When the cow comes home 1/03/2010
In December of 2008 we bought a bred cow from some very nice folks in Cheyenne. She is a Belted Gallaway and Black Angus cross, a half and half if you will. Quite literally, if you look at her from one side she is a 'Belty' and if you look at her from the other side she is an Angus. We have had her now for 1 year and 1 month. We call her Mamma but thats not really her name.
It was a very cold, cold, cold, cold day when we brought her home. We borrowed a stock trailer to get her moved here. Of course, Mr. and Mrs. Skinner, the sellers, got her all loaded for us. By the time we got her home she was none too happy. We thought we would let her out of the trailer and let her be. Just let her settle down. Her food and water was already in place so we didn't have to disturb her. We figured by mornin' she would be much calmer. We put the dogs away so they wouldn't bother her.
We got the trailer backed up to the gate to release her, opened the gate of the trailer and then stood back for the angry cow to stomp and snort her way out. We had our escape route figured out just in case.
Well, she came out. We got the gate closed, moved the truck to drop the trailer and that is when the fun began. While Bill was taking the trailer off the truck the cow jumped the fence. The fence that we thought was ready for her. Turns out cows can jump pretty high. Even pregnant cows.
As we paniced, the cow was making her get away. I opened the corral gate again, Bill ran out into the big pasture on foot. I got in the truck and headed after the two of them. You have to remember this is a very cold and windy afternoon. I would head the cow off with the truck and Bill would keep her going in the right direction on foot.
For an inexperienced cow chaser it is a hazard trying to keep up with the cow as close as you can but be ready to hit the breaks if she cuts in front of ya. I had to do a lot of high speed reverse, tight turns, dirt slinging acrobatics to try to stay with the cow. Cows can turn sharper and faster than an F-150 pickup. Its a wonder I didn't run my husband over.
In the meantime, my poor husband is out there on foot, running and chasing the cow (he has cow chasing skills). Its cold and the wind is cutting through him. There is no way in Hell I could have done my husbands job.
We finally got the cow into our north pasture and closed that gate. It was just for the illusion because the north pasture still had fencing down. We coaxed her back into the corral just for her to repeat the whole process. I won't bore you with the details of the second chase. But we did eventually get her back in. And she got back out. We tried and tried but we were unable to get her into the barn. We could have locked her in the barn.
All of us were exhausted but mostly my husband and the cow. It was so freaking cold out and the wind was just blowing away oblivious of our plight. The one hole side of the cow was just frozen slobber and snot. She showed no signs of stopping.
My husband had taken over the truck while I tried some uneffective moves. The sun was going down. We had torn up our pasture with the truck and part of the neighbors pasture. It was getting too dangerous in the dark. We have some old foundations out in the pasture from the original barns. I could see running into them in the dark. We had to call it quits. We let the cow wonder off in a northwesterly direction and we went in to warm up and call it a day. I did a lot of crying that night.
The next day we got up bright and early, had some coffee and then went back out into the freezing cold. There were some cattle panels at the east end of our barn that were set up as pens by the previous owners. It was run down and overgrown but it was all we had to work with. While I pried the panels out of the frozen ground my husband used them to heighten the fence of the corral. I worked as fast as I could, crying off and on about our situation, worrying that we had just given away $500 for the hell of it because I didn't think we would ever find the cow.
I just about ran myself into the ground. I worked so fast in hopes that we would get the fencing done in enough time to go looking for the cow. There was one panel I just could not get out of the frozen ground. It was one of the best ones, too. As hard as we worked we didn't have enough day light left to go cow hunting. During the winter it gets dark so early. I was devastated by this point. I was so certain that she had way too much time to get as far away as possible. How do you find a cow when there are thousands of acres of farm land surrounding you?
Finally the next morning came. We got up, had our coffee and then began our search. We headed west knowing there was a dairy farm one and a half miles away. The cows were too far away from the road to try to identify our cow. We were looking for a black and white cow in a sea of black and white cows. The wind made it difficult to try to hold the binoculars steady long enough to see well.
We gave up trying to see that way and so we drove around to the farmer's drive. We were in luck, the farmer was home. However, he said that when he went out to feed that morning he did not see any new additions to his ladies. I wasn't so sure about his assessment being that he has at least one hundred cows. I had Bill (my husband) drive around to the east end of the farmers dairy again so that I could try for another look at the cows. I was contemplately tresspass at that point, sure that he would not have noticed a new cow in amongst his cows.
Bill said we should just keep driving. We headed to the next farm just north of the dairy. No one was home there, but unless he had her locked in his garage, I didn't see our cow. I left them a note asking for them to call if they had any info. Thus the afternoon continued on in this way. We decided to head into Pine Bluffs for lunch at A&W and look at the farms along the way. As you can guess, no luck.
After lunch we headed off to a very large farm about four miles from our place. This is a huge operation, this farm. They gave us permission to look around but of course we had the same results as before. We decided to call it a day. Our hope was lost.
On the way back to our farm we decided to stop in at a cattle ranch a couple of miles up the road. We wanted to let the rancher know we were looking for our cow and if anyone called about a found cow, he could get us in touch. This, too, was a large operation. He raised Angus beef. On our way into his ranch I looked off to the east. I couldn't believe my eyes. Our cow was about a quarter of a mile away from the road standing next to the fence (obviously one she couldn't jump).
Had she been facing his herd I never would have spotted her because I would have been looking at her Angus side. The Gods were with us because she was facing away from his herd and I was seeing her Belty side. I was so excited. We found our cow.
We looked around the place to see how we could get to her and find someone that could tell us where we could put her until we got back with the stock trailer. We found a ranch hand that showed us were we could put her and how to get to her. We got out there, tried to chase her through a gate that would allow us to get her into the small corral that would hold her. Every time we got her near the gate she would change direction. It took the better part of an hour to finally get her through the gate.
We had her heading in the direction we wanted her, things were good, the birds were singing, the sun was shining and then..... she took off in the direction of the herd. We tried best we could to keep her from getting mixed in but she did it anyway. We tried to seperate her for quite some time. She was so tired from all the running that her tongue was lolling and her sides were heaving. But she kept going just the same. We were so concerned that she was going to lose the calf that we called off the chase.
We found the ranch hand again, told him what happened (how embarrassing) and he said that him and some others would get her caught for us. He told us to come back the next day to get her. They got to do it on horseback. Much easier to turn a horse than a vehicle.
The next day arrived and we went to get our runaway cow. There she was, in a pen, acting as if nothing had ever happened. The rancher went in with his Red Heeler and got her loaded in no time (it is really something to watch those dogs work).
We took her home and released her (with great trepidation) into her corral. She looked and she looked but she couldn't find a short spot in the fence to jump. She has been home since. Good fences make good neighbors, but they also keep the cows where they belong.
Just another day on the farm. 
Angus side. 
Belty side.
Copyright 2010