I Gotta Go Julia, We Got Cows!

If you don’t recognize the movie line above you need to stop reading this right now, go watch the movie Twister, and then come back. Seriously, it’s a total classic.

As I stated in my Thistle post we have around 20-ish acres of pasture land on our property. We currently do not own any cattle but that is a future investment. So we lease our land to our neighbor for his cattle to use. Last year his cows were here from about July through September to rotationally graze through our lands. Rotational grazing is different than your traditional grazing. Rotational grazing is “a system of pasturing, whereby livestock are moved to portions of the pasture, called paddocks, while the other portions rest.”[1]

Last night the cows returned!

Our neighbor and his ranch hands along with us helped to drive 120 head of his cattle onto our property and down by our creek. Last fall he had sowed some rye and oats on the other side and they are now ready for cow chompin’.

Cows are a herd animal so they tend to follow each other around. To get the cows to go where they need to go they lead them with the feed truck and honk it’s horn which is the cow equivalent of “dinner’s ready!” They follow along with ATVs to keep them in line and drive the ones that don’t want to get with the program back in line. Seems straight forward but we’re talking about 1,000 pound animals that are running.

Jo: Cow. ‘Nother cow.

Bill: Actually I think that was the same one.