Baker county traffic jam

[Dave]

I assisted with a Baker county traffic jam yesterday. Something like 250-300 cow calf pairs marched up the road for about 8 or 9 miles. I don't know what time they actually got on the road but i know they started assembling them in the field at 7:30. It was around 3:30 when the tail end left the road and turned up into the hills. Those who think it would be lots of fun to go on a cattle drive. It is nothing like Hollywood. It is 99% how slow can your horse walk. The speedometer on my quad mostly said 1 mph. Occasionally 2 mph with frequent dead stops. There was 4 guys horse back with 6 dogs.

Here they come. Sitting in my driveway to keep them from turning that way.


Note the pickup sitting in the road waiting for the the traffic to pass. Also by this point they had gone about 5 miles. 3 of the 4 cowboys had got off their horses to stretch their legs.


When there was a little over a mile to go I worked my way through the herd on the quad, The leaders were a good half a a mile ahead of the tail end. I parked here to turn them off the road on to a little two track which leads up into the hills. We will see them again in the fall.


A couple other pictures I took.

 

[Lucky]

Looks like a good time. Butiful country there, we're getting over crowded here.

 

[Named'em Tamed'em]

Roy wouldn't have been helpful at all, she'd want to bunch them all up.

 

[Mark Reynolds]

I assisted with a Baker county traffic jam yesterday. Something like 250-300 cow calf pairs marched up the road for about 8 or 9 miles. I don't know what time they actually got on the road but i know they started assembling them in the field at 7:30. It was around 3:30 when the tail end left the road and turned up into the hills. Those who think it would be lots of fun to go on a cattle drive. It is nothing like Hollywood. It is 99% how slow can your horse walk. The speedometer on my quad mostly said 1 mph. Occasionally 2 mph with frequent dead stops. There was 4 guys horse back with 6 dogs.

Here they come. Sitting in my driveway to keep them from turning that way.

View attachment 68632
Note the pickup sitting in the road waiting for the the traffic to pass. Also by this point they had gone about 5 miles. 3 of the 4 cowboys had got off their horses to stretch their legs.

View attachment 68633
When there was a little over a mile to go I worked my way through the herd on the quad, The leaders were a good half a a mile ahead of the tail end. I parked here to turn them off the road on to a little two track which leads up into the hills. We will see them again in the fall.

View attachment 68634
A couple other pictures I took.
View attachment 68635View attachment 68636

I miss my time in the field there.

 

[Dave]

Roy wouldn't have been helpful at all, she'd want to bunch them all up.

Good luck with that. It was mostly a solid wall of cows across the back. Hard to get around them. And it was a half mile ahead to get in front of the leaders. It was warm enough that by the time they went very far the dogs were mostly walking behind the horses. We had to be watchful. Every time we came to a parked vehicle the dogs would want to crawl under it to get in the shade. Every now and then there is a wide spot to either side of the road. Then the dogs or someone on a horse would have to go to work. I thought it was real good for Patty. Mostly it is just her and me. Yesterday she got to help the other dogs. She did pretty good. Except there was one cow with a young calf who wanted to fight. Patty wanted to bark at her. Shut up dog. There is no use starting a fight. Of course it was the only horned cow in the entire herd.

 

[Ky hills]

Oh what difference that is than here.
Something like that would make the regional newscast. There would be cars backed up for miles both ways. They would be getting them in the closest field they could just to get them off of the road.
Everyday there’s a neighborhood fb group post saying there’s a cow or cattle out in the area. We live on a busy state road and even the county roads are pretty well divided and developed with houses pretty close to each other so a lot of traffic and a potential real dangerous situation with the traffic.
A couple years ago we were in southeast Oklahoma with a realtor looking at property and came up on what we figured was around 100 pure looking Charolais cow calf pairs with a few Brahman cross calves in the bunch. We were able to toll them into another field owned by the same outfit to get them contained and off the road. Owner was appreciative.
We currently are dealing with a big mature bull that nobody seems to know where he came from he is apparently coming and going from somewhere into an adjoining neighboring property and he and our bull are not happy with each others presence. I’m getting our bull separated and moved right now to keep them them destroying fences.

