This story got me thinking about the trouble animals get themselves into. We have had cows in trees, cows caught under stall dividers, cows in haymows, cows jumping down the chute out of haymows and many other hair raising, and sometimes semi-unbelievable events.
We have had cattle DIE out on the open hillside, just by lying down in the wrong position. This was not caused by poorly designed equipment or mismanagement. This was in a large, open, pasture. Good cows too. Nothing ever happens to a mean cow or a poor milker.
How about you? What crazy predicaments have your beasts found their way into?
***Farm Side research going on here.....
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11 comments:
Too many to list. Just when you've seen everything they come up with a new way to get in a predicament.
This reminds of one of our bulls we had. We had gates dividing off the free stall barn between milking cows and the dry cows. This bull could get himself from one side to the other without ever breaking gates, all we could guess is that he would semi lay down and squeeze through the divider between the stalls. He would be with the dry cows one morning and with the milking ones the next. He would offer his services and then a couple days later he would be back with the dry cows. How convenient for us I guess.
If I'd had to come up with a list of ways a cow might encounter difficulties . .
Well . . . "in a tree'. . . .
I can not imagine.
I had one of our cows get stuck in the feed bunk! It took someone strange going out into the pasture to get the cow to move enough to get itself out of it!
Over the years we've had things happen that have just made me sick...a cow having her calf in the canal full of running water...I swear she was a blonde in another life! But the one that I remember the most is the bull. Years and Years and Years ago....We had a really nice bull...really nice. We could even pet him. But if he got bored (like after all the cows were bred) he would bang up his feeder bunk. And huge sheet metal and iron homemade (think HEAVY) bunk.
Then one day he lifted the whole thing Up in the air and plopped down on top of him. There he was huge 5 year old bull with a huge bunk on top...it was a huge job getting it off. Once off he went to the sale barn...Terry said that now he figured out how to do such a trick he would keep it up.
Linda
http://coloradofarmlife.wordpress.com
Oh yeah, too many to list. We had a cow stuck in a tree a last year. A couple of years ago I had a horse, a big 7 yo gelding in his prime, lie down in a snow drift. It tipped him back just enough that he could not get up. I found him just in time, another 1/2 hour and the darned fool would have died that way. He was shocky and hypothermic when I found him and I almost couldn't get him up. A totally healthy horse in a wide open field and it was very nearly the end of him.
PS. I love mourning doves. I fear our feral cats have thinned 'em out pretty good. Just got a couple left.
This happens more than you'd suspect out here in beef country.
I drove a large Farmall tractor up a tree, and got my picture (actually the picture was for the tractor) on the front page of our paper because of it
p.s. ...but I didn't see any cows up there in the tree!
Nita, I can imagine you have seen it all. lol
Marian, must have about drove you crazy!
Cathy, oddly enough it is pretty common. Friend of ours lost one this way not too long ago.
Lisa, wow!
Linda, I can barely imagine what that must have been like!
DD, holy cow! that must have been terrible. I am so glad that you saved him! I lost one of my favorite heifers to rolling the wrong way on a hill years ago. Still haven't forgotten her.
Cathy, what a year for them here! We counted several big flocks on the CBC and have at least 25 hanging around here. I like them too.
Jeffro, wow! How did it get up there?
Keith, I shouldn't laugh but.....More than once I put the double hay rakes up on the tractor tire, but no trees so far. lol
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