Something new

With decades of farm stories filed away in our memories, you would think we’ve seen just about everything. Apparently not.

During the first cutting of alfalfa, we were struggling to keep things moving. Equipment, even though prepped, greased and ready to go, seemed to find new ways to slow down the harvest. The power take-off shaft on one of the boxes broke. I don’t know how or where. I just knew it was pulled off to the side, full of chopped hay, waiting to be unloaded and completely out of commission.

Luckily, we were able to borrow the neighbor’s extra box to keep our 3-box rotation moving — that is, until one of their boxes broke and they needed theirs back. We once again limped along with two boxes. Fortunately, we were chopping in the field nearest the bag, so the travel time between chopper and bagger was short.

As we hammered through breakdowns and repairs, along with the daily routine of chores and milking, I thought our plates were pretty full. Apparently, they were not full enough. As responsibilities of harvest and daily chores were collided, we got the call: “Cows are out.”

Nothing gets a livestock farmer’s blood pumping more than those three little words. Luckily, the call came just as we were finishing the morning milking. A neighbor, who is a retired dairy farmer, called to say he saw three of our heifers standing in another neighbor’s corn field just west of our place. He recognized the blue ear tags in the left ear as being ours. A few minutes later, Sam called his dad from the school bus to say he saw three heifers standing in their corn field, a double sighting of three heifers out for a morning adventure.

Before feed could be fed and stalls could be bedded, we jumped on the 4-wheelers to start searching for the missing animals. Up and down the gravel road we drove, watching for signs: a manure splatter here, a group of hoof prints there, weeds trampled down in the ditch. Definitive signs of wandering animals, yet we couldn’t spot any of them. Where were they?

We drove down a secluded driveway to let another neighbor know to keep an eye out for black and white heifers sneaking through their woods toward the pond for a fresh drink of water. We called our nephew on the back side of the pond to alert him to our wandering heifers who could be looking for fresh feed at his feed-out facility.

The heifers were out. The word was out. There was nothing more we could do. Now, we turned our attention back to finishing chores, feeding, fixing and chopping. We would send out a search party later in the day if we didn’t hear from the neighbors.

It did cross our minds for a fleeting moment the possibility of a “cattle rustler” in the area. I would have loved to watch them try to coax three excited heifers on an adventurous run onto a trailer in the middle of the road with no gates or chutes to funnel them onboard. If they had accomplished that, I think they would have earned the high price they could have collected from the sale of those heifers.

Time flew that day, and it was suddenly time to move back to chores and milking. There was still no sighting or word of the wandering heifers. We thought they would surely be hungry by now and anxious to get back to the herd for supper at the bunk, but we didn’t see any heifers wandering outside of the fence line.

As Mark and Austin started milking cows, I started counting heifers in the big lot. We weren’t sure exactly how many animals were in the lot because there is a constant flow of springers moving out and yearlings moving in. We also didn’t exactly know the size of the missing animals. We just knew three were sighted.

I started walking through the lot, counting heads 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 … did I count those two already or is that one body of spots? After I counted three different total numbers, I had to change strategies. Grabbing a notebook and pen, I started focusing on writing down the ear tag numbers, some more than once, as we danced around each other in the lot. Great, one without a tag. Or are there two missing tags?

Once all the numbers were collected, I started to collate them. Soon, I discovered there were several missing numbers in the sequence. Grabbing the herd book, I found many of the older heifers had already calved and had been moved out of the lot. A few of the other “missing” heifers died as calves; yes, we can’t save them all. I quickly figured out who the non-tagged heifers were. My numbers started coming together, and I soon had everyone accounted for.

Mark and Austin finished the evening milking and brought the milking switch heifers back to their pasture next to the big heifer lot. Mark wanted to count the lot to find those missing heifers because it was bothering him to have animals unaccounted for. Before he could start, we got a call from the neighbor again. He was cutting hay across from our farm and spotted a group of cattle rummaging around our haylage bags. Sure enough, the switch heifers and yearlings had just broken down a back corner post in the pasture. They decided they were still hungry and just helped themselves to the feed from the bag.

Once we got those animals back in the pen, we started counting again. Soon, Mark’s numbers matched my numbers. We know at least three heifers were out by confirmed sightings, but how is it that we don’t have any missing?

All we can figure out is that the heifers broke back in the lot. Hunger must have driven them home. I had walked the fence line earlier in the day. I think I found where a few sneaked out according to toe tracks pointing westward and away from home. I never saw any tracks pointing back toward the lot. Of course, I’m not an expert tracker, but I’m just saying the signs weren’t there.

When you think you’ve seen it all, just wait. There will be something new to surprise you to add to your memory file. Heifers breaking back into the lot?

As their four children pursue dairy careers off the family farm, Natalie and Mark Schmitt started an adventure of milking registered Holsteins just because they like good cows on their farm north of Rice, Minnesota.