 

[TexasJerseyMilker]

Here's a satellite view of everyplace in the USA I don't want to live.

 

[Stickney94]

Here's a satellite view of everyplace in the USA I don't want to live.

View attachment 68652

Are those oil field lights in Western ND? Yikes.

 

[Dave]

I have said here a number of times. Baker County is bigger than the state of Delaware and has a population of about 16,000. Of those about 10,000 live in Baker City. That puts 6,000 people scattered over an area bigger than the state of Delaware. For kick I calculated the area and population of the 7 farthest eastern counties in Oregon. They cover 41,259 square miles. Bigger than any of the 15 smallest states. The total population is 104,742 people. If you subtract the 35,054 people living in the 3 biggest towns in the area it makes 69,688 people spread over that 41,259 square miles. That works out to 1.68 people per square mile. I like man kind with a little more space between them. Any one of those counties you will eventually see a herd of cows walking down the road in the company of some cowboy on a horse and cow dogs.

 

[Silver]

I have said here a number of times. Baker County is bigger than the state of Delaware and has a population of about 16,000. Of those about 10,000 live in Baker City. That puts 6,000 people scattered over an area bigger than the state of Delaware. For kick I calculated the area and population of the 7 farthest eastern counties in Oregon. They cover 41,259 square miles. Bigger than any of the 15 smallest states. The total population is 104,742 people. If you subtract the 35,054 people living in the 3 biggest towns in the area it makes 69,688 people spread over that 41,259 square miles. That works out to 1.68 people per square mile. I like man kind with a little more space between them. Any one of those counties you will eventually see a herd of cows walking down the road in the company of some cowboy on a horse and cow dogs.

Still far too crowded for me

 

[Dave]

Still far too crowded for me

I knew that. You and Dave both live in areas with next to no people.

 

[Silver]

I knew that. You and Dave both live in areas with next to no people.

Everything is relative. Pretty small and crowded here compared to places in Australia. Notice that the Shire of East Pilbara is about 50% larger than the state of Oregon, and almost 3 times the size of my “county”

 

[Dave]

I did those calculation for all the people who live in the areas that TexasJerseymilker had in the satellite view that she referred to as areas she didn't want to live in. Areas where people panic when a cow is out.

 

[TexasJerseyMilker]

When we first moved to Oregon, state population about 4 million and most live along I-5, the fences on this place were a joke of sagging barb wire and leaning posts all held together with bailing twine. The pastures were leased to the ranch across the road. Almost every night their black cattle got out on the state highway. We would wake up to honking horns and go out for yet another midnight rodeo. Folks were so used to this they would even get out, open the gates and put the cattle back. Needless to say my husband built new fence and used cattle panels down to the ground because those cattle were overstocked habitual fence crawlers, pushing and lifting the fence to get grass on the other side. They are gone now and we are friends with the ranch across the road.

 

[Ky hills]

I wouldn’t know how to act in a place that you didn’t have to panic if cattle got out. It’s just a fact of life here. I reckon it’s our location along the road that makes folks think that ever time an animal gets out that they automatically think it’s ours.
We have helped all of our neighbors get cattle off the road and back where they belong, a lot of times other neighbors and passers by will stop and help too. Over the last several years we’ve had 3-4 situations where nobody knows who the animal belongs to. Somebody will get the animal off the road and into a field and try to find the owner.

