Thirteen Hours of Animal Wrangling

Phil was up at 6am, setting up the long cattle move from one neighbor's property to the other's. Other than short breaks for breakfast and lunch, he was on his feet, trying new things, the next thirteen hours.

In one of those hours, we sold our last three Babydoll sheep. I heard from one of last fall's purchasers that she had FIVE babies out of her two ewes. We were happy to have two living babies at the end of the season. I am happy that the sheep are so happy with her.

What brought Phil from pro-sheep to no-sheep? He scythed a patch of ryegrass, between a few experimental blueberry plants. Phil has never really scythed just grass before. He's scythed woody weeds and brush, but that is more a hack-hack than an easy swish. When he saw how quickly and pleasurably he could mow grass by hand, and calculated how much time he spends setting up sheep netting and taking it down, he realized he wanted to be done. At least for now.

We still have three full-sized sheep on the property, but in the afternoon, we had a former Polyface Farm intern stop by. He could not have had better timing (more on that in a minute), and he'll be back sometime next week to take the other three.

I posted six sheep for sale on Thursday night. I would not have expected to be sold out by Saturday afternoon. Clearly, it was time for the sheep to go.

The rest of the time was spent with the cows. Early on, we moved 14 cows into their first section of pen. Baby Dorothy was not there. How could Toots leave her, so callously? As we pulled up stakes and Phil wound up the electric line, we searched the entire paddock diligently. No sign of her.

We've lived this scenario before. Not the day following a severe predator attack (total chicken mortality this week: eight white Leghorns, fully half of our flock of layers. I am grateful to have eight yet, grateful for the sole guinea, grateful to hear Chanticleer's call, and especially grateful that Isaiah's pet Tux were not taken). But missing calf with calm mother: we've been there.

With almost every task completed before the herd moved on, Phil found Dorothy, lying in the unfinished basement of the neighbor's house, calmly curled up on the gravel floor.

And so we drove the fifteen cows to the edge of our field, where Phil had set up a cattle chute. These chutes allow a rancher to deal with an individual cow in tight confinement. The cow walks into a little stall, then the gate in front opens and the cow walks on.

Today, this was needed because several calves have no collars, and the two bull babies need their collars loosened. It's also just good management, to have cows go through chutes periodically.

And so the marathon began. After a half hour or so, we had a few yearlings go through in fairly quick succession. Fern, always eager for new forage (and perhaps remembering her AI experiences) proved brave enough to test the chute. Phil carried baby Dorothy through, and then held her with her little leash on until Toots, hesitatingly, walked through, too. Hornless Catherine, finished with the flying horns from stressed out cows, finally wandered through. Her son Clover soon followed. He jumped and tried to lunge out in several different ways, but Phil managed to loosen his collar and he moved off, no worse for the wear, and considerably freer in throat. I put a leash on Bianca, and tugged her through. It was like milking: she planted her feet, I tugged until she moved.

And so we were two hours in and had six of 14 through, and eight stressed out animals to go. That was when the former intern arrived, precisely when we were scratching our heads most. Why were the animals so completely balky? Was there an obvious fault in the set up? Even Snowman, generally the most gentlemanly of bulls, shook his horns at Phil (who made a truly astounding vertical leap over an electric line, well out of harm's way; I was still thinking, "Snowman's behaving aggressively," before I processed, "And Phil's ten feet and an electric line away).

No, he said, it seemed like it should be functional.

Sometimes the most helpful thing is just to know that you're not an idiot.

Phil wondered if perhaps the cows were so hesitant because he had used the boundary fence, which usually has a live electric line running the length, as one side of his chute. The line was, of course, turned off for the moment, but cows wouldn't necessarily want to cozy up to an electric line.

So he made a second chute, right next to the first. And after a break for lunch, sure enough, lead cow Bethany sauntered right on through, as did Snowman's current flame, Beatrice. Snowman headed in next, and, to our horror, his shoulders proved about two inches too wide. The original chute would have been the perfect size, I think: the second one was just a tad too small. He had to somehow ungracefully back out, and he was one shaken fellow by the time he could breathe free. A bull that big and that terrified felt particularly menacing, so we cut him out as quickly as possible and let him out a different way.

In the end, we had two that simply would not go through. Cheri and I both ended with hurt hands from Charlemagne charging through one of the electric lines. Charity spooked so badly she started breaking free of the holding pen and running around the hill. Ken got a shock from touching a line. Phil got shocked holding an insulator: he wondered if it arced onto his hand.

It was almost six. All the other cows had walked to their new pen. Fern and Bethany came back, calling for their foolish children. And so Charlemagne and Charity did not experience the wonder of the chute and the headgate. Some other time.

Phil took down fence and line for another hour or so, and at 7:30, thoroughly beat down, he sat down. A long day done.