Last night just as I was cooking dinner I received a phone call.
“One of your cows is out.”
Ugh, Sunday night during dinner? What a time to get out. I finished up dinner quickly, ate like someone who’d been starving to death for the last month, and then raced out the door to get our errant cow. The fact that it was nearly dark, and that the bottle of wine was nearly empty didn’t add to my excitement over this situation.
Luckily Spork eats faster than I do, and Dustin was up having dinner with us. So the boys all headed over in the increasing darkness. We saw the calf out, walking along the fence line trying to figure out how to get back in. I’d planned ahead and had brought the tools I needed to disassemble the fence. I’d also thought to unplug the fence charger, saving that bit of excitement.
With help from both boys, plus all of the cows who came over to watch the excitement, I took the fence apart. There are four wires that need to be disassembled. I started at the top, because I am old and bending over hurts. May as well warm up on my way to the bottom wire.
I quickly decided that the bottom wire was going to stay attached because if his butt managed to get out through four wires, he could very well hop over one to get back in. Plus that last wire was way down there and I didn’t feel like getting it.
As I was unhooking the third wire, it suddenly snapped out of my hands. I looked over to see that our calf had nearly jumped the third wire coming back into the pasture. Nearly as in not really. Luckily I had it apart already so it just flopped onto the ground. With now ALL of all of the cows looking at us, we went about putting the fence back together. Luckily Miguel and Vicente have been doing fencing the past week and all the fence tooling is in the Gator, including the fence puller which is required for putting this type of fencing back together. Otherwise we’d really have been in a pickle keeping the cows in for the night.
While cursing, laughing, and generally getting things done by cell phone light (thanks Dustin) I managed to get the fence back together and ready to contain cows. While working, I looked over at the cows and noted a calf that looked new. Kinda hard to tell which black cow is which in the dark, but I didn’t think this one was here before. I wasn’t chasing him down in the dark, so I texted Miguel to let him know so he could look in the morning.
Sure enough I got a text this morning, #94 was born Sunday to Sprinkles, #50.
Sprinkles is one of our great moms. A girl calf from her, with Boyd as the dad, should make for a good momma. Hopefully this little girl will be a keeper.
I have no idea how the cow got out. He was young, so probably doing something stupid. There is nothing wrong with the fence.