Working with cattle

Ken had some cattle work pencilled in for this morning. As per usual, we got up at 5am. Well actually, as per usual, Jo slept in while me and Ken had tea and porridge. It is the best part of the day.

Just after sunup I went to have another look at my Land Rover's carby to try and work out why it runs so rough. Ken thinks it is an electrical problem. I am more inclined to think I have made a mistake when I reassembled it. After an hour of tooling around with it I realiased that for now it has me beat. Best thing to do is walk away, and next time I am up at Stanthorpe I will have another go.

While I was doing all that, Ken rounded up the cattle. He has them quite well trained. They basically come when he calls.

After another cup of tea we went to work in the cattle yards. The outcome was to split all the calfs from the cows and then split a few of the cows off as well, marry the calfs back up with their mothers, some of them minus their testicles. Sound simple? Well it was not that bad although Jo and I had a bad case of not understanding what Ken wanted us to do. That is saying something considering that Jo worked with Ken for nearly 10 years!

With the calfs in the cald run we sorted them, most of the boys getting the chop while the girls got to go straight through. I had to identify the sex of the calfs in the run. This involved lifting the shitty tail to see if they had boy or girl bits. Yes, I did make mistakes but it all worked out in the end.

Ken also had to do some rear end work on a couple of the female cows. Again, I had to hold up the shitty tail so he could do his work. It was more gross than the calf work.

Still, it was all fun and I am not put off steak.

Late morning we packed up, did the 3 hour drive home and the rest of the day has been spent sorting through a mountain of cow-smelly laundry.

Jassy had a great weekend. She is a bit subdued at the moment. I think she prefers the farm to the city.