This picture of Richard driving these calves this afternoon comes with quite a story. These calves were delivered to their new owner Thursday, April 5. They stood nicely in the corral for several hours, and so the owners decided to let them out into their single-strand electric fenced pasture. Well, the calves were not quite as gentle as expected, and they headed out. The owners called Richard (having worked with his office and heard of his stockmanship skills) Friday asking advice. Richard volunteered us to go bring them in. Richard and I walk about 12 miles on Saturday and managed only to track the calves to a hay field about 2 miles north of their “home” property. We suggested the owners watch that hayfield for the calves and call us if they see them.
They called Sunday after church saying they had them in sight in the hayfield. We drove up and headed down toward them. They turned into the brush beside the (unfenced) hayfield, which happened to be right where the 2003 tornado went through. What a mess to walk through! Richard and I walked through it 3 times and saw the calves for brief moments. We finally thought to call the owners who had been waiting on the hill, and they said the calves had came out of the brush and headed to the other end of the pasture. So, we walked up and saw them waiting there right at the edge of another set of woods. We approached them, and again they melted off into the trees. Because it was getting late, and we were unsure of just how to deal with them (because what we had been doing wasn’t working really well), we headed back home and called Mom! She gave us some excellent advice on working wild cattle, and we got ready to deal with them the next morning.
Monday morning we tracked them from where we had last seen them and walked another 6-7 miles around the woods 1-2 miles north of their “home.” Finally we decided it just wasn’t gaining anything and so called it a day. We suggested the owners watch for the calves and call us if they saw them. Or, the weather forecast was for rain Tuesday, and that would help the tracking on Wednesday.
Tuesday morning the owners called with the most bizarre twist of the entire story. They had spread grain in various pastures on their place, and woke in the morning to see one bag moved around and some cattle in the ONLY secure (4 strand barbed wire) pasture on their place. They just assumed it was the neighbor’s cattle who had got on them before. They went down and got a closer look, and sure enough, those 11 calves had walked the 2 miles back home (through brush and trees as there was no directly path between where they were and their “home”) and into the secure paddock! They shut the gate and called Richard!
Richard and I went over Wednesday afternoon and filmed his working them for an hour and a half and getting them relaxed a lot from where they were when we started. We went back again this afternoon and they drove even better. They still aren’t ready to turn out into single-strand electric, but they are getting better!
The owners think the grain drew them in . . . Richard and I wonder whether we didn’t “will them” back home?
