And Then I Broke A Nail!

Grass, it is a-growing! And so last week, I moved Glory Bee and Dumplin onto pasture. Dumplin danced all over the field like she’d never seen grass before.

Because she’s never seen grass before.

Glory Bee didn’t do any dancing, but she put her head down in the beautiful green and didn’t pick it back up for hours.

It’s been a long, slow, drawn-out late winter and early spring here. I finally got tired of milking in the cold, icy mornings and slacked off. Because that’s the kind of milk maid I am. (Lazy and whiny.) With the warmer weather coming on, I was ready to get back to it, though, so Adam came up with a makeshift chute to help me bring Glory Bee and baby back to the barn when needed.

Between the cow field and the back barn yard are two access roads that lead to properties back in the holler behind my farm. Adam set up a new, small gate at the back of the cow field.

Between the access roads, he set up fencing in a chute.

There’s fence wire and a hook to pull across the access roads when moving animals.

The back barn yard gate takes the place of fencing on one side when it’s opened for cows to pass through.

I conducted the first test when I went to milking this weekend. It worked like a charm except for that rambunctious Dumplin, who broke down the fence on one side. That will be reinforced today.

Meanwhile, I had to separate mama and baby overnight so I could milk in the morning. I hadn’t really made up my mind where I was going to put Dumplin. I had an idea to put her in the goat yard, so she’d have company, and she wouldn’t be directly across a fence line from her mama. I thought that might make it less likely that one or both of them would break the fence down to get to each other.

I brought Glory Bee into the milking parlor–not because I was going to milk her, but just to get Dumplin contained. Due to my laziness, I haven’t worked with Dumplin much in the past month. I shut the door on the milking parlor stall and it was just me, Glory Bee, and the wild one.

Morgan, who had blithely stated that she could get a lead on Dumplin all by herself about a month ago–and found out that wasn’t the small feat she expected–was having none of it. “It’s your cow!” Ha. She stood outside the milking parlor stall to watch the show. Dumplin ran under Glory Bee. I chased her out from under there while Glory Bee ate some feed I’d brought her as if a rodeo wasn’t going on around her. I cornered Dumplin several times before I managed to snap the lead on her.

I dragged her kicking and mooing out of the milking parlor. Apparently, she’s been eating well because she weighs a whole lot more than the last time I dragged her around. Whenever the farrier is wrestling Poky, he says, “You ain’t gonna win!”

Dumplin bucked and dragged me around. I dragged her around back and told her, “You ain’t gonna win!”

I walked her around the barn yard, working with her while trying to decide where to put her. If you can call this walking her.

It was more like tug-of-war, and she was frothing at the mouth mad.

And I broke a nail.

But I won!

Then I put Glory Bee in the back barn yard till milking time in the morning, and shut Dumplin up in the barn since the goats were looking at her like she was a scary monster and I really didn’t think the goat yard was going to be a good idea, after all. (No reason to upset EVERYBODY.)

Morgan was taking pictures of me, then got bored with me and the bad baby so she started taking pictures of Chloe. (Who would have loved nothing more than to get over the fence and play with that wild calf!)

I’ll be working with Dumplin every time I bring them over for milking.

Cowed baby cow:

It’s going to be a fun spring! Right, Dumplin?