Monday, August 16, 2010

Not exactly a Sunday drive in the country!

Our Sunday was spent in the country and we did drive....some cattle! We moved some of
our cow/steer pairs across three pastures to the next one in our grazing rotation.
This was the water stop about 1/2 way to the pasture "way over east". The darn prairie dogs
have tried to take over the water lot and two pastures next to it. The water lot and one pasture
are on our private land so we can use some control methods. The other pasture is on federal
land where we can't do much about them except see them eat the grass, make holes and
produce a weed infested,  highly erodible mess and of course reproduce.
Our final destination with this bunch. The cattle know the schedule thru out the year as we change pastures
which makes it easy to move them from place to place.
We also had been working on getting our bulls in and back home this week. Bart was the last hold-out
of the bunch. He got to be rather agressive this summer. The first few minutes when we we getting
him to the corral and trailer he was good. Things rapidly went downhill from there though. Bart decided he was going to go the way he wanted which was the opposite of the way he was supposed to go. He got crankier and crankier,finally refusing to move at all. With Doug and I urging him with the help of the dogs
he still wouldn't budge. Eventually he just got plain mad and came after Doug and Badger. He had done this before so he was on probation anyway.  Let's just say Bart made a wreck of the day for us. We don't keep agressive bulls or cows on our place so it's "bye, bye, Bart"  

5 comments:

-my husband grows cotton- said...

Agressive cows/bulls make me nervous. Love the new picture on your header!

Far Side of Fifty said...

Hi Judy, Great photos of your cattle drive! I enjoyed them! :)

gtyyup said...

It's unbelievably gorgeous out there! I'd love to take a "drive" with you all!

Sarah said...

these were great pictures! Shoot me an email next time your moving cows and I'll load up and come help if I can get home! Now that I know we're so close to each other geographically, it would be so easy to drive over for the day and I LOVE moving cows! Any excuse to ride and be out on the prairie!

Beth said...

I would love to go out and do ranch work for a week. It just something I would like to experience.