Landing Highway

Simply wanting the cows to move from one area to the next can be a challenge, especially when we place our log landing right in the middle of the path that they chose to use as the highway between one pasture and the next.

We have large fields for the cows to meander around and this time of year and they have many, many acres to do just that. They tend to think of all the ground as their space and make their paths wherever they feel compelled to walk. If one cow walks a path, several others will walk the same path and before long there is a highway with designated stops and hazards.

Currently the path they have chosen is right through the middle of the log landing. The cows zig and zag amongst no less than five different log piles to get from one side of the landing to the other.

Today they are also tiptoeing around a bunch of firewood that I had just finished cutting. And yes, for those of you who are about to ask the question, they do leave their calling cards scattered throughout the landing and sometimes on my cut wood. Any wood tainted by splatters gets stacked in a special spot near but not too close to the woodshed and will be used in the outdoor wood furnace when we build the first fire of the season.

The herd sire, Prowler, hasn’t a care about what the rest of the herd is doing. He is busy finding and using the decked logs as his own private, multi-tiered, scratching post.

He spent the whole time the cows were single file through the gauntlet itching his head, neck and belly on the logs that were stacked for the next log truck load.