For any of you thinking of getting some cows in the near future (maybe you think they'd be good weed control or a nice pet or you're just not thinking clearly), I have one very important message.
Get them de-horned.
No, there haven't been any injuries around here. And for that, I'm very grateful. Of course, a lot of that may have something to do with the fact that I told the kids to stay away from the cows. (Three of four of them have horns.)
The problem is actually that cows are very curious creatures and they use those horns to explore and get into trouble. We used to have a rabbit hutch. We used to have some bales of straw which were actually behind a rigid wire fence panel, held in place by a 10 foot long post, 6-8 inches in diameter. We used to have an electrical plug on the trailer (although that has more to do with the cows' teeth than their horns). We used to have a sound corral.
This morning, I got to chase the two biggest trouble makers out of a cow-forbidden area. They had moved the 16 foot gate over and sauntered right in. I was just hoping I could send them back through the 2 1/2 foot space they had come in through, without getting rammed or stomped on. Mission: complete.
Darn those horns! They are quite the shovels, picks, crowbars, pitch forks, spears, battling rams, medieval torture tools!
Interestingly, you'd never think of cows as having individual personalities since you usually just see a whole herd of them. If you thought that, you'd be wrong.
Umm . . . aren't you quite pregnant? What a great pioneer woman you would make - chasing mad horned cows around a pasture! Impressive. :-)
ReplyDelete