Herding Cats

With all the frantic spring clean up and the moving of young stock into new pens...each group as the individuals grow larger "graduates" to bigger spaces...we are busy all the time. We need to keep moving right along because if it ever dries out field work will start and then it will really get crazy.

Friday we moved the group that my 3-breed critter, Scotty, is in over to the heifer barn (she is a yearling now). Then we put some youngsters that had been inside the cow barn out in their old pen.


Yesterday, when the boss and I went into the heifer barn to water Scotty's bunch, Betty and Battlemint, a Citation R Maple daughter Alan gave me and a half shorty..hmmm he gave her to me too...were loose in the big, wide flat manger having the time of their lives. They had wormed their way through the feed through and were quite happy with the situation.

Alas they can't stay there where we store their hay, so we filled the water tub, and while we were waiting, fixed the wide place in the feed through where they had escaped.

Enter Kashette, Becky's yellow barn cat (named after a dragon and quite fittingly. she thinks she owns the world). She trotted into the barn and up the manger as if she owned that too.

Betty was quick to dispute that notion. If you have heifers you have probably seen them chase cats (and chickens..and dogs....) However, if you haven't let me tell you it is quite a sight. Hooves thundering on the hollow sounding concrete. Tails in the air. Noses down snorting hot breath on the victim's fanny. It is quite exciting. Battlemint joined the fun and all the big heifers in the other pen galloped along side cheering them on.

Poor Kash flew down the manger and out under the gate at the end. She must have kept right on going and exited by a window in the back of the barn, because when I went outside she was sitting there grooming her coat as if nothing had happened at all.....nothing to see here...move along...she seemed to be saying, but I knew better and so did she.