. Took em 2 minutes to lay my electric fence to waste and disappear over the hill. Thank goodness my perimeter fence is barbed wire. If that didn’t stop them the next thing was the tennessee river… 15 miles away!!
Yesterday, I come up on the field and one of my heifers is trying to hitchhike her way out of the county. Took about 15 minutes to get her back in the pasture and another couple of hours to find the leak in the fence and fix it. I'll be glad when daylight savings time gets here. Fixing fence by tractor light is no fun. Especially with my habit of laying tools down anywhere!!
Interesting doings around the Bachelor place of late. We’ve started a cow herd. Well…. not really a herd…. more like a passel. Oh, they’re just as much fun as the goats, and took no time at all messing with the owner of the place. In fact, I think they are having a downright good time.
My biggest problem is watering. See, my pond is three hundred and three feet from my pond. How do I know this? I bought three hundred feet of hose to hook up to the pump to fill up the watering trough, but I seemed to have misjudged the distance by the slimmest of margins. So rather than waste an hour going to the store and back, I decided to fill it while holding my thumb over the end.
Now, my wife has taken care of many of my farm injuries before, but never a sprained thumb after 100 gallons of water flowed over it. When I showed it to her she told me to “Cowboy up” which is quickly becoming her new annoying term of the month. So rather than face another one of her irritating jokes, I’m keeping my mouth shut about the probable plastic surgery I’ll need to repair what seems to be chronic “water wrinkle” of my thumb.
Anyway, back to the cows and how they mess with me. Because they’re weaning, I’m keeping them in a corral for a couple of weeks. So I pump the water out of the pond with a gas water pump and 350 feet of hose (yes I added 50 feet) to the water trough. Well at my advancing age its kinda hard to see what’s happening 100 yards away, so after a half hour I walk up there, and they have knocked the hose out of the trough and are taking turns dipping their noses in and out of it. Its become a game of sorts.
Well, I’m mad that I’ve wasted a half hour, so I put the thing back in and stand there and watch them. Its all going pretty well, when I hear the pump sputter and run out of gas. I went back and filled up the pump and started it up and stood down by the pond for a while. I looked up towards the corral and all I could see were the cows facing backwards shaking their booties like KC and the Sunshine band were doing a reunion tour.
I hurried back towards the corral and sure enough, they had knocked the hose out of the trough again, and the water was shooting towards the corral, so they were taking turns putting their backsides towards the water stream and giving themselves some sort of perverted water wedgie.
I am so thankful this was on the back side (no pun intended) of my property. I had just bought this twenty acres and didn’t want anybody looking out their windows and saying stuff like “What’s he doing to those things now??
Well, since that first day, I’ve learned the value of baling twine and how to tie the hose to the fence so it doesn’t come out. I have to say though, I was using goats as training materials for cattle. I don’t think they’ve trained me near enough!!
Other interesting things to note:
1. When banding cows, Don’t bring a goat toy to do a mans job
2. I think I’ve discovered the organic equivalent to Velcro. Its called cow flops!! The stuff sticks to EVERYTHING
3. On that note. Cattle dirty things a little higher than goats….. about hand high…
4. On that note. Why are cattle’s favorite targets gate handles?
5. So Far in the electric corral fence “who gets shocked the most” contest Brad 5…. Cows 1
6. In the “who gets shocked the most when nature calls” contest Cows 1 Brad 0 (although I almost sent this one into overtime….)
7. When goats move in the livestock trailer, you look back to see how they’re doing. When cows move in the trailer… You’re changing lanes…
8. Cows and goats are both pigs when it comes to corn.
9. Young cows can get in a hay-ring like young goats get in the bunk feeder.
10. When a goat gets you, your hand gets blue… When a cow gets you, your hand gets the blue cross card….
Well, theycame out of the corral slowly, then started kicking up their heels at their new found freedom. Took em 2 minutes to lay my electric fence to waste and disappear over the hill. Thank goodness my perimeter fence is barbed wire. If that didn’t stop them the next thing was the tennessee river… 15 miles away!!
Yesterday, I come up on the field and one of my heifers is trying to hitchhike her way out of the county. Took about 15 minutes to get her back in the pasture and another couple of hours to find the leak in the fence and fix it. I'll be glad when daylight savings time gets here. Fixing fence by tractor light is no fun. Especially with my habit of laying tools down anywhere!!
Interesting doings around the Bachelor place of late. We’ve started a cow herd. Well…. not really a herd…. more like a passel. Oh, they’re just as much fun as the goats, and took no time at all messing with the owner of the place. In fact, I think they are having a downright good time.
My biggest problem is watering. See, my pond is three hundred and three feet from my pond. How do I know this? I bought three hundred feet of hose to hook up to the pump to fill up the watering trough, but I seemed to have misjudged the distance by the slimmest of margins. So rather than waste an hour going to the store and back, I decided to fill it while holding my thumb over the end.
Now, my wife has taken care of many of my farm injuries before, but never a sprained thumb after 100 gallons of water flowed over it. When I showed it to her she told me to “Cowboy up” which is quickly becoming her new annoying term of the month. So rather than face another one of her irritating jokes, I’m keeping my mouth shut about the probable plastic surgery I’ll need to repair what seems to be chronic “water wrinkle” of my thumb.
Anyway, back to the cows and how they mess with me. Because they’re weaning, I’m keeping them in a corral for a couple of weeks. So I pump the water out of the pond with a gas water pump and 350 feet of hose (yes I added 50 feet) to the water trough. Well at my advancing age its kinda hard to see what’s happening 100 yards away, so after a half hour I walk up there, and they have knocked the hose out of the trough and are taking turns dipping their noses in and out of it. Its become a game of sorts.
Well, I’m mad that I’ve wasted a half hour, so I put the thing back in and stand there and watch them. Its all going pretty well, when I hear the pump sputter and run out of gas. I went back and filled up the pump and started it up and stood down by the pond for a while. I looked up towards the corral and all I could see were the cows facing backwards shaking their booties like KC and the Sunshine band were doing a reunion tour.
I hurried back towards the corral and sure enough, they had knocked the hose out of the trough again, and the water was shooting towards the corral, so they were taking turns putting their backsides towards the water stream and giving themselves some sort of perverted water wedgie.
I am so thankful this was on the back side (no pun intended) of my property. I had just bought this twenty acres and didn’t want anybody looking out their windows and saying stuff like “What’s he doing to those things now??
Well, since that first day, I’ve learned the value of baling twine and how to tie the hose to the fence so it doesn’t come out. I have to say though, I was using goats as training materials for cattle. I don’t think they’ve trained me near enough!!
Other interesting things to note:
1. When banding cows, Don’t bring a goat toy to do a mans job
2. I think I’ve discovered the organic equivalent to Velcro. Its called cow flops!! The stuff sticks to EVERYTHING
3. On that note. Cattle dirty things a little higher than goats….. about hand high…
4. On that note. Why are cattle’s favorite targets gate handles?
5. So Far in the electric corral fence “who gets shocked the most” contest Brad 5…. Cows 1
6. In the “who gets shocked the most when nature calls” contest Cows 1 Brad 0 (although I almost sent this one into overtime….)
7. When goats move in the livestock trailer, you look back to see how they’re doing. When cows move in the trailer… You’re changing lanes…
8. Cows and goats are both pigs when it comes to corn.
9. Young cows can get in a hay-ring like young goats get in the bunk feeder.
10. When a goat gets you, your hand gets blue… When a cow gets you, your hand gets the blue cross card….
posted by Brad Bachelor at 4:03 AM
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