Cranky cows

Plenty to do with cows this week. After the rain we had last week we put back loading out three hundred cows until Monday to give the roads a bit of time to dry out. As this was the first time they had put cattle through the lot, a fair few things could have been improved, such as checking their teeth earlier on. Cattle can lose 15kg's just from the stresses involved in yarding them and so the fewer checks you have to do to them at load-out, the better. They were gone by Tuesday lunchtime and the boss(es) weren't far behind them. The cows to Oakey meat-works and the boss to the Gold Coast for a Lot-feeders' conference and grog-fest at the Royal Pines Resort.
At least on Wednesday I got to do cotton stuff - setting up a couple of tool-bars, using a few tricks I have learnt to make the set-up and adjustment easier and more accurate.
The bloke who looks after the stock side of things started here the same day I did and was getting a bit behind in his work, so on Thursday I spent most of the day on the backhoe, shoveling shit. The pens had to be cleaned out in readiness for the next intake of cattle and the cow-dude was over the other side of the property mustering them up. The backhoe is a stone-age piece of shit and the job took a hell of a lot longer than it should have because about a third of my day was spent repairing hydraulics, power steering etc, etc.
Friday, I had to put on a big hat and talk real slow because the cow-dude and I went mustering. In a straight line it is probably only about ten or twelve kilometres from the feedlot to where we picked the cows up from, but because the cows has us outnumbered 155 to 2 we had to push them along fence-lines to keep them bunched up, a trip of about 20 - 25k's, thick scrub nearly all the way. I was on a bike, the cow-dude on a quad. The first job was to find them. The cow-dude took off along a fence-line and I followed him for about a hundred metres when the bike stopped. Turning the fuel on is always a good idea. I followed the fence-line along until I came to sand ridge which just about pulled me up. I was down to walking speed paddling my way up the hill. I got to the top of the ridge ( which was also the corner of the paddock) just in time to split up a mob of cattle which had charged the fence and were taking off into the neighbours' place. About twenty of them had already gone through, I turned about the same number. The cow-dude and his dog went through the fence after the rest and I worked my way along the fence-line, pushing any cattle I found through the scrub to the open section at the bottom of the hill where the bulk of the mob where grazing.

After a while the cow-dude returned with the strays and we worked the rest of the paddock. Galvanized burr is a silver coloured little prickle bush and there was plenty of it in this paddock. There was also plenty of dead wood laying around. Sometimes the dead wood just won't lay still, and when you're barreling through the scrub trying to head off a few breakaways sometimes you don't notice the logs in your path. Oops. Those little burrs are irritating bastards of things when you're coated in them.

So we cleared that paddock and pushed them back to the edge of the cotton country, a long but uneventful trip (save for a 'river' crossing that was fairly Man From Snowy River - except for the distinct lack of horses in evidence). We stopped for lunch and I left the cow-dude to push them the rest of the way while I went ahead to check on my sole underling. He was doing just dandy so I left him to it and went to the silo's where the world's most inept B-double driver was waiting to unload some feed. When I saw the cattle coming up the lane I gave the cow-dude a hand to put them in the holding yard. The bosses returned while we were doing this.

Friday night was one of the larger nights I've had in quite a while, involving much beer and singing with a bloke from a nearby property who brought a guitar and P.A. to the pub. Don't remember what I sang, but I didn't have any blood on me Saturday morning so I can't have been too bad. Or these people have no taste.

All in all, not the best preparation to put 150 cranky cows through indoctrination. One of the bastards, a big dark-coloured Santa Gertrudis gave me a kick in the thigh that I'm not going to forget in a hurry. Right now I've got a cow-print that covers about half of my right quadricep. I've got your number (literally)756, I'll be looking for you come killing time. They were weighed, tags checked, teeth checked (a few four teeth were drafted out to be put through with a later batch) given a hormone injection and a 5 - in 1 injection. Then we had to finish up shoveling the shit out of the pen (from under the feeders, the water trough and the fence-line). Fix up a few low spots with the backhoe put out some hay - the grain is introduced gradually - put the cows in and fuck off.

I went home with all intentions of going for a ride but sleeping for thirteen hours got in the way.