It appears she laid and reached under one of the corral panels to reach the grass on the other side. She pushed and pushed and bent the bottom rail upward. The metal t-post by this panel was partially out of the ground. The twine tying the panel to the t-post was broken. I think she got under the panel and pushed it upwards and slid underneath the panel to "freedom". She is not a small cow.
The panel dropped back down to the ground and the rest of the cattle were upset. They were standing at the corral panels, mooing loudly, and watching cow #7 ignore them as she ate grass on the other side.
I fixed the corral panel and post and twine. I left cow #7 alone. There was no way I was going to get her back into the corral panel enclosure when all the other cattle wanted out to join her. I would deal with cow #7 later when I put a new large hay bale out later in the day once the cattle finished the previous bale.
Later cow #7 raised a ruckus. Her belly was full of grass and her udder was full of milk and she wanted to calf to drain her milk. I left her be as I wasn't ready yet to put a new large bale of hay out.
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| Mother and daughter wanting a reunion |
Rusty came over late afternoon with a pickup load of fresh cut green grass from his lawn. The cattle all love it and swarmed over the piles we made as we raked it out of his pickup. Cow #7 wanted back in the corral to get what the other cattle were getting. So I opened one corral panel and let her back inside.
I saved a little hay for Buddy as he has been behaving. It was a challenge driving Rusty's pickup into Buddy's part of the corral as Buddy really wanted to come out through the gate. One of the cows is in heat as I seen another cow mount her repeatedly today. I finally was able to wave Buddy away from the gate long enough for Rusty to drive inside. Rusty had placed the grass on tarps so we were able to quickly pull the tarp out of the pickup and dump the grass. Buddy was distracted by the fresh cut grass so Rusty was able to easily drive out of the other corral gate.
I put a large bale out for the cattle before sunset as they had eaten all of the grass by then.
The other news... yesterday I bought a used haybine and a fertilizer spreader. A guy - Mike- near Libby, Montana had these and other equipment for sale on Craigslist as he had upgraded. By coincidence the day before I had spoken with the salesmen I bought my tractor from asking if their dealership had any used haybines for sale. Nothing right for me. He did mention Mike might, and praised Mike's upkeep of his machinery.
Mike is quite the talker. He can equal, or even outdo, me. And he has an beautiful and interesting place. So lots of time was sidetracked on stories and tangents.
I did buy his New Hollander 488 haybine. And a fertilizer spinner spreader that mounts on a tractor's three point hitch. Now I need to fix my tractor's three point to replace the missing bolt.
I pulled the haybine home using my pickup. I had to pay attention as my pickup's left tires were on the yellow center line and the haybine's right tire was on the white line on the side of the road. Some parts of the highway had a nice shoulder and many parts had not much of a shoulder.
The drive was from about 6:30 pm to almost 8 pm so the traffic was lighter. Thankfully. I didn't go faster than 50 mph to be safe. I made it home without any mishaps. The closest call was that I nearly took out my own mailbox but fortunately noticed in time and moved the haybine so it missed the mailbox.
And wouldn't you know it... the night after I bought the haybine some posted a newer John Deere haybine on Craigslist that looks interesting. If I had waited one more day...
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