Hungry Hungry Heifers

When people ask me what my favorite thing to do on the farm the first thing that usually pops into my head is herding cattle.  I'm not sure what makes it so much fun but flying around on a 4 wheeler and chasing cattle is awesome. 

A couple months ago we had several pastures that we kept our heifers on all varying in distance from about 2 to 15 miles from our house.  Since the cattle had been out on those pastures since spring we were starting to run out of grass and it was time to move the cattle.  We decided would be easier to transport the heifers from the farthest pasture with trailers, but the rest of them were all moved with a good old fashion cattle drive. 

 

The first thing that has to be done when you are starting a cattle drive is round up the cattle into one big group and get them heading toward the gate.  The problem is that they know that there is an electric fence where the gate was so they don't want to get anywhere close to the fence.  Getting them going usually involves tricking one or two of them to go through the gate and once that happens they all just follow the heifer in front of them.

When you have them on the road you mainly spend your time keeping the cattle from doing their favorite things which include: eating, drinking, and peeing.  If you've ever tried to heard football fans toward the game and away from a tailgate party you've probably experienced something similar.

After the first 10 or 15 minutes all the heifers started to get tired and instead of running they just started walking until we got to our destination.  We ended the drive in a irrigation circle of corn stalks, and some wheat stubble.  After we got them there, I could tell they were all happy to be left alone to do their favorite things again. 

-Cowboy Ryan
 
My Grain Headaches Suggested Reading:

•  The Last Cattle Drive: Robert Day - This novel is about a Eastern Kansas guy who moved to a rural area in Western Kansas.  Sound familiar?   It's a lot of fun to read and I've found some parallels between the main characters story and my own.