The summer of 2011 may forever be known as the summer of the cows. Logan had been considering buying some goats or sheep to eat the grass at the cabin when he came across 4 young steers for an unbeatable price. Because the cows were so young we were worried they would run away and not stay on the property near the water. We were right.
We opened the gate to the trailer; the cows walked out and just kept on walking, never even looking at the pond ten feet away. We stayed at the cabin that night so Logan could herd them back to the pond a few times, hoping they would take the hint. The next morning one of the cows got spooked and jumped the fence onto the neighbors’ property. We said good bye to him for a while knowing he would be much safer with the neighbors older cows. Before too long the other three were nowhere to be found.
After two weeks of searching the mountain every chance we could find we were almost ready to give up looking. Then one day, after a 4 hour hike to the bottom of the canyon Logan finally spotted all four of our cows together, living happily, with the herd next door. We breathed a sigh of relief.
During the two week cow hunting period we were planning a solution to contain the adolescent runaways, IF we ever found them. Logan bought an old mamma cow; we call her mean mamma because she doesn’t seem to be too friendly with humans. We put her with my brothers’ cows at our barn and she graciously adopted a few of his calves who had recently been weaned but apparently wished they had not. Mean mamma is at least a good mamma.
Today Logan is going to the mountain to build a temporary corral to put our five cows in for a few days. After the young steers have had a chance to interact with “Mean Mamma” a bit we will let them out to graze; keeping our fingers crossed that Mean Mamma will keep track of the young ones. Be ready for “Cow Wrangling Part 2” next week to see how it all goes.
Just for fun I took some pictures of my little brothers new baby cows, aren’t they cute?
This little guys name is Toaster, he is the calf Mean Mamma has adopted.
The really black calf was very friendly and enjoyed playing with J5 while eating the bottom of her shirt.
