Winterish!

Been a little chilly the past couple days, but its is the 11th of December.

Got some more loads of hay in, in the past couple weeks. Looks like we will have enough to get us thru’ for quite awhile, maybe to spring. We got some snow and it somewhat covered up the grazing, but melted down some and that helped. But now it has made a pretty hard crust, so I have been feeding the cattle, tho’ they still go out and pick. If it gets real cold I will have to feed them a full feed. We still have all the calves, so we got some extruded soybean and have been feeding a little of it every other day. Chance and I made a way to feed it out of a wide tire off some implement. Cut a small hole in the center of the tread and put metal sides on with a pipe thru’ the middle, like an axel. You put the bean in and grab it with the bale unroller on the back of the tractor. When you get to the cattle, you just lower it and roll it like a wheel and every time the hole comes down, it spills a small pile of feed on the ground for the cattle to eat. Works slick!

Had a weird thing happen today. Neighbor called and said it looked like we had a cow stuck in the fence. I drove over and sure enough, there she stood with her head stuck thru’ the wire, pushing. I got out and started to walk towards her to try and get her back into the pasture. She tried eat me! Man, she wasn’t bluffing…she finally got out and walleyed thru’ the snow in the ditch, up on to the edge of the road… I tried to stop her with the fender of my Nitro, that is my ranch vehicle and she’d just hook at me.. I got turned around and she was heading across the road, so I tried to stop her.. again, she just hooked at the car, made it into the ditch and started heading towards deeper snow.. I sent Bitty, my dog to get her and the cow just tried to eat my dog and ended up with her head thru’ that fence… then just stood there, pushing against the wire…I noticed she traveled a little odd.. I wondered what to do and then it struck me that she had rabies or some other neurological disorder. I tried calling vets but after about 6 calls to vets all over the area and none there, decided it didn’t matter, she wasn’t going to be able to be fixed. So I went home and got my 30 30 and put her out of her misery. I went home and got the tractor and a bunch of ropes and some rubber gloves. Went back and put on the gloves, hooked a rope to her hind legs and drug her onto the shoulder of the road with the loader. Then turned around and hooked her to the back of the tractor and drug her home, leaving her off a ways, where we could watch to make sure no dog tried to eat on her. Tomorrow I will see if I can burn her up, as my vet suggested when she called back later. She told me it might have been rabies or a tumor in her brain, but agreed that there really was nothing we could have safely done for her.

Weird.

Made me think she ate some loco weed, and she might have eaten something, but not sure what it would have been. We really don’t have much for loco weed around these parts, but anything is possible.

Weird.