Moving Cows

Today on the farm we moved the main group of cows to their calving pasture. This group is due to start calving April 4th. True to form I had one cow calve last night (12 days early) and the baby rode with me in the tractor. The photos below show how we move cows on Pinhook Farm. It's nothing like the Ponderosa, however, I think the cows enjoy the experience.

 We have found that it's much easier to lead cows than to drive them. (Probably some kind of LI lesson in this). So the first step in moving cows is getting a bucket full of tasty cow bait. (Dried distillers grain).

In this shot we have a group of about 200 cows happily following the bucket of treats. If you look to the back of the pack you can see Kevin following with the Ranger, to push any stragglers. This is sort of like Pavlov's dogs, I honk the horn in the tractor and the cows get fed, so they are happy to follow. The exception is the rule on the farm is that if you honk the horn you do feed the cows. I always felt sorry for the dogs in Pavlov's experiment. Cows are easy to move so long as they are always going to "greener pastures".

 This calf was born last night, so he got to hitch a ride with me to the new pasture. I enjoyed the company.