Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Two-minute cattle roundup

One of our long-overdue chores (now that our busy season is over, yippee!!) is to move the cattle from the pasture-side of our property to the wooded side.

It was way past due. As you can see, there's nothing left for the beasties to eat. They had access to the neighbor's twenty-acre parcel also, but even so, pickings were slim.


We didn't move them before this because we had some fences that needed repair, and we didn't have the time to repair them. But Don patched the fence today, so we decided it was time. We stationed the girls with push poles -- one blocking the driveway, the other blocking access to the barn.

A call of "Bossy bossy bossy bossy bossy!" brought all the animals to the gate in a hurry. They know what's up!


"It's about time!" they told us.


When Don opened the gate, they came bolting through. They knew exactly where to go.


Stampede! (Except for stopping for the occasional bite of grass, of course.)




Within two minutes -- tops -- they were on the wooded side of the property, happily munching whatever greenery they could find.



You never saw a more contented herd of cows.






We've been bone-dry here for nearly three months, so grazing in the woods is limited at best. Thankfully rain is expected this weekend, but I suspect the cows won't find much more than about a week's worth of food. After that, we start feeding hay, and they'll graze here and there until there's snow on the ground.

7 comments:

  1. here on our country road we have annual cattle round ups too-though generally they go from farm to farm. sometimes they bust out of the fence and end up near the highway, but all one has to do is grab a golf club and point the way and they all just fall in line and go where they need to be.

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  2. Good stewardship having well trained animals & a secondarygrazing area. Hopefully you'll have rain and the other pasture will green up enough to delay having to use hay already

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  3. Hey, Patrice - you mentioned the very dry conditions you are having. I just watched last night a documentary called "Back to Eden" about a fellow in very dry Northwestern conditions who has been gardening successfully without irrigation for about 30 years using deep organic mulches. His garden is unbelievable with lush plants and almost no weeds. Just thought you might be interested - you can read about the idea or watch the movie by free streaming at http://backtoedenfilm.com/

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    1. this film is rather long, but very interesting...i tried this form of gardening this year with a very small patch and it works indeed..the big payoff will be as i continue through the years.

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  4. Idaho's version of Pamploma's "Running of the Bulls."

    Only this is the "Running of the Cows, Steers and Horse."

    I love to see happy animals.

    Just Me

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