Ya Just Never Know

A week or so ago I had written about the bulls and what a fine job they did behaving as they moved from pen to pen and from pen to trailer, rather showing off how well mannered they were. I even had comments about the fact that we had no rodeos lately…with lately being the operative word.

Oh we have had impromptu rodeos in the past, there was the time when the vet showed up to assist a cow that was down with milk fever. (Milk fever is when a cow is giving so much energy and calcium into her milk for the baby that she depletes her own reserves. In beginning she stumbles around as if she is drunk and falls down often. Later stages of milk fever and she cannot stand. We have lost cows to milk fever in the past. Vets jab a large caliber needle into the jugular vein in the cow’s neck and lets quarts of fluid flow with a mix of calcium and nutrients. Within minutes the cow is back to normal and can stand without wobbling around, and is back to normal able to graze and feed her baby.) Any way, one year we had a very senior cow who had milk fever, she was stumbling and falling in the pasture. The emergency call brought the vet in less than an hour, to this day I don’t know how he managed to get away from the office clients so fast, the drive itself is a half hour. Steve showed up in barn boots, one hand holding a quart bottle with the clear fluid and the large syringe in the other with a two foot length of floppy tubing connecting the two. The cow took one look at Steve and her adrenaline kicked in. the usually docile cow ran to the woods where she hid in the underbrush, she skirted around trees, she wobbled around the enclosed barnyard and broke through a fence. Behind her the whole way was the vet and Mike trying to coax, prod, and chase her to a stopping spot. She finally fell and could not get back up. Steve got the medicine flowing quickly into her jugular with a quick jab and was so spent he could not lift his arm up to hold the jar aloft. Less than an hour later she was back to normal, all the nuttiness of the milk fever was gone completely.

Or the time we were cutting steers that we had let get a little too big before doing the procedure. (Cutting steers is the procedure that takes a male calf/bull and removes his testicles making him into a steer.) Our brother-in-law was helping in the barn as we grabbed the steers one by one. I was the hazer (the one who corners the calf), Mike was the thrower (the one who lassos one back leg), and since we were in a rather confined pen BIL was to assist in lifting the calf slightly to take his legs out from under him so the rope could be secured around two legs making it so he couldn’t stand back up. BIL would then lay on top of the critter so Mike could do the necessary cut and removal surgery. Somewhere between the lift and the lay, the rope did not get quite secure enough on the lively bull. The calf jumped up and BIL, still hanging on to the back of the spooked bull, rode rodeo style around the pen for several quick laps. I had never seen him move so fast.

One time we were anticipating some very special guests to the farm for dinner on a sunny summer evening. The week previous was spent getting the house, garden, yard and farm looking sharp for the visit. That morning we had gotten up early to do the chores in order to be on track to finish the evening chores before the guests arrived. Within minutes of them pulling into the driveway we noticed a commotion in the pasture with bellowing, running and panicked animals down in the woods and across the fence on the neighbors side as well. A fence between the two farms had been compromised and animals that had never before had an inkling of life beyond their fenced pasture took out on an adventure, each one in a separate direction. We had some of our cows in with the neighbor cows, we had calves that broke out through the electric fence and were dodging traffic on the county road, we had the dogs barking, we were running and the special guests pulling into the driveway. The next vigorous hour was spent with the guests (they were wearing shoes for a bbq not an all out poop fest) trying to corral the fleeing, scuffling, bellowing and barking menagerie back into secure areas.

Ya just never know around here, a rodeo could break out at any moment.