The other day we needed to corral a heifer. For some reason she could not get bred.
She was getting bigger, eating and not producing, and my freezer was getting empty. It was a perfect combination – a need, and a means to fulfill that need.
Rounding animals up where they need to go when they need to get there can be challenging and demands patience and determination. Sometimes it’s just moving them to the next stage, or culling one now and again, or once in awhile it’s singling one out to be butchered.
The day came to round up this unproductive animal. My husband has a surefire way to get heifers into a trailer. (Well, it’s usually pretty dependable!)
We bring them in from the heifer barn through the middle and little pens, using gates to partition them off, creating an alleyway through to the exit. As added precaution, machinery is placed strategically at an angle to block an escape. In that manner my husband and I can pretty much coax any heifer out to the cow yard to mingle with the cows by ourselves. At milking time they all make their way up to the barn and usually the new heifer shuffles along with the older milking cows.
This one was feisty and caused a commotion right from the start. She decided the cow yard was not exactly her comfort zone, immediately broke the fence down, getting back in with her friends, the heifers in the heifer barn.
The next day we tried again, this time getting her all the way in the barn, locked up for the night in a pen in which my husband used yet another gate to partition off the little milk-fed calves. Feeding through an opening in the opposite side of their pen that night, they accommodated us nicely by sticking their heads out one at a time to drink their supper.
Normally, when our trucker comes to pick up cows he backs up to the barn and we conveniently load the animals on the trailer right out from the big barn door. We butt the doors tight up to the trailer, and the animal has no recourse other than to step up and in. This time, however, because we were chopping straw we had the blower and pipe set up in the cow yard and the trucker had to back his trailer to another door, for there was no room to accommodate him at the usual spot.
The morning arrived to relocate her. The heifer was coaxed down the barn aisle and everything was going fine until she saw the trailer sitting outside waiting for her.
Just outside the door a gate had been put in place to guide her up the ramp. She stuck her head in the lower rung of that gate and tossed it for all she was worth.
The gate flew up and over, and away she went across the field, running like the wind.
My husband immediately jumped on our four-wheeler and took off after her, corralling her back toward the farm. She saw her friends in the heifer barn and busted the fence down (again) to get back in there with them. We were back to square one.
We had to wait another week until the meat-packing plant had a spot open. My husband had another tactic up his sleeve, patiently determined to get this job done. We were going to load her into our trailer and when our trucker came, back his trailer up tight to ours and transfer her over. Before we attempted this, my husband gave the frenzied heifer a dose of heifer calm, to try to ease the transition. (It did nothing, by the way.)
The day dawned overcast and rainy. We had no choice but to continue. It was thundering, lightning and raining and we were out in it, carting steel gates around, driving a tractor hauling a trailer, trying to get a jumpy, uncooperative heifer inside. Everybody’s nerves were tight.
We set the heifer’s headlocks in place and I went around in front of them to release her. Backing out, she spun around and took off past my husband in a flying mass of hooves. We waited. I shoved their feed in. The sound of the shovel scraping feed brought her right back to the headlocks to eat (what she did best) and we started in again, released her and backed her out.
This time we got her out of the big pen, through the middle, into the little one.
Now we had to get her up into the trailer, backed up tight against the little pen’s opening. All the while the lightning was zinging, the thunder was rumbling and we were getting soggy. After a few rounds around the pen she finally got up into the trailer. As my husband slammed the door shut, I went weak with relief. My husband set about shutting gates and releasing the rest of the heifers. I drove the tractor into the shed to await our trucker.
A half an hour later he drove onto the yard. As soon as she heard that sound, the heifer bounced the trailer around so hard it lifted the hitch right off the tractor, sending the pin flying. My husband had to use our skid steer to back the trailer up to the trucker and finally, finally, she was going down the road. I almost waved.
Whew! Mission accomplished! The result? My freezer will soon hold the benefits of our patient determination.
(“A man’s wisdom gives him patience.” Proverbs 19:11)
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