The Great Cattle Hunt

It is a wonderful time saver to have a creak running through the middle of your cow pasture. The one that divides our gully almost in half has water in it almost all year, even in dry years like we are having this year. This water source does have some drawbacks.

Last Sunday my wife, Calista, and I were mending some fences (no, no, the fence in the cow pasture). Being almost done where the creak enters the front part of the property we let the cows into the pasture. They had gotten through the fence that we had just mended so that is where they headed for first. Seeing us still working on the breach they turned and headed for where the watercourse exited the property. Only slowing down enough to go into the creak they were out of our field and heading for the bush at the back part of the concession.

Off my wife and I went in hot pursuit. One of our Black Angus heifers never went trough the fence and Lucy, having gone through the fence, never took her calf Bullette ( See photo in “Cows And Bullets” below.) into the weeds on the other side. Unfortunately the rest of the cattle were now out of site and in the bush by this time. We took the cattle we had back to the barn and confined them there.

Let me tell you about this bush. It belongs to a city gentleman who wishes to return it to its natural state, this seems to mean to let it grow wild. I have lived on my farm for thirteen years and during that time the bush has been left on it’s own. It is now full of undergrowth consisting of wild rose, wild raspberry, some other kind of bush with long thorns plus lots of stinging nettle. Calista was dressed in shorts and a short-sleeved top; I was a little better off in genes and a t-shirt.

After four hours of literally beating the bushes for the $%&U] cattle we emerged tired and bleeding from the scratches inflicted by the many thorns and not having seen or heard hide, hair or moo of the cattle. It was now five PM and time to take my grandson Peter home to London.

Upon returning home we resumed our search for our wayward bovines with flashlights and a full moon.

This was not the first time that these cattle had escaped. In the past they had always made their way back to the closest gate to the barn, which they consider home. Calista went on foot back through the hay field that borders the pasture and runs beyond it along the edge of the bush. I took the pick up truck down the other side of the hay field. It wasn’t long before my wife hollered that she had spotted three of them coming along the fence to the rear of the barn and heading toward the gate. (No big surprise) I circled around the opposite side of the field with the pick up and soon found three more coming along a ways behind the others. I went back and opened the gate and we soon had these wanderers, plus another group, through the gate and into the barn where we closed them in.

After counting our prisoners three times both my wife and I decided that we were one cow short of the nine we should have had. Our next thought was; Why is there no mooing? Lone cows moo for the heard and all was quiet on the home front.

After feeding the cows we had, off we trudged back out to the hay field to search for our one hold out.

We first checked along the route taken by the first cows to return. I was able to back track them along the edge of the field and through some places grown up with Golden Rod as high as my head and depressions in the ground to step into.

At the very back of our property my wife spotted the reflection of eyes in the beam of her flashlight. Darn the eyes were in the bean field. Well nothing for it, off I go wading through the beans. The eyes disappear immediately. After wading through beans and hay for another hour or so we start to wonder aloud if we had miss counted the animals in the barn. But we did both count them thee times and my wife even knew which one we were missing, Frieda, a yearling heifer was the wayward one. We continued to search.

At midnight or a little after we agreed that there was no point in continuing the search in the dark and I would continue the search in the morning and Calista would go to work.

On our way past he barn we went in to make sure that our Houdini cattle were going to stay put. While there we took a quick count. WHAT DO YOU MEEN THERE ARE NINE COWS HERE? We counted them three times earlier and there were only eight. This can't be. We did see the reflection of eyes in the bean field. Then it dawned on us; we had just spent two hours chasing a dear around the bean field and pasture.

The cattle are still confined to the barn until the fence at the creak is made secure.