 

[Dave]

I say if there isn't a cow on the road I get nervous because I know they are lurking somewhere waiting to jump out in front of me. Just now I went to the post office. There is 6 pairs mostly laying down between the road and the fence. Based on ear tags and brands I know who they belong to. Everyone is busy making hay now. Those cows will get all the grass ate along the road and wander back up into the hills eventually.
When we moved cows on Thursday there was 4 cows with very young calves. About two thirds of the way up there those calves had all they could go. So the cowboy cut off those pairs and left them along the road. There is the river for water and grass on the river bank so they will just stay there until someone has time to push them on up. Or they might spend the entire summer living along the road and the river.

 

[TexasJerseyMilker]

Satellite view of North Korea. North Korea has a total population of 26,633,691, ranking as the 56th most populous nation in the world.
The people are too poor to have a water buffalo or even a goat.

 

[Dave]

North Korea has all the lights turned to protect from air raids just like they did in WW11.

 

[TexasJerseyMilker]

They are so poor they don't have any electricity. Ever read the book In Order To Live by Yeonmi Park? Yet the Dear Leader is massively obese.

 

[Ridgetop]

Sorry to post this here but I don't know how to IM or post on this forum. This is a question for Dave in Baker County Oregon - Have you heard anything about some sort of Petition 28 trying to get a new law on the voting schedule? If you read through petition the law if passed would make hunting, fishing, breeding of animals, butchering, raising livestock for food, ranching, livestock shows, rodeos, etc. all illegal. While I can see some crazy Peta members in Portland thinking this would be good, I can't believe that the majority of Oregon would want it. Heavily populated areas of the west coast states have gotten very strange in the past years though, so?

This is the Initiative Petiton 28 (PEACE) wording:
Initiative Petition 28, titled People for the Elimination of Animal Cruelty Exemptions (PEACE) Act is a ballot initiative filed for the 2026 Oregon general election. For those hearing about IP28 for the first time, this ballot initiative would remove many of the current exemptions from Oregon’s animal cruelty laws against animal abuse, animal neglect, and animal sexual assault. These statutes prohibit the intentional injury or killing of an animal (abuse), the withholding of care from an animal or the injurious tethering of an animal (neglect), and the sexual contact of an animal’s mouth, anus, or genitals (sexual assault), but many animals are not currently protected under these laws due to the numerous exemptions included.

By removing exemptions from these laws, animals that were not previously protected from abuse, neglect, and sexual assault would finally receive legal protections. As one might realize, this would impact many industries that currently involve animals. Animals on farms, research labs, exhibitions, and in the wild, would no longer be allowed to be intentionally injured or killed (abused), nor would they be allowed to be forcibly impregnated (sexually assaulted). Animals in transport trucks, or in the industries already mentioned, could no longer be deprived of adequate food, water, and shelter (neglected) either. Importantly, all veterinary practices and the use of self-defense would remain exempt from these statutes.

IP28 prohibits any activity—other than self-defense and veterinary practices—that intentionally injures, kills, or sexually violates an animal, many of which are currently legal because they are exempt from our animal cruelty laws. You can read a summary of the initiative's impact created by the Attorney General here. The reason we are seeking to prohibit these activities is not to be punitive towards anyone currently involved with the injuring, killing, or breeding of animals, but rather to be protective of the needs of the animals and to codify their right to life and bodily autonomy in law. There are many alternative ways that all of us can meet our needs without relying on the abuse, neglect, and sexual assault of animals—and we hope that this campaign helps push us towards that more peaceful future.

In order to help support the transition to alternatives that do not rely on injuring and killing animals, IP28 also establishes a Humane Transition Fund to provide grants helping with food assistance, replacement of lost income, job retraining, and aid in conservation and rewilding efforts. The Humane Transition Fund will be administered by a council consisting of representatives from the Oregon Department of Agriculture, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, Office of Tribal Affairs, Oregon Department of Human Services, among other community members who would be impacted by the implementation of IP28. For a full list of those who would be recruited for the oversight council, see Section 13 of IP28.

If someone wants to post this on it's own thread, please feel free to do so. I thought this was a scam or joke until I looked it up and saw it was going on the general election ballot in 2026.