This isn’t our cow. She belongs to a neighboring rancher who is renting the sweet corn field next to us. She is really nice girl, comes to the fence every morning and every evening to watch me do the chores. She is fascinated with the chickens and has been known to sniff on Sammy-Sam the cat.
Since she is a range cow, I’m sure she doesn’t have a name, but I have named her Friend.
Cold here again.
And snowing.
Next week is February ….winter is, hopefully, winding down.
Linda
About a dog named Houston.
(She is the little one..the blonde. An air-head if there ever was one.)
And a bunch of blue herons. (The photo didn’t turn out)
And a herd of cows.
As the story was told to me by Houston,
It seems that Houston (Houston is just now 1 year old, which may explain the following) got all excited because a large flock of Blue Herons which landed in the corn field next to her house, so excited she decided to jump the fence and go see them.
Of course she was barking all the way.
Now, to bring all of you up-to-date, all the corn fields surrounding the farms in our area are always pastured off by the cows, which spend the summer and fall in the mountains. Once the snow comes the cows come off the fall pastures and onto the farm ground to eat and have their babies.
Cows are a pretty docile type of animal. A body would think that they don’t have a way to defend themselves, after all they don’t bark, nor do they roar, they don’t have claws and they only have bottom teeth so they really can’t bite. They seem pretty helpless don’t they?
WRONG!
Cows live in herds ( I know, I know you are all aware of that, but hear me out) herds are a huge social group, cows take turns being the babysitter, while the other girls go eat, they have a leader which really is the boss of the whole group, (and I do mean BOSS), and they take turns guarding the herd.
Okay, I told you that so you could have the rest of Houston’s story.
So Houston takes off barking at all those lovely flapping, rustling birds, forgetting, or not remembering that not only in that corn field are the birds, but about 75 head of pregnant Momma-to-be cows.
In Houston’s mind the cows aren’t an issue, they are ‘a long ways over-there’ and the birds are RIGHT BY THE HOUSE!
Just as Houston enters the flock of birds barking and jumping up and down the GUARD cow breaks loose from the herd makes a mad dash into the fray, turn around and produces a HUGE kick to Houston right in the middle of that yapping mouth.
Houston said she didn’t even know what hit her….suddenly all she knew is she was flying through the air in a gigantic summersault, tumbled to the ground and rolled at least fifteen times (at least there was snow) and landed smack dab on the fence.
Houston’s Mom was standing in inside the yard, when Houston slammed into the fence, gradually Houston became aware that her Mom was yelling at her to come back and then she realized her head hurt. (and her eye and her ear)
It took a little while to recover.
When that whole truck load of dogs came over to visit, a flock of Canada Geese lit in the field, by the cows, right next to MY house. Not one dog (I know better), not either one of the Rottweiler’s or Houston even looked toward them.
So never let anyone tell you that cows are defenseless, just ask Houston she will tell you.
Some lesson’s are really hard to learn—if Mom says STOP, YOU COME BACK HERE, you better do it; there is a reason behind it.
Fuzzy (my gray hair is proof I’m wise),
Hi, I’m Sammy’O, Sam for short!
Pleased to meet cha!
I think we met some time back, back when life was a bit more easy. Just hang’n out with the guys, drinking beer and having a cigar now and then, talking politics, women just don’t understand politics.
Boy, does that get the girls all riled-up when I say that, but hey(!) we guys know! We see how there is a Boss Cow, shoot, she even bosses me around.
But its summer now, and I’m a work’n feller, and I’m one of those lucky guys…I LOVE MY WORK! Man, I just love it!
Some of the boys, get all snorty and run and jump and butt heads together, but me? Well, I’ve got this whole thing figured out. You make it hard for ‘the people’ and you get the hard jobs. You make it easy, you get the cream. Heck, my days are full of guard duty, lots of green grass, and hang’n with the chicks. No beer, or smokes, but that can wait for winter. (Have to set a good example for the kids, ya know.)
My Mom, who is a cow, told me- if you don’t get carried away with yourself, (like butt around the feed trough, or stamp on the waterer), make friends with all the other cows, be a good security guard, and don’t get the human scared, the world will be your oyster.
AND SHE WAS RIGHT!!!
The other dudes, get loaded up and headed out, but I get to stay with the late bloomers, you know the ones who have kids later in the spring. I stay my required 42 days, sometimes more, give or take a week or so. Then my human shows up with the trailer, I wait right at the gate (I know what that means…more pastures, more girls) and as soon as the trailer gate is open and he opens the corral gate, I just walk right in.
AHHH! Life is Gooooood!
In the winter the cows have the run of the whole farm, all the ditch banks, the shorn off crop fields, the fields we have not farmed in years because getting the irrigation water over to them is just too hard, and the ‘upper end’. (This is what we call the back of our place.)
Come calving season the cows come to live in the corrals. We have lost calves before to the coyotes, and our sheep raising neighbors and the dairy about three miles above us have lost animals to mountain lions. (We sometimes see the mountain lion footprints on the ditch banks, but that is another story).
A cow in the middle of birthing a calf is a very vulnerable animal, and the calf is even more helpless.
Then when farming starts and all the calves are born, several weeks old and able to run fast, the cattle get to go back to the upper end.
The upper end, the old alfalfa field, all along the fence lines, we have wild animals. Most of the time they live with us in harmony and the cows don’t seem to mind them at all.
Every year, we scatter corn seed for the whole slue of wild birds to eat (and stay away from the growing plants) and every year we see rows of corn becoming food for the deer and the skunks and the raccoons. We try to make sure there is enough for them and us.
Still there are rules, the wild things stay out of the yard and we won’t bother their hidey holes.
The gated pipe had a hard time this year, with all the snow the cows really couldn’t see the pipe (no we don’t pick it up yearly, it is just too hard and there is just too much of it).
Still it was only two sticks and those can be ‘mended’. We won’t have to replace them, just patch them. Stay tuned so you can see what a ‘patched pipe’ looks like. Nothing like patched jeans! J
We didn’t go to anywhere, long story, which I will tell sometime on down the road.
While out checking on the cows and seeing how the ground was coming along for tractor work I took a photo of this cow
“Looks like you are going to have twins”, I told her.
“TWINS!” she replied, “TWINS!”
(I think so, don’t you? SHHHHHHHHHHH!)
Life on a Colorado Farm 