Thursday, June 5, 2008

Who's walking who?

Greetings from Watchthesky family farm! :) It feels like forever since I have found the time to say hello in blogland... almost a week!

#59 is doing good. She is a very nice cow and I am growing fond of her. Shocking, I know. Me, the animal hater actually thinks having a big moo-ing animal in the backyard is a good thing. The dog on the other hand... we're trying to get rid of her. No takers yet but I'm still hopeful. :{

Anyway, back to Twink. She had enough of her fenced in pasture and thought the grass on the other side was much greener (which it was) and tried her hand hoof at getting to it. To make a long story short, she broke the fence, hubby noticed what was going on from a window upstairs, and the whole family took action to get her to chill a bit.

1st step in keeping a cow from pushing down a piddly little fence is to spray water toward the broken part. I guess cows don't like to be sprayed. It worked for us anyway.
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Secondly, the whole family starts cutting long grass wherever they can find it, for a good 1/2 hour, to throw to the cow to keep her busy and happy and away from broken fence while hubby digs a hole for a new post. ( You only do this if you do not realize you could have just put her in the barn until hubby was done).
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Thirdly, once hubby has a post to chain her to out in the new pasture, you take her for a little walk & hope she doesn't have a mind to run. (Turn your volume up for this spell binding video). :)

Did you hear my humble and wise suggestion? Yep, I'm pretty smart... and helpful.

Fourthly, when the cow gets two legs all caught up in her chain while grazing in her new pasture and you think she's going to break a leg or have a nervous breakdown, you forget you have neighbors and start yelling like a crazy lady for you hubby to "COME RIGHT NOW..... PLEASE!!!" I'm sure I sounded very calm, cool, & collected. I'm sure we put on a good show for all our neighbors and passerbys as well.
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And lastly, holding a large container of grain you just lead your cow back to the barn and lock her up until you can get a proper fence in place.

Life on a farm when you don't have a clue what you're doing can be very interesting....and make for a few good laughs at the supper table.