Sometimes things get a little crazy!

When you're working with cattle, you always have to be prepared for the unexpected. If you think you're only going to be briefly checking on the cows and then quickly returning to your nice warm home, you better make sure you've got a warm jacket and a hat, just in case you have to stay for a few hours to help deliver a calf. And if you think you're going to have a calm and quiet moment with a fresh from the womb calf, be prepared to chase it down the highway.

In February of 2010, we went out feeding on a Sunday after church. We dropped off the hay, walked through the herd, and didn't see anything amiss. So we left. As we were driving off, I spotted a dark clump in a distant corner of the field. I thought that it was probably just a large clump of manure, which it generally is, but I convinced Clayton to go check it out anyway. And I was right. It was a new calf, less than 24 hours old. Her mama was over having lunch with the rest of the ladies. This is fairly common; where the cow will leave her sleeping baby safely hidden behind a safebrush or in some tall grass, while she goes off to graze. Clayton was quietly observing her to make sure that she was warm and sound, when out of nowhere, BAM! The calf jumps to her feet and starts running like crazy in the opposite direction. She got into some really tall grass and Clayton lost sight of her.

By this time, I had left the dogs in the truck and went over to help find the baby. This particular field is divided into two sections, which are fenced off with a gate between the two sections. If we want to rest the grass in one of the sections, we'll herd the cows into the other section and close the gate. But during the winter, the gate is usually left open. This calf was in the opposite section from the rest of the herd, and we wanted to make sure that her mama could find her when her lunch was over. Instead of walking all the way up the field to go through the gate, I cut across the field on foot and shimmied underneath the barb wire fence. We walked back and forth, quietly searching for the baby in the tall grass, not wanting to spook her again. Finally, Clayton calls for me; he has spotted the calf. Unfortunately, she had chosen a poor place to huddle up. She was laying right next to the neighboring field, and was halfway underneath the wire fence. Looking back, we probably should have just left well enough alone, and left the poor thing there. Chances are that she would have been fine. But we were concerned that she might roll under the fence and go into the neighbor's field with their cattle, and since she was a newborn, we hadn't had a chance to tag her as our own. So we got behind her, requiring myself to shimmy underneath yet 2 more wire fences (did I mention that I was 7 months pregnant? I didn't? Well, I was 7 months pregnant), and attempted to quietly herd the calf back to our herd.

But of course, things don't always go as planned. We were fairly close the the rest of our herd when the calf took off running again in the wrong direction. She ran across the full length of the 100 acre field. We lost of sight of her among some bushes, but figured that we'd done enough damage, and that the baby would calm down and let her mama come and find her. So we left.

We were halfway back to Tooele, when we got a call from the sheriff's dispatch, saying that a motorist had spotted a calf along the highway close to our field. Groan. We knew that this had to be our runaway calf, so we turned back around. After slowly cruising up and down the highway, we finally found the calf curled up in a clump of grass near the road. She had run more than a mile, going through a ditch full of water and at least 2 barb wire fences before she finally stopped. The poor thing was probably exhausted and scared out of her mind. We did not want to spook her yet again and cause her to possibly run out into the road, so Clayton very slowly and cautiously crept up behind her and threw himself on top of her before she could get away. We carried her to the back of the truck, where Clayton pinned her down and held her tightly while I drove us all back to our field. Once we got back, we drove to the herd of cows and let the mama cow come and claim her calf. The mama was outraged that we had treated her baby so badly, whom she had left peacefully sleeping almost an hour ago. Well, Mama Cow, if you had taken better care of your baby in the first place, then we wouldn't have had this problem, now would we?




The innocent-looking red calf in this picture is the subject of this post, whom we affectionately nicknamed the "Little Red Devil".