The Shape Of Moo

Sunday the hubs and I got to go on a fantastic outing with some dear friends. As we were gone from morning til night, I should have known that something awesome was going to greet us when we got home. It's like Murphy's Farm Law. An example of this is when I left on a two month long road trip one year, while stuck in rush hour traffic in Las Vegas, my horse decided to get out back home. Like the second day we were gone. It is inevitable.

That said, the kids fed everybody on Sunday, so I wasn't worried. They aren't as OCD as I am when feeding, but they are competent at the task, so I wasn't too worried about a moopacolypse.

I should have known better.

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The following morning, I was up early, leading my contingent of cats and dogs around from feeding chore to feeding chore, when I looked at the lean to over the barn door.

Well, that's not Christian, I murmured.

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Somehow, probably with their very beefy flintlocks, my three bovines in the barnyard had knocked the lean-to post off of its block. Let it be known that the lean-to has stood there, proudly, for almost twenty years and made it through the worst winter in recorded history round these parts.

It just couldn't take the moos.

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Moving on into the barn (I went through the back door), I came across another cow-tastrophy, well, a steer massacre more like it. One of the main uprights in Pumpkin, my daughter's show steer's, pen was angled nicely as well. That was a little bit more scary as it was a beam joining, load bearing section. Ugh.

So Monday my poor hubs had to get out the tractor, load the bucket with tools and salvaged lumber, and repair the cow wear. Things like this always happen at the most inopportune time, as there is no school this week but still sports practice and about a million other things, so I had to spend most of the morning and part of the afternoon on the road shuttling heathens and stuff.

The thing about my husband though, is that he is the most amazing improvising creature ever! I know a lot of it came from being in the Army as a career. They had to make do and figure things out on the fly with limited equipment a lot of the time, and boy has that knowledge and gumption come in handy on the homestead.

The cattletastrophe got me to thinking about the art of keeping cattle. If you were to go to my grandma's house and grab a photo album from out of her cupboard, you would find pictures of kid me with a baby Hereford calf in my lap. I've been around cattle most of my life, my papa ran a 100 head of them. They are wonderful.

They are also destructive, hard-headed, and not for neophyte homesteaders. Now, I don't believe in being a gatekeeper to anything, I think anyone can learn to do most anything, but you have got to put the work in. And when it comes to cattle, learning to handle large livestock is a skill that must be cultivated.

I have a glorious anecdote to illustrate this sentiment. My most excellent neighbor buys raw milk from a local small dairy. Her friend was buying it too, and decided she wanted her own milk cow. The lady, without any livestock experience under her belt, went out and paid 5K for a fresh, registered Jersey milk cow. AHHHHH!

Next week she was in a walking cast because the cow had fractured her foot during the first milking.

She ended up selling the cow not long after because she couldn't handle it. Most people make the mistake of staying too far away from cattle when they are handling them because they are scared. It's okay to respect an animal, especially a large one, and I do, but you have got to get up close with animals or you are going to get hurt. Heck, you are going to get hurt anyway, but it's easier to mitigate cow hurt if you can grab their head and twist up their nose.

A good example of bovine handling came when my daughter got her first show steer. It sat in the field all winter, eating a ton, and not being worked because she was only about ten and a bit scared of it. Guess who got to gentle the dang thing in March? This Kat! The hubs roped it and held on while I slid in and locked my arm around Uno's head and nose. He and I did a bulldogging show around the paddock for a bit until I had enough and tipped his nose to the sky, he flopped over like a beached whale, all 800 pounds of him. After that he was still a bit of a butt, but he respected me and treated me as the lead cow.

Cause that's the thing, you don't have to be mean to animals, ever, but you better be the lead animal and not afraid to flex on them a bit. This morning while walking out of the barnyard, my dominant heifer, Chloe was feeling frisky and came bouncing up behind me like she was going to headbutt me, I turned around and stuck my hand in her forehand and said, NO. She stopped and mooed meekly. You have to have their respect and trust, while also respecting them. It's a partnership as old as herdsmanship.

So no, gatekeeping is not what I am advocating here, more like interning and working your way up. When I moved on the farm, I hadn't worked anything but horses for a long time, and I was poor. Cattle are expensive, so I started with goats, chickens, and hogs. After many years, I started getting bottle calves.

(Side note: Bottle calves are not for neophytes either! Find a mentor, lots of literature/forums, and be prepared for death, they are fragile!! Thankfully I have never lost one, but I have spent 48 hours in the barn syringe feeding/tube feeding the scouring little moos, not fun!)

Before long I had a nice little herd started, I even split the cost of a magnificent chonk of show heifer with my daughter and am slowly building my breeding program. Why? Because I love cows, always have, always will. It's in my blood.

But dang, I wish they'd take it a little easier on my barn!

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So, in closing, the moral of this little missive is, don't be afraid to start at the beginning. Part of growth is making mistakes, trying new things, and learning from others (especially from the animals themselves). I just hate seeing animals hurt and neglected and people hurt and jaded because of our dopamine-addled society and its instant gratification, oh I saw that on tv, I've got lots cash or credit mentality. If you give it the time and respect needed, keeping livestock is one of the most rewarding things ever. That and you will get really good at throwing buckets in frustration when your bovines go on a bender and try to destroy your barn just because you went out and had fun for one stinking day!

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And as not most of the time, all of the images in this post were taken on the author's husband's probably smells like cow patties and molasses iPhone.