Gentle But Still Damage

Our herd sire, Prowler has been keeping company with the main herd of cows on the far side of the river. He is a rather gentle critter, he is not one to go around the periphery to contain his harem. He does not bellow or snort to get attention, he tends to hang out in the middle of the herd rather than lead or follow. Although we never turn our backs to any bull (rule number one), Prowler has never raised any concerns about working with the herd while he is in their midst. So the damage that was incurred the other day surprised us.

We had been in the process of weaning five more calves. The green weaner clips had been inserted in their noses  several days earlier so the cows had pretty much dried up their milk supply and the calves needed to be moved away from the main herd.

Mike moved the tractor with the hydraulic splitter attached out of the loafing space in the barn where we had stowed it to keep it out of the weather until we could finish up the log splitting in the back landing. He backed the tractor out of the barn to the corner of the barnyard where he had temporarily set it the last four times we needed to move the herd into and out of the barn. Then we opened the gates to let the herd into the barn so we could separate the green clipped calves and sort them to the end of the barn where the stock trailer was positioned.

Since Prowler is quite a bit bigger than the cows and his neck is so thick, he cannot get his head into the locking stanchion head gates in the barn. Once we got the calves moved from the back end of the barn to the loading end, we let Prowler and a couple of the cows back into the barnyard just so they are out of the way and not bothering those cows that were locked  in the head gates and eating hay.

It could not have been more than a half hour time from getting the five calves loaded and hauled the bunch across the bridge, across the county road, up the driveway, and through the pasture to the showbarn where we dislodged the calves from the trailer. The five immediately started eating their own freshly fluffed hay, we shut the gate and headed back to the herd across the river in the barn and barnyard.

Back with the main herd, we shooed them out of the barn so the entire herd could be fed properly with everyone eating in the field.

It was when we went back to move the tractor with the splitter attached to find that Prowler had destroyed the air filter and surrounding casing off the 3/4 ton hydraulic behemoth. We are positive it was that gentle bull who did it because he had dusty marks across his flank where he was rubbing an itch with the edges of the splitter and the broken bits had clumps of his hair all over it. So the splitter was broken and by default the herd sire was busted.

Its a good thing our gentle giant is not mean or he could have destroyed the whole motor. As for Prowler, he just ambled away to go eat hay and did not even say he was sorry.

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