Cattle Drive ’21

We love our dog. Almost all of our neighbors have dogs. Dogs are sort of like spouses. You may like your neighbor’s dog, but you’d never marry that breed. Occasionally, you (me) don’t even like your neighbor’s dog, so you’re glad that as a ‘neighbor’, they’re 1/4 mile away. One of the ‘neighbors’ has heelers. Unfortunately, they are aggressive cattle dogs looking for something to herd.

Friday afternoon they found a ‘herd’. The herd they found was mine. My cows had been ‘wintering’ across the street with a few friends, helping to trim Captain Jim’s hay field. The heelers aggressively pushed the herd into a corner of the field snapping at them. The cattle backed into the fence, putting stress on the gate, which backed up to the highway. Luckily, the gate held as cars stopped to help the cattle being pushed by the dogs.

I’ll not lie, I was kind of ‘hot’.

Captain Jim and I met up Saturday morning to move the herd.

It was a relief to get up close to the cattle and see that they were all okay.

Clarice and her calf Noel, want to check me out as well.

Clarice comes in for a close up.

We quickly load the cattle. Captain Jim works the trailer and I push the cattle down the shoot. Agnes, the biggest and the oldest of the herd, leads the others right into the stock trailer. Loaded quickly like nobody’s business.

Captain Jim says, “Oh, yeah, we’re the beef whisperers.”

The Cattle drive begins….all the way across the street.

The herd is safer in our pasture as it is surrounded by field fencing which the dogs cannot get through.

Benny and Jett are still housed in the barn, while Benny recuperates, so they are safe as well, while we work out the heelers situation with the other neighbor.

I’m pretty grateful to have my cows home and the neighbors cows too…

Happy cows and happy me too.