Moving Cows

Well I quit feeding hay to all the cows and have commenced "kicking them out into the hills." Now I know the whole place has hills on it but its just an expression I use when I kick them out of winter pasture onto fresh spring pasture. With the warm weather and what moisture there was the grass is growing like mad and there is some old grass where I kicked them so they are going to do well out "in the hills."<br />n<!–more–><br />nIt is a little time consuming the way I do it since we grab a bunch of cows and take them up to where we kick them out and have to mother up the cows to thier calves before we let them go out the gate. Well the cows get so excited about getting out on fresh grass they plum forget about there calves and just want to run out the gate. It takes quite a while to slow everything down and slowly get them mothered up. The past couple of days we have moved out about half the cows and are going to take a break and let them spread out a little. <br />n<br />nOne thing I do while doing this is cut out the real old cows and put them in a seperate pasture so I can get rid of them later in the year. When we were done cutting today we had 5 old cows to take to the corral. They were quite the site. They were all 15-18 years old, had produced a calf every year, and ethier had a calf on them or were going to calve yet. The total number of pounds these faithful critters have weaned off has to be simple astounding when you consider it. Well I will let them raise one more calf and then I will get rid of them. I know it sounds cruel but what am I to do with them? I don't run a cow nursing home here, in the long run I have to make a profit to stay in buisness. But truth be told I probably will shed a tear or two when they go down the road since there is quite a few memories involved with each of them and there presence will be missed.<br />n<br />n<b>Life, if well lived, is long enough. Lucius Annaeus Seneca</b>