by Jan Fielden
Whenever I feed the cows I always worry about one of them getting out of the pasture they belong in and in to one they don’t. It has happened to me a few times but fortunately I have always been able to get them back to where they belong.
Last Friday was one of those heart-stopping adventures. Feeding the Yearling Herd, one of the heifers came all the way down to the gate even though I was yelling at her. She out-foxed me after I had pulled the tractor and the bale of hay through the gate, got off the tractor and ran to close that gate.
She ran through the gate as I was reaching for it to close it. I opened the gate back up, told her to “get back in there” and I walked out of the gate and around to the opposite side of her hoping to push her back in.
She was having none of that. She turned, took about 4-5 steps and made moves to run the opposite direction. I had to close the gate to keep the others in so I told her she could just stay out there and not get any of the delicious hay that I was serving.
As I was reaching to close the gate, she looked at the herd as it moved on up the road to where they had been fed before. It was one of those “deer in the headlights” moment.
She kicked up her heels, ran through the gate and on up to catch her herd. But she did look at me as if to say, “this was all my idea to come back in and you had nothing to do with it”. I didn’t care, just as long as she was in with her herd.
Even feeding the animals at The Red Oak Ranch is fun!
