Aaaiiiieeeeeee!!!! Stampede!

Yesterday morning I was doing my regular graining of the young heifers when the strangest thing happened.

These are the 6 month to year old girls, close to the same size as the heifers below. Their feed bunks are on a bit of a hill that falls steeply off down into the creek bottoms.



It was just barely light out, maybe 6:45 AM or so, and I had just opened the gate and was shoving my way through the 10 of them when suddenly something happened behind me (dunno what it was) and they all startled and went charging off around me. One of the smaller ones got so excited she tried to jump a feed bunk, landed smack inside it and flopped around like a fish out of water before she leapt out and took off in the rear of the herd. It was kind of freaky because I was afraid I was going to get trampled.

I had this brief and strange sensation that I was in that scene from Jurassic Park where the veggiesaurs were flocking around the professor and the two kids, and if I turned and looked down over the hill I thought perhaps I'd see the T-Rex coming after me.

But thankfully he wasn't there.

I was glad.

Comments

Anonymous said…
A T-Rex?! That would definitely be a bummer!
March 22, 2010 at 8:42 PM
Unknown said…
Wow! Wonder what it was!? Something like that happened to us the other day...only we sense that it may have been two wolves or two coy dogs! Ummm...not dogs who are coy, but a mix of coyote and domestic dog (which is the worst to have because they're not afraid of humans!). LOL!
March 26, 2010 at 3:10 PM
Calfkeeper said…
I forgot to add that they came back in a few minutes. So apparently it wasn't too bad.

Yeah, I have heard of coy dogs. We have lots of coyotes around here, but so far I've yet to hear of any coy dogs. I hope we don't get any. I have heard they are dangerous.
March 27, 2010 at 2:32 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