
The steers arrived from Colvin Ranch http://www.colvinranch.com/ again this year on Memorial Day, May 28, 2012. They are beautiful yearlings; however, I guess one of them (we think one of the black ones) needed a little more adventure than just a trip over in a horse trailor and new green pasture. Monday night (or was it Tuesday morning?), I woke up and heard what sounded like a raccoon on the deck. Thankfully, I decided not to check out what the noise was and went back to sleep. Tuesday morning I went out to let the chickens out into their yard and noticed that the netting covering the yard was down. I went on to work and then Mark called to take me on a bizarre trip via cell phone as he followed steer hoof prints from one end of the farm to the other. Apparently, one of the black steers decided that the clover was better on the other side of the electric fence and simply ducked under the fence. Fred, (Colvin Ranch) says his calves sometimes learn to do this. This steer was now at the back end of our five acres. He came up to the middle section of the farm and tried to get out of the metal gate between the vegetable gardens and the house--with no luck, he squeezed around our small greenhouse and butted his way through a vegetable washing table that blocked his path. Next, he went to another gate, but finding no way back to his friends, he turned right and plowed through the chicken yard gate and jumped (yes, we think he did) over some blackberries into one of our smaller gardens. He toured this garden--evidenced by hoof prints in the carrots and radishes and on the weed paper, then jumped over the 4' barbed wire fence back into the pasture with his buddies. Moral of the story: If you have cows, never get up and see what the nighttime noises are.....they will find their way back into the pasture. Oh my........