When the Cows Come Home

RobS · Nov 12, 2001

This is definitely one of those "you had to be there" stories, but I'll tell it anyway...

My son and I were out at our property with tractor and various hand tools. I was taking down a natural knoll where our driveway will pass through. Had to be back home to meet the sprinkler blow-out guy and that made for a nice lunch break. We packed up a bit, but left the tractor in the field, not an uncommon thing here in farm country.

Did the sprinkler thing, had lunch and rounded up a few other odds and ends to return to the property. Saw my wife returning home as we left, so stopped briefly for a smooch /w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif

As we returned to the property I could see something odd about my trusty 790. The green didn't shine through like it normally does on a sunny autumn day. Did I get it that dirty?

Upon closer inspection we find the little tractor surrounded by six young cows /w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif As we pull up, they give that "cow look" and walk off a safe distance. There they stood while I phoned my wife and got back to work. She called the sherriff and came out with a camera shortly thereafter. The cows seemed to enjoy the sound of the diesel engine but eventually wandered off through a neighboring corn field.

The sherriff had no reports of missing cattle, but promised to do some calling around. A couple of neighbors had seen them and did some driving around as well. We never heard the outcome, but sure got a chuckle out of our new found friends.

Ah, rural living at it's best /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

zenmek · Nov 12, 2001

Have a similar story, here goes... Woke up early one morning (about 4:30am) to a lot of ruckus in he yard, very abnormal as the only things that move around here at that hour are dogs and critters. Well come to find out that the neighbors cows got loose and decided to make a beeline for our place (don't know why!) any way we got them all rounded up and sent home. Later in the day we found a "calling card" right by my daughters window. I guess we had the closest thing to a peepin tom that we will see around here. too bad she didn't wake up ..what a surprise! guess that's the beauty of country living!

JJT · Nov 12, 2001

We have beef cows and the only way to round them up is with the tractor - they think a running diesel means dinner time. They ignore the truck, 4 wheeler and chain saw, but start the tractor up and they come running.

dmccarty · Nov 12, 2001

Rob, consider yourself lucky.....

I worked on a farm when I was 16. The the boss ran about 75 head of cattle. Pesky things. One of the neighbor's dogs when run the cattle and I saw them run through a barbed wire fence more than once. If we had ever found that dog he would never had made it home......

Anyway, one day I was out on the old MF 35 fixing barb wire fence and the herd was off to one side of the field. The critters got curious about what I was doing and wondered over to take a look. I did not have a problem with their visit except that they did two things. One they brought over the bitting flies. And two they pooped all over the place. I think every one of them animals decided to take at least two poops standing around me and the tractor! /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif They all seemed to have a real bad case of bovine flatulance and squirts. OHHH, what a wonderful smell, Eau D Farm, I suppose. /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif Course all this made the flies estatic. I finished what I was doing, got on the MF, cranked up the RPMs, put that old collar shift tranny in gear and left them bovine squirters behind. No pun intended! /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

Cattle are wierd animals. Very curious but easily spooked. We scared them one day when they were down on some bottom land next to the Ohio river. They spooked and started running. They could not go right since the river was there and we were on top of a dam the boss had built for a pond that he had. The only thing the cattle could do was run straight which is what they did. There were large trees down in their path and they just ran through/over it somehow. I don't know how they did not break legs. Seem to be smart animals but sometimes that herd instinct kicked in and made them real dumb. Interesting animals..... /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

Later...
Dan McCarty

Bird · Nov 12, 2001

My neighbor's cows, which also use my pasture, are beef cattle that are never touched by man except to brand, vaccinate, or dehorn, so they're pretty wild. But since he usually keeps a bucket of range cubes in the back end of his Kawaski Mule and in the back of his pickup truck, and puts out hay with the tractor, they get conditioned pretty fast. You can go out in the pasture in that Mule, a pickup truck, or a tractor and you almost have to push them out of the way, but you walk out there on foot and no way you'll ever get within 50' of one of them. He learned to condition them that way because some of them frequently got out and roamed off and it was nearly impossible to drive them back home. Now if one (or more) gets out, he just goes after them on the Kawasaki Mule and they'll follow him anywhere.

Harv · Nov 12, 2001

Seem to be smart animals

Really!!??? /w3tcompact/icons/shocked.gif

On one of the few roundups I ever participated in, I was struck by just the opposite. We'd peel 'em off one at a time in the corral and send them into the chute. The chute was then clamped them in, flipped them off the ground on their sides, at which point they were castrated, de-horned and branded in a matter of seconds. Once back on their feet, an electric prod sent them running out to the fields.

