The winter storm was late arriving. When we went to bed at 10 there still wasn't any snow. Got up this morning it was snowing and blowing. When I fed this morning there was 12-15 cows on the wrong side of the river....... oh boy. This is going to be a joy herding them down stream 300 yards to the crossing on the quad in the blowing snow. I pulled down to the crossing in the feed truck, honked the horn, sat there and slowly they came down and crossed the river. Once across the river they ran to the feed row. Cows.......
You used your head. Sometimes with cows, wait, MOST TIMES WITH COWS, a little patience goes a long ways.
Years ago a friend of ours, who was only about 9 at the time, helped a rancher trail about 300 cows to the mountain permit. It was just the neighbor rancher and Tom, who was about 9 years old. They had to go through a pasture on the way and the cows in that pasture ran over and got mixed with the cows headed to the mountain. Tom got excited, as kids do, and said, "oh boy, what are we going to do now?"
The rancher said, "I'm going to take a nap." So he got off his horse, laid down with his hat pulled over his face, (like cowboys do) and went to sleep. He woke up about an hour later, the pasture cows had gone through their cows and had gone on. The rancher got back on his horse and he and Tom started trailing their cows on to the mountain. They had maybe 2 or 3 of the pasture cows that were still with their bunch, but they were easy to sort out.
I always remembered that story. It has helped us for years to remember, don't get in a hurry when doing something with cattle. Tom never forgot it either.
