Dave
Well-known member
Last Friday I bought 6 angus heifers at the sale. It was after dark when I unloaded them so I couldn't back up to the barn/corral. So I put 10 other heifers from the barn into the little (1/2 acre) field along side the house. The 10 were already real suckers for a bucket of grain. It is surrounded by 47 inch woven wire fence with two strands of barb on top. It was all set up to go back to the barn. So I unload the 6 and they mix with the 10. I close the gate and hurry around to the other side of them. Shake a grain bucket at them and lead them into the barn. They run after me, I give them the grain and they go to eating. I shut the gate. Two minutes hadn't gone by. I counted them several times. It is tough to count black heifers in the dark. There should be 16. I come up with 15, 14 , 13, 15 but never 16. So I go back into the little field and walk around with the flashlight. Nothing there so I figure I must have them all.
Well the next morning in the daylight I only have 15 heifers. There was a heavy frost and I find tracks in the frost in the nieghbors backyard. She must have jumped the fence. But I never could find where she left. So I get in the pickup and drive around the nieghborhood. I see nothing. About 9:00 that morning I was talking to the neighbor across the street, asking if he had seen anything. While we were talking he says "there goes your heifer." A pickup pulling a trailer went by with a black cow(?) of some sort in the trailer. We sort of joked about it but there is no way that I could have run the 100 yards to my car and caught up with him as the road forks several times in about a mile.
Now I am 5 days later and there has been no sign of my heifer. I put up signs, let the sheriff know, and talked to pretty near everyone who owns cattle within a two mile circle of here. There are too many 5 acre places and fences here for her to go unseen for this long. I now think that probably was my heifer in that trailer. Someone probably caught her that morning and called a friend to haul her off. When I penciled this heifer raising plan I allowed for losing one but i figured that would mean that one would get sick and die not that I would just lose her.
Well the next morning in the daylight I only have 15 heifers. There was a heavy frost and I find tracks in the frost in the nieghbors backyard. She must have jumped the fence. But I never could find where she left. So I get in the pickup and drive around the nieghborhood. I see nothing. About 9:00 that morning I was talking to the neighbor across the street, asking if he had seen anything. While we were talking he says "there goes your heifer." A pickup pulling a trailer went by with a black cow(?) of some sort in the trailer. We sort of joked about it but there is no way that I could have run the 100 yards to my car and caught up with him as the road forks several times in about a mile.
Now I am 5 days later and there has been no sign of my heifer. I put up signs, let the sheriff know, and talked to pretty near everyone who owns cattle within a two mile circle of here. There are too many 5 acre places and fences here for her to go unseen for this long. I now think that probably was my heifer in that trailer. Someone probably caught her that morning and called a friend to haul her off. When I penciled this heifer raising plan I allowed for losing one but i figured that would mean that one would get sick and die not that I would just lose her.