Always on a Friday

What is it about Fridays? This past Friday I came home from the dreaded weekly shopping trip, (quite late actually because we had to go to Ellen's Play Day picnic, but more on that some other time perhaps), got the sleeping child down for her nap and was headed back out to get groceries when I spotted a lone heifer ambling up the ditch from Mother in law's place.

*sigh*

Great! Hubby and MIL are gone. He left the 4-wheeler up at MIL's place. So I hot-foot it out there. Heifer spots me and bawls once or twice. She knows the jig is up and comes toward me a bit. Then she gets skittish and trots back along the fence line. I think; good, I can herd her back down further on to our place. Ha. Wishful thinking.

She turns around and heads back up the highway, this time forsaking the ditch and walking on the pavement. About this time the neighbor couple come by on their little motorscooter. He gets off and comes forward to help, but the heifer freaks out and goes galloping straight toward them. The gal, who is on the other side of the scooter, freaks out herself and starts squealing and hopping around.

At this point, if I hadn't been so frazzled, I would have thrown myself on the ground and rolled around laughing my head off at the gal's reaction. It was one of those moments when one gets struck by this irrational hysteria; you are under stress but the humor in the situation gets the best of you. If I weren't familiar with the behaviour of bovines and a 500-600 pound, horned beast came charging at me, I'd have freaked out too. But, anyway...

The heifer did stop, I thanked the guy for his offer of help and walked up to MIL's to get the 4-wheeler. However. Hubby had taken the key out of it so it wouldn't disappear, and rightly so, but it didn't help my situation. So I headed BACK up the road and, on foot, chased the heifer around the house, back down toward the back gate behind the barn. She went back and forth in front of said gate a time or two before she went into it.

Thank you Lord!

Later we found out she'd snacked on MIL's strawberry plants and left hoofprints all over the yard. That day we loaded her up and took her to the heifer herd in Windyville.

Comments

Unknown said…
Wow! Never a dull day on the farm, eh? :) This morning, I woke up and gazed out the window to admire our beautiful fields. I had to do a double take because I swear I spotted "the girls" in the field (where they were NOT supposed to be!). Sure enough, they jumped fence and were right behind our house. Nice.

BTW, I tried to e-mail you a few times but my messages keep bouncing back! :(
April 21, 2009 at 9:59 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Oyster

It isn't even halfway through the month yet and I have run out of lists or anything amusing to tell you about the dairy. So here is a poem I picked up on a homesteading forum. It does deal with ag issues, just of a different sort... Enjoy! The Oyster Baxter Black The sign upon the café wall said OYSTERS: fifty cents. "How quaint," the blue-eyed sweetheart said with some bewildermence, "I didn't know they served such fare out here upon the plain." "Oh, sure," her cowboy date replied, "We're really quite urbane." "I would guess they're Chesapeake or Blue Point, don't you think?" "No ma'am, they're mostly Hereford cross . . . and usually they're pink But I've been cold, so cold myself, what you say could be true And if a man looked close enough, their points could sure be blue!" She said, "I gather them myself out on the bay alone. I pluck them from the murky depths and smash them with a...
Read more

Like Cats A'Fightin'

Image
That's a local saying when it's snowing hard. Snowing like cats a'fightin'. You can look out and see the fur flying. Ellen had never been outside while it was actually snowing. She was enchanted. She had to have a bucket of it to carry around. It was in the mid-20s but we took a bit of a walk before coming back in for a nap. The snow is still too dry to be able to make a snowman, it is really powdery. So far we have somewhere between 3 and 4 inches, I would suspect.
Read more

The Blind Calf Story

Image
This happened last month. I thought it was an interesting case. Wed Aug 15th 2007 8:30 AM: Went out and brought new heifer calf and cow in from field. Not too sure how old calf was; umbilical cord sort of dried up, but calf still seemed damp. Left her with cow all morning ‘til maybe early afternoon, then separated them. Beautiful, normal calf. 6 PM Fed calf bottle. She slugged back the whole thing. Thurs Aug 16th5:15 AM (approx) Calf comatose. Or as near as I could tell. She was on her side, non-responsive, drooling, head on ground, eyes closed or just barely opened. I tried to feed her bottle but she only swallowed convulsively once or twice, then milk just drained from her mouth. 5:30 AM. Husband went out and looked at her. Drug her out of pen and out of the way to be taken to boneyard later after chores were all done. She was barely breathing and as I said, totally non-responsive.This was a real grief as the cow she came from is a great milker and to get a heifer from her was a joy....
Read more