Friday, September 28, 2012

Friday Farm Fun- Spaz Cow

My husband is always trying different things when it comes to farming. Sometimes it's interesting crops, sometimes a different breed of cattle. A few years ago, he thought he'd like to introduce some limousine cattle into our herd.
Her don't mess with me look. 
He purchased some heifers and brought them home. As soon as he opened the trailer door, one of them took off and jumped three fences. We eventually got her home but over the years we've ended up selling all but one.

The one we kept raised good calves and doesn't jump fences, but... She acts like a cow high on meth when you walk into the field. No matter how far away from you she is, her head goes up, her eyes get round and wild looking, and she keeps her nose pointed your direction at all times, making sure you aren't sneaking up on her. But she is also the first in line when we move the herd to new pasture. I think she takes the lead with the comfort of the whole herd between her and us.

Wednesday, she had her calf. My husband has been dreading this because she's been known to knock us around when we try to tag the calf.  We decided to run her and the calf into the corral. Which actually went smoothly. It was when we tried to separate them by chasing the spaz cow into the smaller corral that I let out a blood curdling scream and ran for the fence.

While trying to herd her into the smaller corral, my husband got behind her and she decide to go my way. I did the usual wave my hands and crow, "Hawh! Hawh!" Only that just made her mad!  Her eyes widened, her head dipped ever so slightly and she picked up speed! That's when I waved my arms once and screamed like a little girl before kicking up dust as I raced for the fence. Boots, the border collie, nipped her heels right before she reached me drawing her attention to another target.
Spaz cow pawing the dirt.

We finally ran her into the smaller corral and vaccinated and banded the calf. We were out of ear tags so we left the two in the small corral until hubby brings some more tags home. As we stood there watching from the outside of the corral, the spaz cow looked at us with wild eyes and pawed the dirt, flinging it high in the air.

Yes, just another day at the Jager Wild Cow Days!

3 comments:

Stephanie said...

Okay, I was laughing out loud before the second sentence. We bought a bunch of the prettiest Limousine calves one year. Same problem. In order to move them from one corral to another, I had to load them in the trailer and move them. Wildest cattle we ever had. Still laughing.

Paty Jager said...

Stephanie, it's nice to know others have had as much "fun" with limousines as we have. LOL Too funny!

Nicole McCaffrey said...

LOL too funny, Paty! And yay to Boots the border collie for protecting you. They're amazing that way. Tanner once jumped in front of a Nerf bullet one of the boys had fired at me so I can tell people my dog --literally--would take a bullet for me.

Totally not the image of cows I have in my mind from visiting my aunt and uncle's dairy farm in PA. They were just big, gentle old gals. Great story!