Thursday, March 4, 2010

What a nightmare!! Posting for March 3

One of our neighbors has decided to retire due to ill health and age. He sold his cow herd to one his brothers and a nephew, along with his bulls. He asked us and an other neighbor to haul the 30 replacement heifers he had to the sale barn at Dickinson, ND. His plan was for us to be there at 5:00 pm to load the heifers and head over to Dickinson where the heifers would sell the next day. We have had a tough winter here with lots of snow with wind, making huge drifts. A few warm afternoons of late have made conditions very icey. The corrals had drifts in them that were taller than the fences in someplaces and the corrals and alley ways were very slick. Now add to that mix a bunch of cattle that were not people friendly and the fact it was getting dark fast. We had a horrible time getting those thirty heifers loaded into two trailers. We had heifers climb over the snow drifts into other pens, heifers that jumped fences, broke thru the planks. We had one of our dogs with us and he was a great help, although the had to struggle with the deep snow like we did. These heifers are not ones that would do well on our place! These are the kind that we don't keep as they are just plain ornery. I ended up on the ground when when short-eared nasty little witch ran straight for me to take me. A couple of minutes later, she came at me again! Thru the cold, snow and eventual darkness we battle those girls and after two hours we did get them loaded. Of course they unloaded as nice as could be when we reached the yards at the sale barn!

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