Keeping up with Mother Nature

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Winter is the time to catch up or even get ahead of mother nature,  the weeds take a breather,  things slow down, at least that’s what we thought.

Now that the yearling steers had gone off to market we were expecting to settle into a quiet winter with only our remaining cows and two of their heifers.  The cows are all pregnant and being old hands at the pregnancy thing will be calving in early Spring.  Good animal husbandry tells us that the heifers are too young to breed just yet, but like all adolescents they have other ideas. 

Recently we had a refresher course on what it is like to live with teenagers and their hormones.  Our older heifer began to bellow and act just like a skittish teen, she ran up and down the fence line, she hassled the rest of her herd and she kept the bellowing going on and off all day, it became maddening, drilling through our ears and echoing over the hills.  

She was a girl on a mission driven by mother nature or more precisely - hormones. The racket continued,  and sure enough it had the desired effect - the boys in the neighbour’s property appeared at their fence.  In a move straight out of the nursery rhyme ‘the cow jumped over the moon’  three of the neighbours cattle sailed over the fence and onto the road. I now know what it must be like to be a security guard at the shopping mall on a Saturday afternoon. Out of nowhere and just on dusk our heifer came barreling down the hill and she too flipped over a low section in the fence, looking more like an Olympic hurdler than a heifer.   With that they all bolted into the dusk together for a night on the town.

Next morning a distant and very hoarse mooing led us into the bush where a tired, thirsty young heifer was happy to see us and more than willing to come home.   Picture the mascara running, and the high heels being carried and you have a vision of our girl tottering through the gate and back to her herd.  They greeted her with much head butting and a general celebratory romp around the paddock.

    'Go girl, that's the way- you've already got the boys falling at you feet and they're only steers. 

     Wait till you you see a real bull.'   they seemed to be saying.

 Luckily the neighbourhood lads were all just young and silly steers.  BUT in another 24 days time the cycle will begin all over again.  Another winter job, keep ahead of mother nature -- check all fences and keep the boys at bay.