Sunday morning at about 10am, Alan and I were sitting at the table enjoying a late breakfast. Farm fresh eggs sunny side up and toast, mmm! That was when Alan saw something odd looking through the trees, walking along the fence IN one of our pastures. As it passed by an open area in the trees, Alan could see it was something brown. And white. And HUGE....
I will never forget the look on Alan's face when he realized that what he was seeing in our pasture was our neighbor's longhorn bull. (From now on I will refer to the longhorn bull as The Beast, although I'm sure he has a real name ... and I think it's something like Khann. But I like The Beast much better.)
Alan was out of his chair and out the door faster than FAST! I am pretty sure he had several things in mind immediately... where are OUR cattle if our fence is now down, did something happen to our bull Beavis (bulls don't like other bulls in their territory), are our girls OK, and how on EARTH are we going to get The Beast out of our pasture!?
Knowing we would need to get the neighbor over to our place ASAP, my first thought was, 'oh dear, I need to find a bra!'
I can't recall the entire sequence of events, but I do know this.... we moved quickly. Alan drove up to the neighbors place only to find them not at home. Although he was greeted by about 23 friendly chickens looking for handouts.
Alan found where The Beast walked his way right over our fence into our pasture, laying the fence down in the process (thankfully it sprung back up enough to keep our cattle IN. I left several messages for the neighbors, hoping they would get back to us quickly. Thankfully, they did! They were on their way home, about 20 minutes away.
Meanwhile, Alan prepared an area for the neighbor's truck and trailer. They thought they might just load him up and drive him home. That plan was quickly discarded when the neighbor realized that loading his bull from our pasture without any loading chutes might be more of a challenge than he needed. New plan: get The Beast OUT of our pasture and chase him home either on foot, or with the truck. After lots of chasing and herding and whistling and arm waving, we got The Beast separated from our herd, and on his way towards home where he is spending several days (hopefully more) in barnyard "lockdown".
Not a super quality photo, but I have to show you the size difference and give you an idea as to why we call him The Beast. In the front is Chick, an adult Dexter cow (she's almost 3 years old). (She is Houdini's mama.) Look at the SIZE of The Beast next to her... I didn't take time to measure, but if I were to guess, I would say that the width of his horns from tip to tip is between 4'-5'. Maybe more.
It's no wonder Houdini looked at The Beast with eyes as big as saucers ... "you're the biggest thing I have ever seen..."
Unfortunately, Beavis was injured by The Beast prior to us evening knowing The Beast was in the pasture. We're guessing Beavis didn't really like that The Beast had crossed into his territory, they had a lock-horn moment and since The Beast weighs at least 2x (probably more) than what Beavis weighs, Beavis lost. Beavis can walk, though he really favors his left hind quarter. Not good.
None of the other animals that were in the same pasture were injured - just Beavis. But we are concerned about Chick, who was clearly in cycle when this all happened. It is probably unlikely because of her size that The Beast could have done anything with her, but we can't take chances on her possibly carrying one of his babies to term. We won't risk it because the size of the baby would likely be too big for her, and that would be disasterous. Thankfully, there's a shot we can give her to avoid development.
So... just another adventure on the farm.
Didn't I just say last week that farm life is not always rosy...?
