Fun with heifers

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about updating the Ranchland News, mostly when I am doing things that I’m not enjoying. It seems that the idea of writing usually pops into my head while I am feeding cows in hurricane force winds, chasing a heifer that has a gate stuck on her head, dragging the pasture with the harrow or doing some other task that I’m not enjoying. But unfortunately, on the ranch, all those little things need to be accomplished before I can do the things I want to do. Fortunately for everyone, I’ve checked those things off my list and can now move on. That’s really the nice thing about spring. All the day-to-day tasks that take up so much of my day are nearly wrapped up and I can look forward to the slower days of summer ahead when the cows are bred, they are grazing green grass and drinking from the pond.

Just the rounds of daily chores take up two hours of my day, and that’s on the days when nothing has gone wrong while I was at work and during the winter, those days are few and far between. During calving season, which has just wrapped up, the days can be much longer and by the time I drag myself inside, it’s dark and I’m tired and the last thing I want to do is share that with the rest of the world, trust me you’re better off for it.

But now, we’ve turned the cows and their calves out of their calving pens, the grass is turning green, everyone has had their spring vaccinations and been wormed and we’re all ready for a break from one another. The cows, I am pretty certain, get just as tired of me messing with them and the calves as I do by the time winter ends. They are tired of being poked, prodded, moved, disturbed, confined, etc. About the only thing they haven’t gotten tired of is the pat on the head and the treat bucket. Those two things—well, mostly just the treat bucket—so that one thing, still seems to bring them happiness. They will still come for treats, but that’s about it.

So, it was with that treat bucket that I lured them into the sorting pen on Sunday for vaccinations. I was working by myself, which is sometimes the case, and I managed to get them into the chute alley without too much trouble. In fact, I managed to work almost the entire cowherd without any real problems. The only hiccup came when it was time for Big Gert to leave the chute after I’d worked on her. She’s a little wider than the average cow and far bigger than any 1950s cow, which is the era our chute was built. I thought for a minute that I might have to take the side off to get her out, but she calmly managed to wriggle herself free through the headgate. She’s been there before, so it wasn’t a big deal for her other than shedding off about a half-bushel of winter coat in the process.

We managed to get everyone through the chute, including second-calf heifers who up until this run have been a little snakey about loading up. One in particular has an amazing knack for karate and a quickness that would make Jackie Chan look like he belongs in a wheelchair. Last year she managed to clear the top of the seven-foot high, 32-inch-wide alley from a standstill, but even she processed through without much fuss. She tried one quick poke at me, but I was fast (lucky) enough to dodge it.

There was really no trouble until the last yearling heifer came to bat.

I normally try to move the heifers in first, because they are young and pretty dumb. They haven’t been through the chute more than a couple of times, so it’s pretty new to them. They are going to be through there a lot over the course of the next month as we prep them to breed up, so it’s good to get them a little experience. It’s even better to let the rest of the older cows push them through. This new heifer, (she’s been named Mini-Belle) was born on the ranch last year and has matured pretty nicely through the winter.

She’s probably pushing 850-lbs., so she’s not small, but she’s also a long way from being fully grown. She’s also small enough that I misjudged her size when I set the head gate and she managed to squeeze through the first time I pushed her into the chute. As a result, I had to run her back around and I left her in the holding pen for last. I figured it wouldn’t be a problem, but apparently, I figured wrong.

After I got the rest of the herd done, I pushed Mini-Belle back into the pen and down the alley, which I might note, I spent the better part of Saturday repairing, she bolted in front of me, took a hard left turn toward the chute and then surprisingly, another hard left where there is a small man-gate and proceeded to shear the gate off its’ hinges. With her head poked through the gate, she proceeded to spend the next five minutes or so strength testing the pens. Had it not been for the fact that she had the gate around her neck, she probably would have found a hole and let herself out, but I will say that a four foot gate makes a pretty good shock absorber. Or at least good enough that it kept her inside the pen long enough to calm down.

I let her work herself back around to the bottom of the pen and then slowly, I pushed her back up the alley, hoping that she’d be able to get the gate down the alley to the chute without tangling herself up and getting hurt. She didn’t. She went back down the alley, and took the same left turns again and went right back through the hole she had created. All reasonable enough I guess. So, I figured that was a pretty good time for a break to allow me a little time to create some new cuss words that would adequately fit the situation. I had about five or six picked out when she finally managed to shake the gate off her head. I figured maybe it was my lucky day. But, I figured wrong.

I used a couple of tie-down straps from the truck and strung up the gate as best I could figuring that she might be able to shear the hinges, but not the straps, which turned out to be true. But the straps were far stronger than the gate itself. The next run down the alley was no more successful than the three prior to that, she hit that gate and lumber it’s made of completely disintegrated. It flew like shrapnel and more or less finished off any hopes I had of getting her processed. But, I managed to piece enough wood together with those straps and some spare pieces of baling twine (there’s a reason we don’t throw it all away) to block off that hole enough to give it one more shot.

I pushed her back through one more time, for what I swore was going to be the last go. She wasn’t really much worse for wear, a little cut on her head was the only sign that there was anything amiss at all. She wasn’t really panicky, she wasn’t panting, or surprisingly, even very upset. I on the other hand was a mess and I knew it was this time or nothing.

So, I ran her back down the alley one last time, but this time I stayed close on her heels, risking getting a pretty good kicking and she went right past the hole she’d created earlier into the chute, sorta like she knew all along what the goal was. Sometimes I think that the cows are toying with me just a little, just to see how much I can take. I felt a little like this was one of those times.

So, Mini-Belle got her vaccinations and is ready to go for breeding. The pens and alley on the other hand are going to need a little rebuilding work before they are ready. This time I think we’ll be using steel. Wood—like plastic and sometimes people—just doesn’t cut it when it comes to ranch stress-testing. Anyway, That’s the chore that is now moving it’s way up the list, but I don’t feel much like doing it today, so I figured instead, I’d write to you.

I hope this finds you enjoying warm weather, green grass and sunny spring days, where ever you are.