That's right. My day started a bit before 4am, when Noah came and put his head close to mine and started retching. Groggy I was, of course, when I pleaded with him not to barf on the bed. I searched for something to slip in front of his mouth, but couldn't grab anything fast enough. Up came the usual slime and some less usual pieces of wood. Oh Noah, when you are tearing at a pile of tree stumps and branches to get to the rabbit underneath, it's really better not to swallow the wood that breaks away into your mouth. Really!
So I cleaned that up and headed for coffee.
Around 7am, Kyle showed up. He and I would be trenching today at the other place we have about 8 miles from here. However, before heading there, I needed to feed Little Guy, the calf. As you may recall from my previous post, Little Guy was my orphan calf that I was feeding milk to with a bucket. He had actually been putting on some weight and getting a bit more vigorous as well. I had him in a small corral that was part of a network of corrals that circle our big red barn. The new resident donkeys had access to several of the other corrals. I wanted the calf to have a little more move-around space, and since he seemed to want to make friends with the cat and then the dogs, I thought he might be able to buddy-up with the donkeys. And, for a short while, he did.
The jennies (female donkeys) never did show any interest in Little Guy. The jack showed only mild interest at first. However, after a couple of hours, the jack started to nose the calf around a bit. Within the course of about 15minutes, that jack came to realize that he could push that calf around pretty easily, and thus, dominate him. Once the jack knew that the games were on, and I could not get in there fast enough to stop the attack. First the jack bit the calf on the back, which made Little Guy bawl but not run. He was confused and did not immediately understand that he'd been intentionally assaulted. The second time the Jack's chops went into the calf, the calf wised up and started running. That's when I tried to get in there. I had a damn clumsy gate slow me down, and they were damn fast. They circled around the barn, and the last thing I heard was a loud, mournful bawl from the calf. When I got there, Little Guy had slipped out of the corral between some boards and was off to the hills where the rest of his herd was last time he saw them. That was just past sunset, and there was nothing I could do for him at that point but hope he could stay away from trouble until morning.
He did get to the herd unscathed. I started taking his milk to him there. I figured he would recognize the red bucket I had been using for his milk, which he did, and if I set it down and walked off a bit, he came right to it. So, I have been taking him his milk twice a day, now, for several days. The challenge is, however, that that pasture is about 600 acres of rolling hills and 3 dams, and has about 100 cows and their calves in it. It takes some time to finds him, and this morning, after an hour of looking, I didn't find him. I wasn't worried though. I was pretty sure he was just tucked away somewhere too out of sight for me to see. I figured I would catch up with him in the evening with some warm milk.
So, I went off to spend the rest of my day on a trenching machine going about 35ft per hour. We are putting in lines for additional watering stations for cattle. A trenching machine is a big, loud, and very slow moving machine that digs a 10 inch wide tench (dah). Our tench is 6 feet deep, cuz' that how deep our freeze line. In Virginia the freeze line is 18 inches. Such fond memories. Anyway, I was on that thing for about 5 hours today. The rest of the time was spent greasing the thing. On these big machines, one is supposed to inject grease into moving joint. It's a very greasy job.
I told Kyle that I came to work with cows and play with horses, not grease load machinery. He said that lots of people want to come be cowboys, but cowboy'in it is about 30 minutes of the day. The rest is everything but. I said, "But I'm the giiirrrl." He told me to put the grease gun down and load up onto the trencher. I'm not sure I like that man!
Here's me at the trencher and near sunset.
After shutting down for the day, I rushed home to deliver mile to Little Guy, assuming I could find him. It was near dark when I spotted him. He was hungry enough to shed some of his weariness, and came forward for that warm milk before I even had set the bucket down in the grass.
I then fed the horses, the donkeys, the dogs, and myself. It shower and bed time. Who cares about the chaos that still prevails in this cluttered house.
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