Cows are out!

When I got home from 'work' yesterday,the neighbors two steers were walking inside the fence alongside the soybeans. Just as I was calling them,he shows up on his 4wheeler with a bucket of 'sweetfeed'.those steers saw the bucket and followed him home like they were tied with a rope.Well trained,spoiled?I thought it was funny!

Bucket trained cattle are so much easier than trying to herd them where they probably don't want to go. Sometimes a few rocks in the bucket to rattle around is allyou need. gobble

Amen. I'm 29 years old and all my friends and neighbors think the only way to catch their cattle is to chase them with four wheelers until they finally figure out where the corral/pen is.

Dad and Grandpa have proven how easy it is to stay on the cattle's good side and bait them right where you need them to go. It takes a little hand feeding throughout the year but so much easier.

We call that "catching them with their stomachs".

Years ago I helped the neighbor move his cows about a mile and a half down the road from summer pasture to winter cowyard. He had me drive tractor pulling hayrack. He was standing on back of rack with pail of feed yelling bossy, bossy and those cattle couldn't line up fast enough to march right down the road and through the cowyard gate. Never saw nothing like it.

My neighbor was hauling his in yesterday and before he was done I seen a bunch of them walking down the road. After my wife and I got them in for him I called him and told him. Cattle 101 check that all the gates are closed before hauling cattle in. We had a good laugh about this.

tall kid and i used to try to herd them in
then i decided to give them treats i would dump some sweet feed in grain bunk and start calling them.
i start calling them come boss get big stick and bang on bucket like a big drum and get the heck out of the way lots easier and less stressful for us and cows.

My brother is a dairy farmer. His email address is cowzout@xxxxxxxx

Saw this a year or so ago. Thought it was funny, think it was on here.
Calling cattle

Neighbor moves his herd several times to rotate pasture 1/2 mile up and down road. He just calls them and has gate open they just move them selves down the road. He sets on the four wheeler and waits till last one is out and follows them and closed the gate in new pasture. Its just llike watching robots. The satisfaction of being with your animals so they trust you is truly a blessing.

When I drove semi, I had a run that got me home every day. 1st thing I did was feed the cows a couple bags of sweet feed. When driving past the pasture, with my rig, they would start heading to the bunks. Would only do this with by regular tractor. They were not interested in any other semi's driving by.

Sometimes before you can lead them home with sweet feed you have to wait for the local police to get done wrecking all of their cruisers trying to herd them.

Sometimes before you can lead them home with sweet feed you have to wait for the local police to get done wrecking all of their cruisers trying to herd them.

Wife N I raised herfords for years. Well this one time we had a cow, "Daisy" and she was a bit of a trouble maker. She would always find the weak spots in the fence, let's just say we got to know the animial control police for the tri town areas really well.

Anyhow...she tended to get a lil spooked once out and experienceing new things. Never would come to the feed bucket call.

A neighbor of ours had a Hereford Bull that was originally a show animial he would take to all the fairs, "Bully". Well Bully was the kindest gentlest sweetest ol guy ya ever met. He was just like a 2000 pound puppy dog! We would get him in a trailer and head over to wherever Daisy was spotted by local authorities and we just walk Bully out on this little lead made a dinky half inch rope and she would see him and follow the handsome fella.... good times! Sure do miss those beefers even when they were getting into trouble!

I had an old cow a few years ago that was getting through the fence to eat apples along the road. I'd go get her and drive her up to the other road,then up to the driveway,through the yard and out to a gate to put her back in. I'd done it every day for a week or more. One day the neighbor across the road from the apple tree came up and told me she was out. I told him to give her time,she'd come home. Pretty soon here she came. She walked right past us and out to the gate then stood right there waiting for me to let her back in.

My neighbor's answering machine message begins "Yes we know the cows are out..."

Actually, his cattle rarely get out. He drives up and blows his pickup horn and they stampede to the gate to get their range cubes. What is interesting - I can blow the horn on my pickup, and they don't even raise their heads.

One thing I've learned thru the years is, cows are far from stupid. I had to stop feeding from my side-by-side, they would see me a half mile away and run like they were on fire, wanting a handout. They love the welfare system......

We had someone stop by our farm one day to inform us we had cows out, and we had a group of bottle calves that were for what ever reason pretty good at finding all the weak spots in our fences so we weren't that surprised. Anyway I loudly dump some feed in the bunk and start calling our cows and they come into the barnyard I start counting trying to figure out what's missing, after all we had 9 cows out in the pasture it shouldn't be that hard right? Well I counted 10 cows, yep 10 and I hear some noise in the swampy area to the side of the house, it turns out to be another cow. Well we get the one out of the yard into the barn and the stranger out of the herd into the same barn and we're wondering what to do (call neighbors? call the sheriff/animal control?) when we see a local live stock hauler driving down the road real slow and rubber necking, we wave him into the farm yard and ask him what's going on. He sheepishly admit's he's missing two steers, we asked him a few more questions than asked him if he'd like to back up to the barn and load his steers up. Seems his trailer had a double kind of gate where the whole gate was hinged like a regular door and part of that door was a slider, he didn't have the slider latched it slid open and the cows bailed on him. He was pretty happy to find the steers although one of them got a little road rash when he jumped and he felt he was going to have to turn that one into his insurance. He offered to make it worth our trouble but with all the problems we were having with that group we were raising we declined any reward because we'd probably need some grace from the neighbors on our cows being out within a month or so anyway. He offered to haul cattle to the local auction or slaughter house for us once for free and we left it at that, don't know that we ever took him up on his offer.