I was getting the cows ready to move back to the home
pasture after I get a calf shed to a point where it is stable enough to
withstand relentless rubbing by the cows. When I do this, I take a small
container (an old basting pan with holes in the bottom) of grain and call them
(Com’Boss, Com’Boss) from the back of the Stump Farm. This gets them accustomed
to following the call. The grain is just the lure to train them with. The older
cows already know the routine and would probably move quite easily. It is the
younger ones that aren’t as familiar with the route that I always worry about.
This particular evening I took the pan of grain with me on
my evening walk with Skyeball. We usually go past the back corner of the Stump
Farm on these walks. I called the cows and they came running (they really like
grain). I noticed that Miss D was lagging behind the rest and then I saw that a
new calf, the last calf of the year, was trailing her.
I put the grain out in little piles so no one cow could hog
it all. I gave Miss D the last bit in the pan and tried to get a better look at
the calf to see if it was a heifer or a bull. The calf was a day or two old and
vigorous enough to run pretty well. It shied and started to trot away from me.
Harley (short for Harlequin), Racer’s calf from last year
that I wrote about in the post, New Addition to the Herd of 4/3/13, saw the new
calf trotting away and started to chase it. Harley dwarfs the new calf and it
started to run faster. Harley started to chase it faster, and to make it worse,
several of the other yearlings seeing Harley running joined her.
The new calf hit the fence at the edge of the pasture and
went through it like it wasn’t even there. This wasn’t surprising. The wire was
really loose because the cows had recently knocked off a corner fence brace
that helped keep tension on the wire. And even in top condition, the fences aren’t
designed to stop calves. They are designed to keep the big cows in the pasture
and one hopes and assumes that the young calves don’t want to get too far from
their mothers so they don’t often get out.
The chase and escape all happened in a matter of seconds and
there wasn’t anything I could do about it. I went to the fence, got through it,
and started looking for the calf. This part of the fence borders the Diobsud
Creek Road. I had lost sight of
the calf when it went through the fence though it had appeared to be heading
south along the road towards Highway 20.
A look up and down the road yielded nothing and the packed
gravel surface held no tracks. So I started south along the road looking into
the brush on either side. Then I noticed a neighbor who had just turned in from
Highway 20 coming up the road. He was driving more slowly than normal and
stopped to talk. I think I asked if he had seen a calf at almost the same
instance he asked me if I was looking for a calf. He said he had seen it just
down the road and it had turned west off into the brush.
I didn’t see the calf where he said it had turned off into
the brush. It is really thick in this spot and visibility is about 5 feet. So I
went a little past that spot and circled back around toward it. My hope was
that, if I didn’t see it, I might jump it and hear it moving through the brush
and locate it that way.
The wild card in this whole matter was Skyeball who just
loves to chase things. If I see her and stop her she won’t chase but she was
out of sight making noise in the brush herself. So I couldn’t be sure if it was
Skyeball or the calf I was hearing.
I decided to let Skyeball run loose in the chance that she
might jump the calf and hopefully not run it too far off in the woods. This was
my main concern. The calf had run several hundred yards from the pasture and
there was a very good chance it wouldn’t find its way back. When it started
bawling for its mother, Miss D, she would probably go through the fence to get
it, assuming the coyotes didn’t get it first.
Under this scenario, I would have both the cow and the calf
out wondering around near the highway, newly opened for the year and full of
people driving fast in a hurry to get somewhere. Cows are funny, they will work
their way, or walk or even run through a barbed wire fence but they rarely go
back through the fence in the other direction.
I didn’t see any sign of the calf. When I got back near
where it had bailed off the Diobsud Creek Road, I got on my hands and knees and
crawled for a while in order to see through the brush better. Finally I heard
something that I was pretty sure wasn’t Skyeball. And then I saw some brush
moving about ten yards away. I worked my way over but didn’t see or hear
anything else. Then I took a long step through some bracken ferns and realized
that I had just stepped over the calf. It was lying quietly slightly curled up
just like a fawn or an elk calf would. The calf is red with a white face and
white markings, not exactly a color that blends in well with Pacific Northwest
greenery but it was surprisingly well hidden.
It laid there quietly while I picked it up and then the
struggle was on. It struggled and twisted and kicked and kicked and twisted. I
had just had a vasectomy in the not too distant past and was still feeling a
little tender in some parts that are already naturally tender. These tender
spots got kicked several times. I held on to the calf though. If it got to run
again, I might not be able to catch it. Sweating and panting, with aching arms,
I managed to carry it several hundred yards back to the edge of the pasture and
push it under the fence. This was made easier due to the slack wire.
