I was a Five Hour Cattle Farmer

Monek Marie
Monek Marie Posts: 3,539 ✭✭✭✭✭

On our small ranchette we have had most animals at one time or another, but never cows, until...

My mother and I went shopping one day, It was one of those hot airless days and we were both looking forward to a cold tall glass of ice tea. As my mother pulled in to the lower drive I burst into laughter and tears. I was laughing so hard I could not talk. My mom stopped driving and looked at me. All I could do was point towards the barn. Nine steer had their butts hanging out the front barn doors.

She also burst into laughter then started down the long drive to the house. I popped out of the car and ran to the barn to check out the situation. Yes, there were 9 steer. Fortunately there were no more in the top of the barn.

We had just had a garage sale in the barn and tables were still set up with leftover sale items, many breakable, so I had to get them away from the barn and close it up. The question was where would they go? The bottom of the barn was a machine shop and could not hold cows. so I herded them in to the back field,/yard area and hoped they would not head to garden and use it as a salad bar. We live on a very busy road so I had to keep them away from that, even if it meant losing some of my crops.

I ran to the house and called the few neighbors that had cows. Twenty minutes later I found the owners. The steer had broken through a fence and walked down the mile long dirt road from the top field to get where they were, Seeing a barn they thought they had a new home. Amazingly they had managed to cross the second busiest roadway in Pennsylvania without any injuries.

So here I am babysitting a small herd waiting for the owners to come get them. The owners tried for hours to get a trailer to haul them with no luck so they finally decided to herd them up and walk them across the road and back up the dirt road. They also had family members fixing the fence during this time.

The steer tried to tip over my rabbit pen so I had to move them and one rabbit was so upset I just kept holding it. So I am chasing steer away from the road and garden with rabbit in tow. They did do a little damage to the garden, usually when I was in the house talking to the neighbors.

I look up to see 7 people coming off the dirt road across the main road. Two people remained by the road to start stopping traffic and the rest came down to herd the steer into a group and get them ready to cross. Traffic was backed up close to half a mile on both sides.

I am standing along side the road to keep an eye on the traffic. A lady was close enough to see the steer and me holding a rabbit in my arms and rolled down her window. I could tell she was from a city. She asked me in a rather shocked voice, "Does this happen all the time around here?" I just looked at her, smiled and said, "Welcome to the country."

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