The Round Up 1995

This was the designated day –round up time.  Generally we have various plans in place — beginning with Plan A and then progressing on down the alphabet.

Plan A was changed to Plan B, when it was determined — or at least we thought so — the price would be better at a cattle barn other than the one we had been using.  The barn was changed and the day of the sale was also different.  With Plan B in place, John tried his old and tested method of catching the cattle and that is to toll the calves into the catch pen where he wants them.  Well, as one might imagine, today that didn’t work and Plan B was ditched, so we went on to Plan C and that was to drive the cattle up using the tractor.

Calves are smarter than one might think and they figured out what was happening very quickly, so the tractor had to be parked and we brought out Plan D, which is to walk/run/head-off and force the heifer/calf herd to the catch pen.  That’s much easier said than done, especially with Jake (the dog) helping.  Most of the time the dog gets on the wrong end of the bovine, causing them to bolt and run the other way and this is frustrating, to say the least.

Finally, we got the whole herd in the fenced off area of the catch pen and trapped Number 23, which was one of the girls designated to “ride.”  Now John had a young/wild bull in the barn all ready to load and when we tried to get Number 23 to go in the barn, the bull came out.  We had one more time with those two — that bull knows the meaning of wild.

However, that bull is not as wild as one black cow John had trapped a few days ago — she jumped over and cleared six strands of barbed wire.  We think we may have a cow that can jump over the moon!

Needless to say, the wild bull is still in the pasture.  With Number 23 and another bull safely in the barn and closed off they can’t escape, we now lacked four more and they had to be cut out of the herd.

It was my job at this point to man the gate and let out the keepers and hold in the “riders.”  Sounds easy?  Not on your life!  Number 16 was on the list of riders; however, when she got in with the keepers, John said, “Oh well, she’s muley-headed so just let her out with the rest.” (muley-headed means she doesn’t have horns).

Now we just lacked three!  By this time, I’ve forgotten what plan we’re on!  Anyway we’ve moved quite a ways down the alphabet!  Forget the plan, we just did the best we could and got the last two keepers in the chute and held them there ’til we could get the others hemmed up in the barn.

Now John got the trailer up to the barn door in position to load and all was going well.  They actually all got on the trailer – one right after the other and the back door of the trailer was closed.  John was going around to unfasten a barn door that was chained to the trailer when that back door came open and all five of our load escaped.  Thank goodness a crucial inside gate was closed and they were held in very close quarters, making the re-loading task much easier.

I had great plans for things I would accomplish while John was gone to the cattle sale, but I’m exhausted.  Think I’ll just stretch out these aching knees, take a nap or two and enjoy country living!