Counting cows

I counted cows Monday morning, or bulls and steers to be more precise. Anyone who has dealt with livestock knows the moment I’m talking about when you go “One, two, three, four… five.” Wait a minute. Wait a minute. “One, two, three, four… five.”

When I left Friday, I had four head. I returned from my weekend of drunken debauchery to find five head.

Apparently, one of my close-up cows (soon to calve, for those less familiar with my slang) got sick of living across the road on pasture with the girls and took it upon herself to move in with the bulls and steers who live near the barns. We’ve been meaning to move the cows as soon as I have a place to put them around the buildings, so I can corral the mommas when they calve. This heifer (cow who hasn’t had a calf yet) decided she wanted to be near the maternity ward apparently, because she looks like the first one who’ll go.

Chaos. Just chaos.

It shouldn’t surprise me. After all, the cows moved themselves to grass this spring. Why wouldn’t they move themselves back when they got near to calving?

I tossed the house this week and between moving boxes and running the shop vac (don’t mess with my dust bunnies, they’re more like vampire rabbits with rabies), my dog has lived in terror. He’s pretty neurotic anyway, but the vacuum sends him over the edge. He either cowers under my bed (not an easy task since I stow so much shit under it), hides out in the crawl space where my great-great-great-grandparents kept the hard cider, or b-lines for the truck or car. At least he quit high tailing it to the neighbors’.

Oh and the sheep got stuck under a horse yesterday so the horse I was trying to back out of a slip stall couldn’t move and the dog just made them bunch tighter underneath the other horse. Dad always said the reason our horses aren’t kick-y is because the sheep run/stand underneath them while the horses are tied in the slip stalls. I didn’t believe him. I think I’m starting to.

See? Chaos.