Moved a cow, and more

Now that the snow melted in the corral I could see the cow that had a sore foot is walking well on bare ground.  So I decided to let her back with the cows.  Yesterday I had pulled out another large hay bale to the north pasture.  Early evening when I let the cattle out of the corral to get to the hay I noticed two things:

1. The gate separating the corral into two sections was now off the lag bolts, but still standing upright.


2. The cow was near the gate.

How the cattle got the gate off the bolts is a mystery. The upper bolt points down and the lower bolt points up so it should be impossible to remove the gate unless the upper clamp is lowered. I had to get a wrench and lower the upper clamp in order to re-install the gate on the bolts.

Since the cow was near the gate I opened it and then stood holding the gate to prevent the calves from walking through it.  Several calves were more interested in rubbing against me.  It was raining lightly and the calves were wet.  Soon I was wet.

The cow just stood there.  She would not move.  I could not leave the gate to encourage her to move.  Finally I gave up.

The next morning when I fed the calves and cow, the calves went right to the new hay and the cow remained laying close to the gate.  First I had to turn off the water filling the water trough. Just then a Jehovah Witness couple drove up and wanted to talk.  I was polite. But when they were trying to tell me the world is getting worse I corrected them.  No, there are less wars than there were historically.  Less people are dying in wars than historically.  They tried to play the 9/11 fear card with terrorism on the increase.  I corrected them.  What about the increase in disease?  I reminded them they were old enough to remember when polio and measles were problems, and now those diseases aren't.  Health-wise things are better for humanity.   I challenged them on other of their 'fear' topics. No, there aren't more natural disasters.  The news does a better job of reporting them so it appears there are more.  And historically more people died in natural disasters than today.  I didn't agree with them when they told me the real ruler running the world was Satan.  Are they Jehovah Witness or satanists?  I bit my tongue.  I told them things in the world are better than they have been in the past.  While there are problems and challenges in the world, things are good. They left me their pamphlet.  I didn't read it.  I'm not into fear.

By the time I got back to moving my cow she was now at the feeder eating hay with the calves.

*argh!*

Late morning I checked and she was alone while the calves were still eating.  I was able to leave the gate open then walk behind her encouraging her to move.  She went through the gate and out to the large bale to join the other cattle.  Beulah was laying down but she immediately got up and walked over to check out the 'new' cow.  Beulah is the boss... or at least she thinks she is.


I noticed the cattle had spilled hay out of the feeder.  *argh!*  I couldn't go and put the loose hay back in the feeder as you can see Buddy pulled his head out of the hay, turned and gave me a look when I moved closer.   Would you approach Buddy and adjust his hay?