Richard and I custom graze a few head through the summer for our neighbor just to give us something to do. We video most of the larger moves, and sometimes we find good stuff to use in our schools, and sometimes it’s just another move!
Today we videoed our move from gathering them in a paddock near the house to driving them to the far south of the property. It turned out to be a pretty good example of properly driving 10 cows (2 coming into or going out of heat), 1 bull, and 6 young calves through 5 gates across ungrazed pastures to where we wanted them in about 20 minutes.
When we have tasks to do like this, we don’t worry. We never think, “Will we be able to get them?” We know we will easily be able to drive them wherever we need to take them. You will see through the course of the video they are all (including the 1 week old calves) easy to drive and keep going in the direction we need them to go. There’s one “break-out” where some calves get to running and bucking, but they circled back to the group; my guidance probably wasn’t even needed.
We’ve had people say, “I can call my cattle anywhere.” Just look at the lush Johnson Grass and other favored weeds and grasses these cattle easily drive across until their final destination. “Pre-Bud,” Richard used to call his cattle, and there was no way he could call them across paddocks like these. In order to get to the paddock needing grazing he would have had to call them paddock at a time and day at a time or build a LOT of polywire lanes!
Today we had a lovely 20 minute walk in the cool weather of the early morning and got to do a task easily and properly.
