Working Ranch Blog

This weekend I had a run in with a stirred up cow at my dad’s place in Arkansas. As I stood there straddling a gate with a determined Angus cow at my feet, my mind went back to a similar episode in Wyoming.

Run about last July, I had some cows that had crossed the creek into a great scrub for about a month. When I finally caught the cows back on our side of the creek, we managed to work them up to the corrals where I sorted and loaded them up in the trailer so they could be hauled to the main place for vaccinations. Since these cows were out in the scrubs for a month their flight zone became quite a bit smaller and they seemed to momentarily forget ours was the hands that feed them. As I loaded up the cows, I told our livestock manager to watch these cows because they were likely to be flighty. Later that afternoon I returned to the main ranch to find some tuckered out ranch hands with that look of a long day’s work. Instead of retelling the story, I am going to let my co-worker Katy Jane share it from her point of view. Katy Jane is from England where she had little experience with cattle. She spent last year in Wyoming learning the ropes of the ranch. She denies being a great storyteller, but I think you might disagree. Here is her version of how those “mad cows” tore apart the day.

Cows. Cows are like any animal and get used to their surroundings and objects they see often, i.e. humans. Some of our cows in the Bonanza part of our ranch (already a jungled maze of sagebrush, russian olive and land contoured so that it is impossible to cover it except on foot) managed to cross the creek into a neighbour's ranch, not to be recovered for at least another month. When we did eventually get them back, they were wild as anything and trying to sort the cows from their calves for vaccinating was no mean eat! These pairs had missed going up the mountain with the rest of our herd so we were going to transport them to a nearby pasture until we decided what to do with them. Ted, our livestock manager, and Lindsay, another ranch hand, loaded them into the trailers to transport them but realised at the end that they were three cows short... As it turned out our faithful escapologists had escaped from the corrals and into the surrounding pasture. Which happens to be about 300 acres big. I'm not quite sure how big an acre is but I know that 300 of them = a lot! I was cleaning out the horse barn when Ted and Lindsay come in asking for help...they'd been trying to get these three cows in with quads for the last hour but had only succeeding in losing one and chasing the other two away. I take a quad and join them but again, all we succeed in doing is making the two we can find jump the fence onto the road where they promptly run straight through someone's open gate and go into hiding. We drive into Jim Caines' place and find our two cows enjoying the stackyard, full just after haying. We ease up on them but they see up and jump the fence back into one of our other pastures...great! After much twisting and turning on the quads and much running about we managed to get the cows out our gate and headed the right way down the road to the ranch and the corrals. We have by now established that these cows are "madder than a June hare" (as the expression goes round here!) so the mile trip down the road was spent on egg shells, our nerves jumping every time the cows so much as looked at us! Anyone would have thought we were dealing with bears not cows... The road splits into a Y at the end, the right fork leading to the ranch, the left up the mountain with a cattle guard at the front. Naturally we think they'll take the right fork without the cattle guard but as if to prove us wrong and much to our surprise (and despair!) they jump the cattle guard and run into our stackyard. Again we think we've got them, as the fence surrounding the stackyard is an 8ft elk fence and we run to get the trailer to load them up. Jeff, the general manager, has joined us by this point and Lindsay, Ted and I creep around the stackyard on foot to usher the cows into the trailer. One cow takes one look at Ted and Lindsay on the opposite side from me and runs straight for them, narrowly missing Ted. She then runs straight into the trailer, hits the back wall and comes rushing out again. Cows are quick. By this point I am standing on top of a haybale as the other cow runs past me. Ted goes over to talk to Jeff and Lindsay and I walk cautiously to the back of the stackyard to try again to load the cows. Suddenly I see this cows running straight at me, head lowered and I hear Jeff in the background going "eaaaasy...eeeeeeaaaaaaasy!" As if I could even think about being easy when a 1200lb cow is charging me!!! I had a stack of bales right behind me so had no place to run so I wait until last minute and then run sideways, hoping, praying that she can't make the turn. She doesn't but I see the other cow coming up to Lindsay and shout to her to move. This cow decides to go through the fence and manages to get herself completely tangled. Lindsay and I look at each other, look at the 8ft fence and scale it in about two seconds flat. Ted is half way up the fence at the far end with a cow at his feet. Still determined to get them to the ranch, Lindsay and I run around and grab our quads in order to run them into the corrals after Ted and Jeff free the tangled cow. The other cow escapes over the tangled cow and runs after Ted, who only manages to escape by falling over the tangled cow himself. (If you've ever seen a rodeo clowns, Ted would have made a good one that day!) That cows runs off, followed by the now freed cow and they jump the fence into another pasture - our alfalfa pasture. Alfalfa in large quantities kills ruminants so we knew we had to move them from there. At this point, Jess, one of the interns, drives up to tell us about two cows who have jumped a cattle guard and run back into the Caines' place. By this point we don't know whether to laugh or cry and can't help but marvel a our cows' gymnastic abilities! (I am debating starting up a new sport show jumping cows...) We drive into the Caines' place one last time but the cows, no fools to us, are long gone. The three of us return home for a stiff drink and a laugh at our escapades. A true case of mad cow!

Do you have any stories where you were treed by a contrary cow? Share it with me by email (rjlgoodman@hotmail.com), or on Facebook and Twitter.

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