Cow stuff...

I’m just glad to say that this stuff didn’t happen when I was flying solo for a while this fall….that being said…

We had to get other cow stuff done this morning and then wanted to get cows moved outside for the last few days allotted to us. It was about 3PM before we could get everything wrapped up and head down there. We had the feed truck loaded with protein to put out once we had the cows where we wanted them and also to use as bait. We drove through the gates that we wanted to have the cows come out and as we popped over the hill only a few of them could be seen. Both Husbeast and I got fairly quiet….this had happened last year and when we found the precious princesses, every mother lovin' one of them was in the hay yard.

Apparently the cow who opened the gate last time, remembered exactly how to pull that off again. Those (so many bad words right now) cows, were standing shoulder to shoulder with their fat heads buried in the bale in front of them, just happily munching away on the hay they evidently don’t realize may be the only reason they survive the winter.

*big breath

There may or may not have been some angry words said by Husbeast. And me. I maybe said some of them too…

We drove a tad bit faster, but cautiously so we wouldn’t lose the protein tubs and opened the downed gate the rest of the way. We drove to the end of the hay yard so Husbeast could jump over the fence and run them out.

Luckily, they hadn’t been in there long enough to collapse the entire stack. And I suppose, luckily they didn’t mash allll of the fence. Once he had them out, we headed for the gate again and tried to reinitiate Plan A.

I got on the back and called the cows and they all followed like well-behaved children in line to go to lunch. Until. The truck died. Yep. Just stopped. Husbeast tried to get it to turn over and it made the “sick Ford diesel not starting” sound and there we sat.

Husbeast got out of the truck and started walking toward the house ( it would be a couple miles before I saw him again). I hollered “what do you want me to do?”

“Whatever you want…”

Hmm….so I waited. The cows watched us for a while and then grew irritated (like they had a right) at the fact that their candy tubs weren’t being delivered. Some of them turned back toward the meadow. One Hereford even had the audacity to head back toward the hay yard.

After some time. No idea how long, I heard the distant sound of the quad. Husbeast brought tools and he bled the fuel lines while I tried to turn the motor over. When it finally fired, he told me to keep doing what we had planned and he would come behind the cows. Once they heard the familiar rumble of the motor, here they came again! At that point I laughed. They definitely have the whole Pavlov’s Rule thing going for them.

I took off in low range and here they came.

I hit the main road after about 10 minutes with no issue when Husbeast came out and told me to keep going. I sped up to get in front of the cows again and the dang truck went on strike. Right in the middle of the road. Normally, that wouldn’t matter. But it’s hunting season, so we actually had some traffic!

We nursed the old blister back to life again and Husbeast parked the quad to go with me to put protein out. Finally. We thought.

Climbing a hill with 8, 125 pound tubs of protein is an interesting task. Yes, they were tied down. But they are round and slick on the bottom. We hit a bump going uphill and it sounded like the truck bed broke in two. Two of those tubs and the tool box flew off the side of the truck.

I had to keep nursing the throttle while Husbeast reloaded everything. He had me drive to the top and just before destination A was achieved…yep. Died again. I was beginning to scroll through my phone to look for the neighbor’s phone numbers.

Husbeast got it going again and we switched tanks. This probably seems like an obvious choice, but this is not the first time we’ve had issues and the remaining tank was the first problem. And also yes, he’s been trying to get it figured out for a while but that’s for a different post.

We were getting a little twitchy about where we might wind up walking home from and instead of finding 4 different spots for this round, all of the protein wound up in two spots and we booked it for home.

As if they knew they could add insult to injury, when we dropped into the valley we had kicked the cows out of, they were right back there at the gate liked they’d never left.

I’m pretty sure I heard steam coming from Husbeast (it might have been me….)when Weebeast piped up and said “I’ve been wanting to say this for a while, but I didn’t…remember, they have brains the size of walnuts…”