Acreage and animal ownership brings joy and pain in equal measure, responsibility and hard work, you have to be up for it all! We’ve learnt on the job, made a few mistakes along the way.
Our first ever cow (Sally) arrived in a hired trailer. It was dusk. Rob drove in , shut the gate, then peered at her wondering what to do next?
Hindsight and many cows later, we should have left her in the trailer with fresh hay and water till the morning.
Seems obvious? Right?
But that night our thinking was
“poor little thing cooped up for hours, better let her out!” 🤦🏼♀️ imagining her gently nibbling the grass on our newly fenced place then leading her calmly to the brand new purpose built shed
Skittish little beast had other ideas. We let the trailer door down, it was dark, she had no idea who the hell we were , panicked , bolted past us , ran round the lawn in circles, came to the fence and jumped! 😩
All hell broke loose! Cursing Rob (what’s new?) and seven year old George jumped in the car, reversed enormous trailer out and headed off in pursuit
This was early 2000’s no Facebook community noticeboard for posting escapee animals or sightings
A few minutes later , a call from Debbie “you two said you were buying a cow, we’ve just seen one sprinting down the main road, checking it’s not yours?”
Had to be! Called Rob with location “she couldn’t possibly have reached there already?” turns out she had
A cow running down Main Street in our animal-loving community wasn’t an entirely unexpected sight, just a problem to be solved.
As she sprinted up the middle of the road , another friend Mary and husband had spotted her and drove slowly behind causing a long tail of traffic. Story goes, Rob caught up, zoomed past them all on the wrong side of the road, spotted the runaway, screeched to a halt, ordered George to stay put and bolted after cow! Haha
Imagine , Rob running like the freakin wind 😂, caught up with and rugby tackled the poor wee thing to the ground. Young bloke helped man-handle the terrified bleating cow back to the trailer.
Home they came, George excited and traumatised in equal measure , Rob relieved, vet called in, worried in case of damage inflicted by rugby tackle and marathon sprint, skin off in a few places otherwise cow completely fine.
Rob’s back rooted😩
Escapee animals , Rob hurting himself chasing them, so MANY more of those stories to come 😆