Three Herds One Day

I have mentioned that we have several different herds of elk that meander through the farm on fairly regular routines, but rarely do the herds converge on the same days.

During breakfast the other day, we were treated to the sight of one of the larger herds hanging out in the big field behind the house.  There were about thirty or so  females grazing along the base of the hill at sunrise and where in the shadow of the trees so I couldn’t capture the sight with the camera. The herd stayed out in the field for the hour it took me to finish breakfast and the morning chores out in the show barn.

When I went across the river to begin the feeding for the main herd, I saw a second herd of elk smack dab in the middle of the six acre field. There were about twenty in this herd and could not have been the same ones as I had been watching earlier because they were still in the field behind the house. This field that they were grazing in was right where the mother cows with calves were going to be fed breakfast. We ran off the elk when we drove the Gator with hay into the field and got a close up look at the bunch, we saw that there were two spikes (young adult males) in the herd but no big branch bulls (full grown males). We  fed the cows with calves before moving out of the pasture fields and around the barn.

Just before dusk, a different herd walked out of the canyon by the old log landing and there were only nine in this group with one of them being quite a bit smaller, we were thinking it must be last years calf. By observing the subtle differences in each herd we could conclude that there were indeed three different herds that had visited the farm on that day. Our harvest of one animal did little to control the population of these converging herds.

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I am so pleased to announce that MaryJane Nordgren has made her new book available to the public! Click here for your copy of Nandria’s War.