Nightmare

This morning I woke up from a nightmare.  In my dream the ranch was here but the corral area was different.  There were a couple more very old rundown buildings in the corral.  The fences and fence posts were bad between the coral and the hayfield.  There were two gates, one being a metal tube gate and the other a silver galvanized gate.  Between an old building and part of the corral were a couple corral panels against the old fence to help the fence.  In the back yard was a small travel trailer.  In the travel trailer was a woman who had a horse in the corral.  In the trailer with the woman was a man.  My dad and mother were around as my dad let the woman have her horse in the corral.  The woman planned to leave later that afternoon with her horse and trailer.

I was working in the corral when the cattle came into the corral from the north pasture as that gate had been left open.  The metal tube gate in the corner of the corral to the hayfield was partially open and before I knew it the bull and several cows went through the gate into the hayfield.  The grass and alfalfa in the hayfield was tall like it is now.   The rest of the cattle saw the other cattle in the hayfield and got excited and were rushing to get into the hayfield.

I ran and closed the gate the bull and cows had gone through.  The woman and man in the trailer seemed unconcerned even though I asked them for help.  I ran over and saw the corral panel and the fence they leaned against were down flat on the ground as the cattle pushed them over to get into the hayfield.  I then saw the metal galvanized gate was open. I ran over and closed it before any more cattle could go through it but after I closed the gate I found it was destroyed; only a couple pieces of the gate were still in place and useless to stop more cattle from going through that area.  I was trying to find something to fix/block the galvanized gate when I woke up.

*Whew!!*   What a nightmare!

When I got up for the day and went outside, the first thing I did was move two corral panels against the backyard fence.  The heifers can stick their head through the fence to eat on the other side and I didn't want them to somehow break or push the fence over - even though they shouldn't be able to do that.

Then I got a bigger chain and wrapped it around a gate in the middle pasture that goes to the hayfield.  That gate has a dog type of chain and, while the chain has worked fine these past number of years, I'm not sure it would hold if the big cows or bull really pushed on it.  And the hook has an extra clip to better secure the hook and the clip broke earlier this Spring.  The newer chain should be plenty strong and secure.


Later in the afternoon the cattle were in the south pasture so I closed the gate between that pasture and the middle pasture to keep the cattle in the south pasture for a few days and then start the pasture rotation again.  I had to race to the gate as the cattle saw me walking to the gate and came running.  I barely got to the gate in time.  The cattle were not happy.  In the evening when Daisy and I walked out through the middle and south pastures to go work on the south hayfield fence, the cattle came running over both when we walked out to start work and then when we walked back home at sundown.  They still were not happy I was not letting them in the middle pasture.  At one point they got upset I wasn't letting them into the hayfield.   There is lots of tall lush grass in the south pasture so those cattle are just acting like spoiled divas.