When the bottoms of the draws have melted their last snow and southern slopes gather the sun’s warmth like a down quilt, minuscule shoots of green sneak upwards. It seems to happen slowly, then, BAM!, there’s green almost everywhere. Well, there is if you can see it from a low enough angle.
But that minuscule shoot is enough to make a cow hike hill and dale in search of its sweetness. They’re nosing under fences. They’re walking parts of the pasture they had forgotten about. It’s actually a chemical reaction of sorts, as one extension agent explained it to me long ago. Once they’ve had a bite… they crave more. Think eating only one M out of a bag of M&Ms. The bag is sitting there… OPEN. What would you do?
It was barely a surprise when I came home from the early Easter egg hunt at Daniel’s house to see cows hiking across our bare pivot field on their way to the grassy field below. Great. COWS ARE OUT. Of course, I needed to do something… the guys were all busily feeding their cows in order to make the town egg hunt in time.
Bravo and I jump in the side by side… across the field… up to the pivot field… naughty girls.
Go back, girls… I gave them a talking to, but it was Bravo’s insistence that they listened to!
Aha! Vernon has dug the trench for the water line we laid in the winter… and they’d found the hole where he’d cut the fence. Of course they did. Thankfully, Brandon showed up and after he led them away with the promise of green hay… he came back and we repaired the hole and set some steel posts and tightened the wires. Ok. Brandon did all that, but I helped!
Find me here!
Just in case someone thought cows aren’t smart and opportunistic.
Your M&Ms analogy cracked me up (guess why…). Sounds like Bravo truly is a valuable helper. Does he still need more training, or has he already graduated and become a Very Good Boy & Cowdog? He is veryvery handsome, that’s for sure.
He needs much more work!
Thanks much for your reply! He is still young… Wouldn’t it be fun if you had a smallish bunch of “training livestock”, like shepherds sometimes do, with which Bravo could hone his skills without the pressure of getting the day’s work done already? (Not a suggestion, I’m just dreaming, for lack of my own canine campanion for the past eight years…) I wish both of you much fun & success with the further training!
Oh, how I wish!
And a rancher’s work… is never done!