I was dumbfounded to see these things, dripping disinfectant between their legs, spouting blood from their heads and billowing smoke from their haunches, run about 20 yards and come to a screeching halt when they noticed there was grass to eat. /w3tcompact/icons/crazy.gif

Maybe I caught a dumb bunch. /w3tcompact/icons/tongue.gif

p.s. Being a big seafood fan, I was excited to be invited to have some Rocky Mountain oysters that evening. Heard a lot of laughter behind my back later as I walked away from the dinner table (without eating). /w3tcompact/icons/tongue.gif

dmccarty · Nov 13, 2001

Harv,

Yeah, "Smart" is a tough word when applied to cattle. They were always curious about what we where doing and curiosity is supposed to be a sign of intelligence. There "stupid" side seemed to be the herd mentality. /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

" I was dumbfounded to see these things, dripping disinfectant between their legs,
spouting blood from their heads and billowing smoke from their haunches, run about 20
yards and come to a screeching halt when they noticed there was grass to eat. "

Let me get this straight. The poor animal just got flipped up in the air, horns cut off, bull hood removed, stinging stuff sprayed on their wounds, burned on the thigh and then shocked in the ass. Sounds like a REAL bad hair day! /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

The poor old EX bull runs into the pasture after getting prodded in the rear and says, "What more do I have to live for? They took my horns, my balls and burned my ass! I got nothing to play with anymore! What more is there? Hmmmm, Grass." So ExBull commences to eating. Its the only thing they have left in life! /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif Seems like a mark of intelligence to me! ExBull Figured out they had just been given a bad turn or two, accepted the fact, figured out the only thing left in life was to just eat, and got on with it! No analyzing, no worry, no second guessing, no blame, no trip to the shrink, just start eating the ol' grass.... Its the only thing left... /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif Hey, Big BO, is the grass greener over there? Hey, wait up, don't run so fast! /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

Seems like a high form of intelligence and maturity to me! /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

Later...
Dan McCarty

MossRoad · Nov 13, 2001

Rob. Mooo. Great weather this weekend, eh? Except for all the leaf smoke, it was great.

 MossRoad

MossRoad · Nov 13, 2001

You start up a diesel in a field and the cows come running.
You start up a diesel in a parking lot and we come running.
I'd say, on that level, cows are our equals.

 MossRoad

RobS · Nov 13, 2001

Yeah, it was an excellent weekend with more to come it looks like. I thought burning leaves was outlawed since they do the pickup thing? Maybe that's just in the city? I did see where they are going to divert some of the leaf crews to picking up storm damage debris for the next few days. I still can't believe all the trees down around here. Maybe those cows found a way out from a tree across the fence /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

ERNIEB · Nov 14, 2001

When I worked at the rock quarry, we were often some distance apart, and surrounded by loud machinery. Communication was by hand signs, not the standard Amsilan, but it worked. One sign used was to hold up both index fingers on top of the head pointing upward, like horns on a cow. It meant that someone did, or was doing something that was not very smart.
Having said that. My cows are always getting into my neighbors place. We have a very old barb wire fence between us. If I don't go after them, they eventually come home on their own. But do they come back thru the hole they have made in the fence? No, they come to the fence near the house and stand there, looking over at me like "well, how are we suppose to get back home?" I put in a gate there, so it would be easy to let them back in. It seemed like the smart thing to do. But then they got me to put in a gate, so they don't have to walk all the way to the back where they got out at./w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif

Ernie

CVHoss · Nov 14, 2001

The 400+ acres that I deer hunt on is all farm land. There's a field road that I pull my truck about a hundred yards into where I then unload my 4 wheeler for the trip to my stand. On the north side of this field road, the land belongs to someone else and he raises cattle on it. In all the times I had been going out there over a three year period, the cattle never paid me any attention. One day, I decided I was going to hang an automatic feeder by my stand before season to get the deer conditioned to coming my way. Unloaded the 4 wheeler like always and strapped the feeder to the back rack. Everything was normal UNTIL I picked up the two feed sacks of cracked corn. When those cattle heard the paper feed sacks rustling, I thought they were going to come straight through the fence. The came running from 1/4 mile away and by the time I got the sacks strapped on to the 4 wheeler, I had a couple hundred cattle bellowing at me. The whole heard ran along the fence following me until they could go no further. I found it very amusing how they had become conditioned to the sound of a paper feed sack.

