More fun with the cattle!

(Before you read this post, I will answer a couple of the questions you will be sure to have - I know I would have some questions if I was reading about my son, daughter, brother, sister, friend... doing this - Yes, we do know that it is very dangerous to be in the pen with fighting bulls - and yes we are very, very careful while we are working with them - and yes, we are working on getting rid of the bulls - oh, and yeah Rog - maybe we should think about that cattle prod! ) Yesterday morning, just before breakfast, someone looked out the window and shouted - Samson is out!  Samson is a bull (the top picture) that has been staying with us for a few months.  He had been in a pen about 1/8 mile away from the rest of the herd - so he must have really wanted to get together with them.  He and our other bulls just don't really approve of each other, to say the least.  Anyway, Samson and Fred (the bottom picture) (we call him Friendly Fred because he is usually like a puppy dog - someone must have bottle fed him or something - he is very gentle - but we treat him as if he wasn't - because you never know with a bull) were going at it - round and round - banging heads trying to tear each other up...  So, we put away the eggs and sausage we were planning to cook for breakfast, pulled out the cold cereal - told the kids to eat and get ready to go to piano lessons, grabbed our sticks and buckets of grain and headed out into the pasture.  Really NOT my favorite job!

Some of the cows lead pretty well with a bucket of grain, so we got most of them - including Fred and Samson - into a pen.  Then came the job of trying to get one of them out while keeping the other in - not an easy feat with them being so interested in each other.  Finally after about 1/2 hour of going round and round the pen without much luck, I was about fed up with them.  I pointed my stick at Samson then at the pen and yelled "YOU GO"...then pointed my stick at Fred and then pointed out the gate and yelled "YOU GO" ------- and they went - just as gentle and good as could be.  Hmmmm.... I must get lots of practice with that tone of voice or something!?!

Then, this morning after Todd had gone to work, the kids were looking out the window, and again - someone yelled "Samson's out!"  and sure enough - Samson and Fred were at it again.  By now we were figuring out there was a "girl" involved.  So Todd came home from work - We got our sticks and buckets of grain - and headed back out to the pasture.  This time Fred wasn't so hard to get out.  We left a few girls in with Samson to keep him happy - they were still in there this evening.  We got Fred in a far pasture to get him fattened up for the freezer.  We are really hoping all of our bulls will be gone in the next few weeks.  

We also moved Blossom and Stormy into the pen with the rest of the Herefords.  They had been separated from the rest of the cattle since Stormy was born.  Neither one of them are very tame anymore - they have both gotten quite a bit of spunk.  We were able to get Blossom into a corral and squeeze her down so we could get ahold of her lead rope.  She didn't want to go, but we did finally get her over to the other pen.  Stormy has fully recovered from her difficult birth.  We went round and round the pen - she's fast!!!  We were finally able to get her in a corner and grab her lead rope - but then she planted her feet and absolutely refused to move!!! So we ended up carrying her across the pasture - she's no lightweight!!!  Another time that we were glad that we don't have any close neighbors to watch us!