The case of the revolving cows

Ok, so everyone has their own way of doing things.(foreshadowing!) Friday morning dawns sunny and ...could it be? above freezing woohoo!! In Minniesoda that means that it shorts weather already. Not quite yet for me, but you get the idea. It's been the longest winter. We loaded the cows that were in the little paddock into the trailer w/o any trouble, removed halters, vaccinated the baby and were off to the other side of the driveway to release them into the large pasture with the horses and 3 more cows. ...dun, dun, dun..... get a few chores done, turn around and we have a few cows in the front yard. Herd them back in, do some more chores and general spring clean up around the place ....and now we have cows out of the pasture and along side the road. Yea, this is fun well at least I think that's what the cows thought, I DID not! Guess what? its the same set of cows that were out a minute ago (the ones we got in December). Bob, the bull, is doing his best to impress the girls with his jurassic park bellow which echoes all the way down the valley, hence his other name, Jurassic Bob. I set off across the pasture just to keep an eye on them, make sure they don't cross the road-the neighbors dog was doing a great job of intimidating them into staying on our side of the road. (Note, this is basically a private road as there are only 12 houses in a 3 mile stretch of road, not much traffic). Cows see me coming and decide oh, lets go back into the pasture, fortunately hubbie had seen me set off and was in place to open the pasture gate. TADA!!! they are back in...and out, and in and back out. Remember the foreshadowing part? Well that's where I would have checked to be sure the electric fence was working before moving the cows. Ok, so now we are 'heating' the fence after the animals have left, come back, left... Fence doesn't seem to be hot, so back to the drawing board, rewire the first section of fence as we knew it wasn't getting any power, still nothing ( a few choice expletives later) I can only guess that for some reason with the ground being frozen and not using the electric fencer all winter that maybe something is wrong with the ground rod. Dump a bunch of water on it and tada, fence working. Back into the house for a well deserved break and some food. Hehehe we observe one of the new cows testing the fence, yea, it's working (my thought not the cows). Phew I can finally relax...surprise 2/5 newbies are back out, wait now there's 3..4 of them out, head back out the house and at this point the cows know the routine and head in the direction of the gate 1/2 way there and the 5th newbie decides to join the parade, get to the gate and watch all of the cows step through the fence obviously not getting shocked grrrrrrr. Hours later and the warmth of the sun seems to have solved whatever the fence problem is/was as now they are all in and appear to realize what the fence means.

Next day and all is good, everyone still in place. Bob, is the only one that seems to associate with the newbies they are all on the north side of the creek and the well trained cows (ones we have had) are all on the south side.

Sunny and Gracie the oldest and youngest horses are diligently babysitting Stuie the calf any chance they can. Momma cow seems to have resigned herself to their constant presence by her calf.

Hope and warmth are in the air as it might be that spring will indeed come to Minnie-soda this year.

It also appears that Stuie will be sold as a registered bull, perhaps we should change his name now...