Going back a couple of weeks, here’s how the day went when Rosy and Coco arrived at our neighbors’ place.
In order to get cattle delivered by truck, you need to have a race (a wooden or metal ramp that facilitates loading and unloading) on the property at which they are going to be dropped off. We don’t have a loading race on our property, but Kevin and Ronnie, our neighbors (less than a kilometer from our property) up the road, do and they were kind enough to help us by allowing the truck to drop off our heifers there.
Rosy and Coco had been hand reared by a woman (Hi Pene!) who was very fond of them. She was always gentle with them. They had never been “treated like cattle,” so the experience on the truck wasn’t pleasant for them. Immediately after Rosy and Coco came off the truck, they were a bit shaken up.
Have you ever wished things would go a certain way, even though there was no indication that they would? Getting our two Jersey heifers to our property was just such an experience. We tried walking them through a series of paddocks on Ronnie’s and Kevin’s place. We chased the cows, actually. They led us and we tried to keep up.
Finally, we reached the point where we had to take them onto the road for the last stretch to our place. They seemed pretty skittish, still, and I said to Rebecca something like, “What if they just decide to run away?”
She acknowledged that they just might do that, but what else were were going to do?
ADVICE MOMENT: If you find yourself in a similar situation, go get help from someone who knows what they’re doing.
We didn’t do that.
As soon as we took them onto the road, * poof * they were gone. They took off at a full gallop into a bush block of unknown size, several acres at least.
“One thousand dollars worth of heifers: gone,” was the only thought in my head.
“How the #@!*&@ are we going to get them back now!?” was my next thought. It was my first real OH sh*t moment since being in New Zealand.
Becky and I tried to go after them.
Ronnie noticed how long it was taking us to move them and she and Kevin came down the road with their dog, William.
We all started climbing up through the steep bush. Ronnie gave William a command and he leapt ahead of us and disappeared. I’d say it took about two minutes. The dog brought the cows back down to us. A few minutes later, Ronnie, Kevin and William had Rosy and Coco standing in our driveway.
There are a few lessons to be learned from this drama.
- We bit off more than we could chew with this move
- Kind, helpful neighbors saved our day
- We need a dog that we can train to work like William
