Yesterday was a five hour adrenaline rush! After a week of fencing containment paddocks and wiring new electric lines on those fences, as well as setting up gates and panels---we were ready for pushing the entire herd through the squeeze shoot and dispersing them into the winter paddocks. It was a grueling process.
Dear Farmer's job is to look over every bovine that comes in the shoot. Are they healthy? Do they need a tag in the ear? Male or female? Castrate if needed. Dear Farmer shouts out the number of the animal and color tag to the Wife, who writes down everything Dear Farmer observed on that animal and the tag. The tags are color organized. Yellow tags mean: organic female, Blue tags mean: organic male, and White tags mean: non-organic breeding stock.
The Wife's other job is to pray for safety for Dear Farmer as he stands behind a bull and castrates. It can get hairy(no pun intended). Here we don't use knives for castration, so there's no shots, no knock-out drugs, and no second chances. We use a Calbrate Bander, the most amazing device known to farmers and well worth the money spent!!! It's a thousand times more humane as well!
And we castrate while the animals are on green grass, so there's no fear of infection because there's no messes!
The Farmer's Daughter runs the herd through the containment in into the shoot. She had quite a time getting those little calves to do what she wanted. But she was patient and used her knowledge of "energy" well. "Energy" isn't a new-age concept. It's the force of your emotions and the positioning of your body that drives and animal to do what you want. Sheep herders use "energy" when training their dogs.
Along with the Housefrau Farmer's Daughter keeping all the little people out of the way, and the Whiz Bang!Farmer's Daughter running back and forth from the Wife to the house for miscellaneous supplies-we had four other farmhands helping out. Including the VeggieMan, the ChickenGuys, our Model Friend and the HerbGuru. They aren't usually working the cattle with us, but they did a great job filling the gaps.
In the past we have had Dear Farmer run over and stepped on, Dear Farmer kicked, Dear Farmer's Daughter kicked, people thrown, panels and gates beaten by angry cows, people fleeing over fences, and paperwork pooped on. This year we had none of it! God heard the prayers of the Wife!!!
There's quite an adrenaline rush when working with cattle. It's such a big animal, and we are such little people! There's people "whooping" and "whistling"! The occasional yelling to a body to move one direction or another. It's easy to see why cowboys do what they do, it's fun! But at the end of the day...when the count was in...112 head of cattle...there's the largest sense of accomplishment. It's like, no matter how bad Dear Farmer's body hurt, it was all worth it. Everyone was safe, no one got hurt. 112 Head of cattle grazing contently in a field is a beautiful sight.
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