BIG adventure yesterday. Sunday 8:30 AM we get the phone call..”Your cows are out by the Corner Stop”. The Corner Stop being the local gas station that is located right next to a residential neighborhood and a 4-lane highway. That is the kind of call that takes a few years off my life expectancy. Scott and I head out in separate vehicles to track the wayward beasts. He spots 6 of them in the one of our pastures adjacent to where they should be. I play tracker and follow the hoof prints to find the other 23 (yes, 23) missing cattle. Boy were we lucky the cattle made a right turn away from the highway and into the woods. I heard them before I spotted them. They were mooing and about 300 yards from the high school baseball field but I turned them back to the countryside before they could start training for the spring sport season. By this time our neighbors, the conservation officer and deputy sheriff had arrived to help. This is where patience had to be exercised big time. The cattle were not too nervous. My task was to keep the cattle fairly sedate and the helpers that way, too. I was ready to trail the cattle slowly all day around the countryside if that is what it took to keep the group together and calm. With many turns and twists plus four lines of fence to circumvent we walked/trotted back to the home pasture. There is no way people can force 23 calves to walk over two miles and go through a 16 foot gate hole. We had to gently guide the cattle back to their home pasture so patience was paramount. Boy it felt good to swing that gate shut behind the last tail and have everyone back safely!
I have also had to call upon my patience for a more frustrating, but definitely less stressful situation. Last week a ewe gave birth to twins but had damage to one side of her udder. We did not have any ewes give birth to singles that could serve as adoptive mother to one of these twins. So I have been trying to train the lambs to nurse from a bottle. Right now the ewe can produce enough milk on one side to feed her two 12 pound lambs. The problem is in a few weeks before the lambs can eat a lot of solids but weigh 25-30 pounds each and are nursing a lot. Then there will not be enough milk and one of the lambs could starve to death. I want to supplement the lambs with milk replacer so they can get enough to eat when they are bigger. The problem is trying to convince them now to take the bottle when mom is supplying plenty. The lambs are making a little process, but it is slllooowww going. Hopefully, my patience will pay off!