Miss D was quite happy to get her calf back and the calf
seemed quite happy to be back with its mother. It is a little bull, by the way.
This little adventure brings up an interesting point. I had
entertained the thought of keeping Harley for a breeding cow because she has
some pretty unique markings. This is entirely the wrong reason to keep an animal
that is meant to serve a purpose such as eating or working.
Most of the animals I have ever known, like people, have
their own unique personalities. Harley’s sire was a bull named Bullseye.
Bullseye wasn’t particularly mean but he had a way about him and did things in
a manner such that, nine times out of ten, if there was a problem of some kind,
it could be traced directly back to Bullseye. I don’t know how many times he
got out or how many fences he bent down. Several times when I was moving the
cows, even though he had traveled between the two pastures many times and knew
the way quite well, he would stop in the middle of the gate at the back of the
pasture and block the young calves, who didn’t know the way, from getting
through. Then he would take off and go straight to the other pasture, leaving
the calves behind, now separated from their mothers and completely lost.
I don’t think Bullseye was doing this on purpose. It was
just his way. Goofy, rambunctious, obnoxious. Obnoxious is the best word I can think of to describe Bullseye.
He wasn’t particularly mean but he was an obnoxious knothead who made a lot of
things much harder than they had to be. I finally got tired of this and I got
rid of him. I see a lot of the same type of obnoxious tendencies in Harley.
Big cows might accidently trample a little calf but they
usually don’t chase after them. I think this is the first time I have witnessed
this behavior. Chasing something that is running away seems to be a widespread
instinct. I have witnessed young calves and coyotes chasing each other at the
home pasture, apparently at play, which I am sure was the case while the big
cows were nearby (I’m sure it would have been something more serious and deadly
for the calves if the coyotes had ever been able to separate them from the herd).
In Harley’s defense, she is still young and has a lot of
energy. I am sure she wasn’t trying to kill the calf but her actions put it in
danger. Most cows mellow in a few years, especially after they have had a calf
or two. I am willing to give Harley another chance but I have my eye on her and
if she keeps causing problems, she will gone. Quirky personalities that always
seem to create troubles might be just fine or even funny in people or pet
animals but I can’t tolerate it if you are a beef cow in our herd.
This highlights why you shouldn’t choose your work animals
on novelty looks alone. In this world there are many things might look pretty on the
surface but their true value lies in the underlying characteristics that aren’t
often so visible. Traits like good, healthy calves, successful calving, calf
care, not making a lot of extra work for me are much more important than looks
alone.
A good example of this is Grapeleaf. She isn’t much to look
at, kind of bony, often slightly crazed and sometimes quite dangerous. But she
calves every year without problems, she has healthy calves and takes good care
of them. She generally doesn’t create a lot of problems so I can forgive her
less appealing traits.
Buildings are another good example. Our hay barn is pretty
boring architecturally speaking. It is a square building with a couple of
lean-tos and no fancy architecture but the design is very efficient for moving
hay into it. I know some barns that have pretty cool architectural features
that are nightmare to put hay into. The very architecture that creates the look means you have to fight bales around tight corners and stacks of bales that, of
a necessity to get the barn filled, are in your way. This means spending a lot
more time and expending a lot more effort, often in awkward body positions inside
a hot, stuffy barn. No Thank You!
Finally, I should mention our dog Skyeball. She is a pretty dog with one brown eye and one blue eye and the type of facial markings, cheek patches and two small patches over the eyes, that are so attractive to many people. But she is a
handful, very smart but also quite willful.
She had been to the pound twice before we got her because
she was more work than the people who had her were willing to deal with. As I
stated earlier, while looking for that calf, she was a wild card. I am sure that, with a little work, she would be a very good herd dog but I don't have the time to put into training her. She knows the
command to stay and she will follow it for a short time. But sometimes she will
willfully disobey a command if there is something exciting going on, especially
if there is something to chase. It would take a huge investment in time, that I
don’t have, to train her better and, obviously, the two different people who
had her before us didn’t want to deal with her, period.
The world would be a rather dull place without pretty things. I suppose sometimes it is worth it to sacrifice some functionality in favor of aesthetics but with cows and a lot of other things I have found that functionality is much more valuable that aesthetics. There is a sweet spot where something
that is aesthetically pleasing is at the same time very functional. This is
often hard to find. I will be keeping my eye on Harley in the future.
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| Dreadlocks or Miss D with her new calf, a little bull and the last calf due in 2014. At the time this photo was taken, Miss D was keeping her calf away from the rest of the herd. |
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| Left to Right: Racer and Harley. Harley is Racer's calf from just last year and, even though she is only a yearling, she is as big as or bigger than her mother. |
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