Once we had the cow back in the pasture, I put the jigsaw puzzle of boards back together, which is harder than it sounds, and got back to something normal. The cow went into the woods of this pasture and started bellowing non-stop. Something was definitely wrong. It was like she was searching for something but maybe she thought the other cows would have been there and now they were not. I talked to Miguel (he just happened to call in the middle of all this) and he thought maybe she’s had a calf and the calf had wandered into this paddock by accident? Spork and I went into the pasture to check on her and that’s when I found out the truth.
Her ear tag read #25, not #33.
Now it makes sense. #25 had lost her calf on Friday and we’d had to move the cows on the same day. Even though we’d left #25 in the paddock with her calf and the calf had passed away while she was in there, she wasn’t over it yet. She obviously had escaped the other pasture and come back to this pasture looking for her calf, which was pretty sad. Now she was finally in the pasture and couldn’t find him because we’d already buried him back at the home farm.
Spork and I went around the pasture she was in tightening up boards, removing brush, etc. Basically making sure she’d stay in the pasture she was in and not escape back to the other pasture where the cows were. Then we went to the other pasture to fix wherever she’d gotten out. We fixed 4-5 places that weren’t too bad but nowhere that it appeared she had escaped. I guess when a mom is after her baby, no fence is going to keep her.
With everything settled, we walked the mile back to the truck to get it off Percy’s land. That’s when we found that although I’d driven it in, I couldn’t drive it out. We couldn’t make the turn around some of his trees with the truck and trailer and we were basically trapped. It took us a few extra minutes and the blazing of a new trail, but we eventually got out.
It was now 10:30 and we were about to start our day. Only 100+ pigs to feed. Just another day on the farm.