Post by genebo on Jul 15, 2015 15:07:46 GMT
As I awoke yesterday, the sound of cattle bawling caught my ears. It sounded insistent, so I threw on my shirt and pants, stepped into some garden shoes, and headed for the pasture.
It was a melee! The two Wagyu cows from next door had gotten out and come to visit McBrenn. He was the one doing most of the bellowing. He stood on the inside of the front fence with the cows on the outside. I waved my cattle stick to begin herding the cows back home.
They didn't want to go. They hugged the fence line while McBrenn matched them on the inside. The rest of my herd stampeded back and forth behind McBrenn. It was plain to see that this was a big event in their lives. I managed to get the cows past the end of my fence, but they cut left into the woods, following my end fence. McBrenn had to trot all the way around the barn and the penalty box to get there, but he made it. There was some kind of attraction between him and the cows. DUH!
I finally drove them away from the fence and into the woods toward their place. I called the cows' owner, but he couldn't help. He was at his regular job. He said he'd call around to get me some help.
Good thing, because these two cows were too much for me. They detoured around a big rose thicket in the woods and as I followed, they circled me and returned to McBrenn.
As I made my way back, I heard tires on gravel and a neighbor drove in with a pickup truck. He leaned out the window and said he would get past them and drive them back. Oh, yeah! That didn't work. He chased them about a 1/4 mile before he got past them, then he sped on to the house to turn around. I caught up with the cows and got them turned again. We were farther from their home pasture than when we started.
Once again we drove the cows past the barn and past the end of the fence. Once again they detoured into the woods. This time, with two of us, we got past the rose bushes. Except that they then cut right, crossed my drive, ran through that strip of woods and came out in a neighbor's soy bean field. They traveled all the way across that field, eating as they trotted, then circled around and went back across the bean field, through the strip of woods and across my drive again.
I was tiring out, but I managed to run fast enough to get between them and McBrenn and turned them toward their place. This time, they headed the right way, with the neighbor keeping up while I lagged behind. I had used up my breakfast. Oh, wait! I didn't have breakfast. I must have been using up yesterday's meals.
I caught up with them as the neighbor was trying hard to keep them out of the bean field. Together, we managed to crowd them onto the trail that leads back to their pasture. Once we got close, they picked up the pace and ran through the open gate into their pasture.
Open gate? Yep! The gate was wide open. The neighbor's kids had been riding 4-wheelers in the pasture the day before and left the gate wide open.
When we tried to close the gate, we found further problems. One of the hinges was off of the gate and it had no latch. It was being held closed with two small clip chains, top and bottom, at the latch end. That kept the gate from falling over, but it was hard to secure. Maybe that's why the kids didn't close it. I surveyed the situation, decided what it would take to fix it, and went home to get tools and charge the batteries in my drill and impact wrench. I knew I had a heavy duty latch that I'd bought as a spare for my own latches. I would fix this gate so it wouldn't be left open again.
A couple of hours later, I returned to find that someone else had put in a new hinge pin and hung the gate. They had put the new top hinge pin in with the pivot facing up, just like the bottom hinge. Cows can lift that gate up and off the pins, so first I took the gate back down and drilled and installed the hinge pin the right way. It is a 16 foot gate. Too heavy for one man. So I scavenged around, found a paint can and a bunch of boards so I could prop up the latch end of the gate. That made it easy to install the gate onto the hinge pins and tighten up the top hinge clamp.
With the supports out, it was easy to mark, drill and install the latch. The impact wrench drove the lag bolts with no effort. When the job was finished, it swung closed with a whisper. Even the littlest kid could manage it.
I was being selfish. I did not want those cows getting out again. They wore me out, chasing them. Four times they passed my hay barn, filled with square bales. They showed no interest either time, but I worry that they will come back and ruin a lot of my winter hay. It was cheaper to fix the neighbor's gate than to put doors on my hay barn to keep his cows out.
So far, I haven't heard from the neighbor. No "Thank you" or "Kiss my foot". I'm not sure that he even checked the gate after he got home.
All this makes me so determined to never let my cattle get out and wander onto someone else's property.