I was all geared to spend the day working on the next course about Expectations in business.
Husband at work, kids in school and the contractor was out there spreading slurry.
I was expecting to finally get some serious work done on the ‘important’ stuff rather than the ‘urgent’. The heifers and the rented bull were out in the field near the house and the rest of the cows and calves were with our breeding bull right up at the top of the farm – so what was all the moo-ing and commotion I was hearing? I left the ‘important’ stuff to go and check, and my blood froze when I realised that the contractor had left the gate open and the main herd had come all the way down from the top. The two bulls about to come face to face…
Rushed out, got the dog and ran a quick as I could to try to get the cattle back up the track before they got to close, but the heifers had already seen the others and were jumping the fence trying to join the main herd. It was mayhem! My main concern was to keep the bulls apart and I managed to open a gate to another field shooing the cows and breeding bull in there and cutting off the rented bull and a couple of heifers. But they started to follow the fence running up the track towards what I knew was an open gate with access to the field where I had just isolated the breeding bull and his ladies.
I sprinted to the quadbike – it wouldn’t start! So jumped in the landrover and raced up the track trying to cut the rented bull off before he got to the open gate. Our wonderful Welsh sheepdog knew there was something wrong and ran next to the landrover ready to help where she could. By the time I got up there, the two bulls where in the same field and the rented one was challenging our own, no time to think so I drove the landrover in between them and jumped out, shooing the challenger away assisted by the dog. We managed to get him and a couple of cows into another field and shot the gate behind him. Phew, immediate danger over.
A couple of hours later I had the rented bull with one heifer safely locked away in a shed and the breeding bull with a few cows isolated in the top field well away from the farm. All the cows, calves and heifers in one happy mix in another field where they could jolly well wait until my husband came home to separate them. I looked at Gwen (the sheepdog), she looked at me and I thought ‘Girl Power!’ and was very proud of the two of us.
So why do I think rural women (and sheepdogs) are FARMtastic? Well, who else would be able to shift from being an office woman in front of the computer one minute and a cowgirl handling a couple of tons of challenging bulls the next?!!!
The Breeding Bull