A midnight rendezvous

Nothing wakes a person up faster in the middle of the night than hearing the words, “The cows are out.”

One night earlier this fall, just after midnight, our 5-month-old daughter woke us up wanting to be fed. Jason and I could tell right away that something was amiss outside since the cows and baby calves were bellowing like crazy. I got up and fed the baby while still half asleep, and Jason, also half asleep, grabbed a flashlight and went outside to see what was going on. 

After several minutes, Jason came back in and reported exactly what we feared to be true. A pen of 25 heifers got out, and now they were all over the yard. Jason got the side-by-side out of the shed while I finished feeding our baby. Then, I slipped on a pair of shoes and joined Jason on the side-by-side. The rendezvous was underway.

We quickly found one group of heifers near the barn, which caused the cows and baby calves to alert us in the first place. We have a series of gates that connect all the heifer pens and the barn. The animals that were out belonged in the pen at the bottom end of the series of pens and were currently at the top next to the barn. Thankfully, it was easy enough to open the gate and let them in, and then, one by one, open the other gates to get them back in their appropriate pen.

However, that was only eight heifers; now we had to find the remaining 17. We drove around for several minutes and found one heifer in the dry cow pasture. Again, we were able to open the gates and, without too much difficulty, get her back in the correct pen.

We set out again, this time searching the south side of the corral. We soon found a group of 10 heifers in a meadow just south of the gate the heifers had somehow managed to open themselves. Using the headlights from the side-by-side, we rounded up the heifers and chased them back into the pen with the open gate. We made sure to close the gate and made sure there were not any other gates open.

Then the real search began. We drove around the yard in pitch-black darkness, checking in any building with an open door. Jason and I were both getting that sinking feeling that the remaining six heifers were not in our yard. We drove to almost the bottom of the driveway and then got out to check for tracks. Sure enough, numerous hoof prints were going down the driveway. We had more questions than answers when we got to the bottom of the driveway, as the road we live on is tar, so we were not able to tell which way the heifers went. Our tracking system was not going to help anymore. We drove up to the house and switched from driving our side-by-side to Jason’s truck since it had much brighter headlights.

We had a 50/50 shot. Did the cattle go to the north or to the south? We decided to try to the south, as there is an alfalfa field just on the other side of the meadow where we found the second batch of heifers. No luck. So, we turned around and went the other way, north of our driveway. We drove half a mile and could see some heifers running around in our neighbor’s yard. This neighbor is also a farmer. He used to dairy farm, but now he raises steers and crops. We decided to call him and let him know we were going to be running around his yard trying to get our heifers back. Mind you, it is now just shy of 1 a.m. It took a minute for him to realize what we were trying to say, as it was the middle of the night, but then he said he would come out and help us. Jason and the neighbor jumped on a couple of four-wheelers, and I used the truck to block off the road. After a few minutes, we got them out of the yard and onto the road and were able to walk them back up into our yard. With the momentum of them trotting down the road and up our driveway, we had to open the gate by the barn to chase them in since the gate to their pen has an open meadow next to it. Once inside the pen, we again just had to open the series of gates to get them back into their correct pen. Whew. Mission accomplished.

We thanked the neighbor for his help and laughed about the ordeal for a couple of minutes and then said good night. When Jason and I got back in the house, we said a prayer that all the animals were back home safe and sound and for having helpful neighbors.