Silly me, I thought I might have at least part of the day to catch up on some things at home. Last night I asked M what HE had planned for today and he said, "WE are vaccinating the rest of the calves." Okay, there goes my morning at the very least. This morning he said, "You and Pete can bring the cows while I get things ready at the barn." I'm pretty sure I gave him a look that showed I was skeptical that that would work. He had trailed the cows about 7 miles home from our pasture near Richland yesterday, and they were not really in the mood to be moved again. We have our neighbor's cows across a fence to the south and our stupid heifers across a fence to the north. Before I even got to the cows they took off running across the road up to the neighbor's fence. As I was trying to get them away from the fence a calf dove under the fence to the neighbor's pasture and the mama cow jumped over the fence to be with the calf. I chased the rest of the group up the fence line trying to get them off the fence and heading more northeast. About that time I saw a cow floundering as if she couldn't get her hind legs under her. She finally laid down and I left here there to get into the neighbor's pasture to get our pair out. I also tried to call M but there was no answer so I called his mom and asked her to go to the barn and tell him I needed help. I was more concerned at that time about the cow that was down.
I headed into the neighbor's pasture and got the pair moving in the right direction away from the neighbor's cows. I was making Pete ride on the back of the 4-wheeler with me, but he has a bad habit of immediately jumping off as soon as I slow down or stop. He tried to chase the cow and she didn't appreciate it and came after him and then headed in the wrong direction. This happened more than once, and by then I was screaming at Pete to get on the 4-wheeler and stay there. I did finally get the pair to the gate and out and by then the downed cow was up and gone. M showed up and was trying to get the stupid heifers away from the fence to no avail. One heifer jumped in with the cows we were trying to move but as we moved them through a gate it turned back so M turned back to put it back in where it was supposed to be. The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful. I later asked M if he was going to quit sending me out by myself when I always seem to have to call for backup. He was just trying to save time, but I don't think it saved us any.
We got that group of cows and calves into the corral and sorted off the calves from the cows and cut out a bull and discovered one bull was missing. Since we were waiting for R, we brought in another group and cut off the bulls. R had been at a 21st birthday party so you can imagine how he was feeling today. Pushing calves was probably not the thing he wanted to do. Oh well, that's the risk he took. We got the calves vaccinated and tagged and back with their mothers and went to have lunch with M's parents and J who had been out spraying.
When we came out from having lunch the yard was full of cows. Uh-oh. At first we thought they had rubbed a gate down and then realized that they were the ones that were out in the fields grazing and must have heard the commotion and came to see what was going on. We had left the gate open after the sprayer moved through because we were going to move the cows we were working through there. We let all the other cows out and sent them all back out to the fields. No harm done.
I thought there was a chance I could be still be home by 2:30 and get some things done at home, but we had to take a water truck up to J and I had to run to Richland to get surfactant for J. Then they remembered there were still mustard trucks in the field so we moved those to Richland. The guys went to the shop to get on the internet to look at some trucks so I cleaned out the fridge in the camper. Then they decided to move the combines to town. At that point, M asked if I had stuff to do at home because they could make two trips to get the combines. It was about 5:00 by then so I thought it was silly for them to do that so I flagged for them to move the combines to town. We unhooked the headers and started cleaning out some straw and chaff. I finally got home at 6:30 and then had to give haircuts to R and M.
So, I didn't get anything done at home. Looks like my next chance will be Sunday, but that's a day of rest, and I might need a rest.
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