Missing heifer

I was feeding small bales of hay in the corral to the cattle this afternoon and I discovered Spice is missing.  I counted and recounted and recounted over and over and I always came up with one short.  I then figured out it was Spice.  

The last time I counted the cattle was six days ago on Thursday when the cattle were last in the corral to eat small hay bales.

I walked around the north pasture looking for her.  It has not snowed since I last saw her.  So I looked for tracks.  The only tracks away from the large hay bales and corral were a few that went down to the watering area at the river.  While the cattle drink from the water trough in the corral, the cattle being cattle, they sometimes want to drink from the river.

With all this cold weather the river is partially frozen.  The middle third of the river is open; each side of the river is iced over.  I found cattle tracks right up to the edge of the ice. I was surprised the ice held the cattle's weight.  I spoke with several neighbors asking if they saw Spice or anything unusual.  John saw three or four cattle walk to the river three days ago.  Other than that, nothing unusual.

No signs the ice broke under the cattle's weight.  But it could be possible, since most of the other cattle don't like Spice, one cow pushed Spice off the ice into the river.  This area is kind of deep but maybe only barely as deep as Spice is tall.  This deep area is not large.  The river quickly turns and as it does it gets shallow.  As shallow as to be only knee deep on me.  If Spice fell in the river she should be able to quickly get to a shallow area and then out of the river.

I walked along the river looking for signs of tracks. Donna came and helped look for tracks.  We walked the north pasture and halfway down the middle pasture.  No tracks on my side, either along the river or up in the pasture.

On the other side of the river there were one set of tracks in the snow.  I got my hip waders and walked across the river.  Those tracks were deer tracks.  I walked around a little more but did not see any more tracks.

By now it was starting to get dark so I quit.  I'll go out again tomorrow.

When we got back to the corral I let the cattle out so they could go to the large hay bales I set out earlier in the afternoon.  As the cattle walked out I noticed that #40 was limping badly.  She was favoring her front leg.  When I last fed them at 1 pm all cattle were fine.  Tomorrow I will have to try to get her back into the corral so as to limit her walking until her leg is better.

Going from unlucky 13 cows to 15 turns out to have been unlucky.  So much for making any money this year.  If Spice ends up dead, since I bought her I can write her on my taxes as a loss.  Since I raised Rose from a calf I could not count her death as a loss.