Hoss

RobS · Nov 14, 2001

Hoss, reminds me of this story...An MIT student spent an entire summer going to the Harvard football field every day wearing a black and white striped shirt, walking up and down the field for ten or fifteen minutes throwing birdseed all over the field, blowing a whistle and then walking off the field. At the end of the summer, it came time for the first Harvard home football game, the referee walked onto the field and blew the whistle, and the game had to be delayed for a half hour to wait for the birds to get off of the field.

/w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

TWINKLE_TOES · Nov 14, 2001

Ernie,
Thats funny./w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif On the surface it seems your time would be better spent fixing the fence to keep them in rather than building a gate to get them back in once they got out. Those that have cattle understand the logic in your approach. I have the same arrangement with my cattle.
Works good. /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif
Al

Hillbilly · Nov 14, 2001

My neighbor bought his 1st round baler a few years back,and done a little round baling on his neighbors place that he farmed.
Well he baled several round bales and left.His son and he came back later on to admire the round bales.Well they had all dissapeared except for a few and one went rolling by while his son and he watched.It appears his cattle had gotten into the field through a neglected fence and started rubbing against the round bales and had rolled all of them except 2 or 3 to the deep hollows.
The next 2 days he spent his time recovering his round bales from the hollows./w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

ERNIEB · Nov 14, 2001

Al, Oh I fix the fence. I fix it alot. When my neighbors red Limosine bull "Barney" decides he wants to come over for a visit, he comes over. And of course makes a hole that my cows can use to get out. The neighbor and I both agree that replacing the fence will be difficult and expensive. We also agree that we can live with it as is. I guess we will have to do it someday. I can't complain, I've gotten some pretty red calves/w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif/w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif

Ernie

Hillbilly · Nov 15, 2001

You do not have a good red calve until you get a RED Angus./w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

Jag · Nov 15, 2001

Loved, all the stories... But when you started Rob, I was thinking about a John Deere tractor I saw when I was a little kid that was left in a field. Do not remember what model it was, I was too little to know about models then, but should have been about a 4020 size. This BIG bull had for some reason decided he did not care for the green tractor that was left in his field, and turned it over and then proceeded to do a Mexican hat dance on it. I have seen several tractors that had been rolled down hills and turned over several times and not had the much skinned sheet metal...

As for cows getting into habits, back years ago the horse feed we where getting came in a pale blue bag. I pulled up my pickup into the lot to fix some fence and was working. Not paying much attention when the old horse walked over to the truck and reached into the window and bite a hunk of seat off that was about the same color as the feed bags.

MDNick · Nov 15, 2001

I grew up taking hogs and steers in 4-H. In December is branding and weigh in, had a bad snowstorm so they rescheduled to the same Saturday in January that we were going to be out of town looking at a college. A 'friend' of ours was going to haul it for us. Just guessing (Friend is very high strung) but he came in hooten and hollerin', scared my steer so much he just walked through his pen gate (galvanized steel) and took off. I guess they chased him for 3 hours. The steer would stop, they'd get close to his lead rope, and he'd take off again. Finally cornered right back in the barn. No idea how.
We were primarily hog farmers. A pen of pigs would get out periodically and do unheard of damage to anything green. A pen got out once and my brother went to tell mom:

Brother: Mommy, the piggies are out!
Mom: Out where?
Brother: Out by the tree!
Mom: What tree?
Brother: The one by the piggies!

We have been laughing about that for years, my brother is 31.

My brother and I got home once from school, there was mom in the middle of about 35 200 pounders. Not much she could do by herself, took the 3 of us to get them rounded up. Life must be boring in town. Most excitement in the community was when Olie Miller had a boar jump out of his truck at 55 mph in front of the local gas station. Gas Station proprietor calls to tell us we have a boar out. Nope, but will come down and corner him. 15 mins later here comes Olie, looking for his hog. Rural living at it's best.

Nick

Farmer kid usetabe, Farmer Wannabe

Bird · Nov 16, 2001

Being a big seafood fan, I was excited to be invited to have some Rocky Mountain oysters that evening. Heard a lot of laughter behind my back later as I walked away from the dinner table (without eating).

Harv, the Big Texan Steak Ranch in Amarillo has mountain oysters on their appetizer menu and in fine print adds if you think this is seafood, you'd better order the shrimp cocktail instead. (I'm not sure that was the exact wording, but at least words to that effect). At any rate, my youngest daughter and grandson didn't know what that was, so I ordered it and they found (as I already knew) that it's some fine eating./w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif