Scooter And Tophill

To catch everyone up on the story, Mike was away from the farm for less than a day before nine of the main herd headed for the hills and were unaccounted for when we fed that evening and still when it was time for the morning feeding. I went up the hill with my trusty pooch Butler looking for sign (poop), trails and footprints to locate the missing. It was a good day to be on the hill with no measureable rainfall in the last three days. The mud had firmed so walking up had been much easier than when Knuckles was born just ten days earlier. Butler and I wandered around for a good long while before finally spotting an area where the grass was smashed down and their were large piles of fresh poop along, a sure sign that was where the nine had bedded down for the night. We knew we were close but it still took several wrong turns and dead ends because the group was meandering and grazing rather than walking a straight path. I had been doing my version of the cow call, but none of them answered me.

Finally we came around a bend in the skid road I was walking on and spotted an ear just over the crest of a little bump in the road. As I walked I saw another and another cow. I counted eight and thought I was still missing one when I saw one laying down on the far side of and old stump. When I started to round up the bunch to head them toward the downward path toward home the resting cow stood up and she had a calf by her side. The errant bunch were hanging out in one of our newer seedling patches that has Douglas Fir, White fir and Cedar, many of the cedar seedling cages were disturbed and that will be another project on a different day.

From the looks of it, #35 Scooter had gone up the hill to deliver her calf and eight others joined her on her adventure. The calf was in wonderful shape, all cleaned off, strong and solid on his legs. If I were to venture a guess I would say that he was as least 12 to 18 hours old when I found the bunch of wanderers…

Coaxing the group down the hill was not an easy task because the mother cow, Scooter wasn’t quite ready for her baby to meet with the rest of the herd so she and her calf headed off toward the right while I had the other eight moving toward the main skid road that Mike had punched in a couple of years ago. Not even halfway down the skid road the heifer #71 panicked and shot across the thick forest in search of the cow with the new calf. If you recall, THIS particular heifer is also one that had taken to walking with three other heifers cross country and off the property from the top of the hill before our winter weather began.

The seven in my stead were busy playing in the mucky dirt from a pile Mike had made with the logging bulldozer last summer and were coating themselves by rubbing faces, necks and legs in the goo. They didn’t see heifer #71 get away from them. I was able to pry them away from their mud pile and once one of them realized they could begin the downhill trek they kicked up their heels and scooted down the logging road to Mike waiting and calling at the bottom of the hill.

Then I went in search of #71 and Scooter with her baby. I found #71 first, she had not been too far away after all and when she heard the wild commotion of the running seven she began her downhill run on the ridge just over from the skid road. She tore through tall ferns and snowberries, downed trees and old wildlife trails until she got to the small plateau just before the last steep drop to the base of the hill. Knowing Mike would get her the rest of the way down to the main herd, I went back uphill to find #35 and her baby.

Scooter is cunning and can be so quiet that I could walk right past her if the brush was thick. I walked the main road that is fairly flat running north to south between our logging projects and found her with her calf resting by her side. With a gentle stride I was able to keep her and her baby moving down the wildlife trails toward the trail we use to haul seedlings up the hill. Even with the slow pace, I would lose sight of Scooter when she would veer off the course I thought she was going to take. The calf only took one break during this long, stumble hazard strewn walk and when Scooter got to the last very steep downward pitch had the calf nearly running to keep up. Mike met them when they came out of the forest not far from the outdoor mangers. From there it was an easy walk along the fence line to the open gate that let to the barnyard and a second gate that put the pair into the nursery field with the ever growing small herd.

Welcome to the farm, we are glad you are off the hill, bull calf Tophill. Born 1/17/2022 and weighing in at 80 lbs.