I moved the cows yesterday. I wasn’t intending to. Brent was coming back late last night. I thought I’d set up the fence for him so that when he arrived, he could roll the hay out and move the cows. It was getting darker by the minute and Brent was not home. All this talk about squatting and hay bale rolling. I thought I’d give ‘er a go. Why not? I’m on my own, I have no walkie talkie, I’ve never done a cow move by myself, it’s getting dark and the cows with the big horns are staring at me. What could go wrong?
I removed the hay net, easy. Then went in for the deep squat. But did it budge? No, not a bit. I felt them roll their eyes. “Come on lady, he does it each day, three times a day,” they insisted in a Seinfeld cow kind of way. I squat again. And I push and push and again and squat and push. Nope. I switched tactics and used momentum and gravity. I got the ball rolling. As it rolled down the hill, I noticed that is was not unrolling. I needed to turn it. A round bale of hay weighs a ton ( well, not exactly a ton, but it felt exactly like a ton ). Darker it gets, their laughter increases, so I stopped. I left a small line of hay with a ball at the end. I started winding up the temporary wire fence to let the cows through. The cows were lovely. Perfect move. Except for the silly me winding the wire. While watching the cows come through, the wire popped off the reel, but I kept on reeling it in. Then, well, the sun had set. I couldn’t see how to fix it. So as the cows were munching, I gathered the wire and picked up the posts. As I came to the end, the gate hook attached to the ball of wire I was holding caught on the live fence. Yep, zapped four times. And anther zap on my way out of the paddock.
The next morning the cows were in! In the wrong place! The abandoned ball of hay rolled over the temp fence, knocking it off and low enough to cross. They had a lovely Grand Slam morning breakfast on their next strip.
Brent is back home and thankfully all is right. No new calves today. Whew.
