Tuesday morning "fun" (well, maybe not so much)

Right as the sun is coming up I decided to count cows. One cow-calf pair short. Great, just what I wanted to do this morning! (not) Wife heads out in one direction in her car, me on foot trudging up over the hill in the other direction. Wife finds the calf, and it's outside the fence. Normally, not too big of a deal, but not this morning. I look in the pasture the calf is in and it seems the neighboring ranch has put a bunch of steers and a bull in the adjoining pasture. I hop the fence into that pasture and start walking the fence line. Yep, sure enough our bull, Jack, and their bull must have got into it during the night. Up near the top of the hill the fence is completely down except for a top wire for about 150' feet. Great. Mad scramble occurs trying to get our cows, calves and Jack into a different pasture before everyone gets mixed up and then we have a big rodeo on our hands.

First, we've got to get the calf back to momma, so we just run her through the hole in the fence. Problem is, she's HUN-GRY! She must have been out most of the day yesterday. We're trying to move the cows and all she wants to do is nurse which makes momma stop every few feet. Jack always brings up the rear, so every time she stops, Jack stops. This gives Jack enough time to look back and see his adversary in the other pasture. He's all worked up, slobberin' and growlin' the "Let's fight!" song... (if you've ever heard a bull do this it's memorable; it's the only time they make this sound).

We finally get momma moving, poor calf is getting towed along like a trailer attached to her teet tryin' to nurse. We manage to get everyone in a lower pasture so they're separated from the other steers and bull by a pasture between them.

Now I get to go fix fence, and it looks like it's gonna' take a while. Plus, I get to do it with steers and a foreign bull right on the other side of the fence I'm tryin' to fix. It's supposed to snow tomorrow, so the fence has got to get fixed now. Just what I wanted to do today.

Feels like a Monday, on Tuesday. **sigh**

Sorry - it just never ends, does it?

a reply to: Lazarus Short

Heh, heh... Seems like it sometimes. There's certainly no lack of things to do, that's for sure.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

Ya know, Monday always gets a bad rap...but..
What the hell is so great about tuesdays?

The kind of funny part of this is what caused me to count the cows in the first place. It was an owl. Yep, an owl.

I walked out on the front deck and thought I saw a cat sitting on top of a fence post. Odd, I thought. All I could see was the top of its head and its ears. It was due east and the backdrop was the rising sun, so everything was in shadow. (Beautiful sunrise by the way). Anyway, I grabbed my binoculars to see what this cat was doing. Well, it wasn't a cat, it was a great big Great Horned Owl sitting on the fencepost probably hunting rabbits. My wife and I stood there for a few minutes looking at this cool owl (we have tons of them around here).

It was about that time when I saw the first of the cows come over the top of the hill, so I decided to count them all while I was standing there watching Mr. Owl. That's when I noticed we had a pair missing. I thought they might just be stragglers, sometimes calves will do that, they just conk out and momma stays behind waiting for their lazy butt to wake up. But when she didn't show up after a pretty long while I figured something was amiss.

Thanks, Mr. Owl, had it not been for you I'd have probably had a much bigger chore on my hands today.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

Maybe Tuesday Afternoon will be a turnaround and your wife will join you in...

I'm looking at myself, reflections of my mind It's just the kind of day to leave myself behind So gently swaying through the fairy-land of love If you'll just come with me you'll see the beauty of Tuesday afternoon Tuesday afternoon

(From Tuesday Afternoon song, by the Moody Blues).

may I offer you a feel good post.

If it was easy, everyone would do it.

now,please get back to your regularly scheduled mayhem.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

Sounds like someone is gonna hit that prison hooch this evening.

hey - its evident that any critiscism of you or what you do is intolerable

but hey - sane people would move the bull first - by itself - bull problem solved

but hey - you know best so ...............................

Well, you could be making an hour-long commute into the city, fighting bumper-to-bumper traffic on a six-lane parking lot while listening to soul-sucking propaganda-disguised-as-news broadcast over the airwaves.

Step back and count your blessings, man. I miss waking up to the smell of livestock and being in the saddle just after sunrise.
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originally posted by: ignorant_ape
hey - its evident that any critiscism of you or what you do is intolerable

but hey - sane people would move the bull first - by itself - bull problem solved

but hey - you know best so ...............................

Easier, maybe, but probably not faster than just getting done once for all.

Sounds like he had a possible sitchiayshun brewing with those two bulls in the same neighborhood.

a reply to: ignorant_ape

Not sure where that came from, but okay, whatever.

a reply to: incoserv

That was exactly the situation. Else I'd have had to move the bull over a mile to one of our lower pastures. This way I only to move him a couple hundred yards.

originally posted by: ignorant_ape
hey - its evident that any critiscism of you or what you do is intolerable

Why the hate?

but hey - sane people would move the bull first - by itself - bull problem solved

but hey - you know best so ...............................

Yeah, he probably does. Unless you own and run a cattle ranch and know better yourself.