Haynes and calves

Haynes likes to play around with stuff.  The other day I found one of the wooden pallets I set the hay bale on, up on top of the remainder of the hay.  How he got the pallet up from under the hay, who knows.

Today I put out a new large hay bale for Haynes.  I see he decided to push the hay feeder closer to the corral fence.  Before putting a hay bale into the feeder I had to use the tractor to move the feeder away from the corral fence.

This evening, before putting a new hay bale out for Haynes, I herded the cows out into the extended part of the corral.  That way I can let Haynes into main corral while I work on the hay bale in the south corral.   Before letting Haynes into the main corral I got 12 of the 13 calves into the loading corral.  The grass has grown there and I want it eaten down eventually.  The cows would go through the grass in minutes.  The calves, not so quick.

The calves are starting to eat hay in addition to drink from their mothers.  Over the past few days while filling the water trough I would tear some grass in the yard and give to the calves near the water trough.  The cows keep an eye on things and when they saw me tossing grass to the calves they would run across the corral and push the calves away from the grass and then eat it.   So I only fed grass to the calves if the cows could not see us.  Yesterday several cows must have heard or smelled as they came over.  One calf has learned how to take the grass from my hands.  So I would give some grass to this calf.  So what did a few cows do?  They would reach over and grab the grass sticking out of the calf's mouth and take it away as the calf tried to chew the grass.  The calf then would turn its head back once it got grass from me.  The cows followed and grabbed the grass.  Then the calf would step back once she got the grass from me.  Sometimes that worked.  Other times the cows still took the grass from the calf.  Once the grass I had torn from the yard was done, so was I.

That is why I decided to only let the calves into the loading corral.   The cows had been eating hay from their feeder, but once I let the calves into the loading corral grass the cows immediately noticed and were upset.   You can see them standing and mooing at the calves.  The cows were not happy they weren't getting the grass.  Tough luck.

I let the calves stay in the loading corral a few hours until it was getting dark.  Then I herded them out.  Not the easiest thing as we went around and around as they did not want to go out of the loading corral.  They were having fun in there.

Once the calves were back in the main corral I opened the gate and let the cows into the corral.  The cows stampeded into the corral.  Sorry, but I had already closed the gate to the loading corral.   I'll let the calves back into there another day.