We had a bit more sorting to do with the cows today… I missed shipping our steer calves yesterday because I was working at the library, though I heard we had good help! So today we were sorting cows we are going to sell from those we’re keeping. Plus the ones that needed new tags because they’d lost theirs… and some we were going to keep in the fields instead of the badlands…
Yeah, don’t worry, sometimes we get confused, too!
Bravo was very excited to bring the cows in from the field.
Daniel and I thought we could sort things by ourselves to start… Vernon was off repairing a gate… Brandon was off hunting down some stragglers. I found Brandon’s clipboard with his fancy list of “to sell” cows, including his reasoning behind having them on the list: Calving due date too late (May), lame, broken mouth aka missing lots of teeth, lost their calf this year, or just not performing well.
I stood in front of two open gates, clipboard in hand, ready. Except I wasn’t. The cows came too fast for me to stop them, look up their number, and send them the right way. The first three that came by, I messed up on two! Lordy. Daniel patiently explained Brandon’s list to me and we started again. It’s tricky when you need glasses to check the tag number (even if Daniel was calling them out) but you don’t need glasses to read the paper. I’m sure I was doing a comical lifting of my glasses off my nose routine to see things! Plus standing spread eagled trying to intimidate old cows that could easily flatten me from doing that while I decided which gate they needed to go through. My clipboard papers fluttering around as I waved to slow their progress. We finally fell into a working rhythm, so long as Daniel sent them to me slowly… I was ok! I was much happier when all four of us were working the alley, I must admit! Of course there was no time for photos…
The first round of sorting over, Vernon and I took a little bunch of calves back to where they belonged.
Daniel and Brandon sorted and retagged and hauled some to my place. Vernon kicked the big bunch across the bridge and disappeared… maybe to check some fences? I declared myself done… and took my dogs and went home! Only an afternoon of work for me, but I’m happy to do it.
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