Ouch, ouch, and more ouch!

OK, so this was the worst cattle-moving day that I ever remember.  It may have been because we have several new cows who are more skittish, I'm not sure?  But, anyway...  We did get them all tagged and moved up there (except we're missing 1 calf still), all except for the few cows we kept back here to give special TLC to or to sell to friends for butchering. 

The "Ouches" happened like this:

 

• We all received sunburns--everyone says I'm the most red and I do resemble an Indian.  Dad called us all rednecks...
• My dad was tightening a wire on a fence we were fixing when the wire snapped and scraped my mom's hand.  It's not too bad (could have been much worse), and isn't as bad as the scrape she got on her leg from a weed or something.
• My dad and Andrew had a collision---4-wheeler and dirt-bike.  They both swerved to miss each other while chasing cows, but dad's wheel hit the back of Andrew's dirt bike tire and sent him sailing off the side, hands first.  THANKFULLY, he had a long sleeved shirt on (to cover the sunburn) and some leather gloves!   I don't think he was really hurt, as he was laughing about it at supper tonight.
• Jacob had the biggest ouch.  He was chasing a cow from the ditch onto the road (one of the new cows) and she all of a sudden kicked him in the arm.  It all happened so quickly so that he's not sure what happened, but somehow his bike tipped over and he got a nasty scrape on his back-side.  Something on his bike scraped him and tore through his jeans even.  He's soaking now in Epsom salt...

I was way in front of the cows with a 4-wheeler, trying to hold them back a bit, as there are always a few cows  that just want to run the whole way and leave the others in the dust.  When we got up in the wilderness part of the trail, I needed some help getting the cows to turn the way they were supposed to and to not continue on that trail.   I managed to get them stopped and then they all spread out there and started eating grass.  I looked down the road but could only see my mom with the pickup/trailer a ways back and saw no guys.  My mom was sitting still.  I waited a bit, chasing the cows from one side of the road to the other, then realized I wasn't getting anywhere.   I tried calling Dad and Andrew, but couldn't get them, so I decided to go see what was holding them up.  

I guess what happened is that they were loading up a few smaller calves that had gotten tired (they went in the trailer Mom was pulling) when a group of other calves turned around and started running back in the direction of our farm.  They went and tried to stop then, but then more calves broke away from the cows and ran the wrong way too.  By the time I found the calves and the guys, they were about a mile or more away from where they'd broken away from the herd.  I tried helping them get the calves headed in the right direction, but they were SO dumb and wouldn't herd.  They kept breaking away from each other and running off in their own directions.  There were about 15 of them.  If any of you have herded small calves before, you'll know how hard this was!   I drove back to the main cow herd at this point to see if they were hightailing it for Canada, or if they were contentedly eating where I'd left them.   I found a few cows heading back for the farm, and got most of them turned back the right way and chased back to the rest of the cows (who were just eating grass).  I went back to help the guys again and met up with them about halfway back.  This time, they had all of the calves together and one cow had joined them.  The calves stuck by her and actually were moving in the right direction.  There were about 20 calves by this time.  Well, to make a long story shorter than it could be, we got them back with the main herd (put a few more calves in the trailer, as some were pretty tired) and after a long time, we got everyone up in the pasture cell that they were supposed to be in.  Ouffta.  After fixing some more fence, we were going to head home for a bit, then got a call from some neighbors saying that they found 2 calves by their place.  SO, Dad told me to stay up in the pasture and keep an eye on the cows who were obviously looking for calves, making sure they stayed in the fence.  The others went back to find the calves (of which they only found 1) and to do chores/make supper. 

While I was up there for another hour and a half, I was able to drive around and write down several more cow/calf pairs numbers.  As we tagged all of the calves (who weren't already  tagged) this morning, we needed to match up which calf went with which cow.  I found 48 pairs, so that was a good use of time, I guess.  My dad came up there then with the 1 calf.  I knew of 2 cows who for sure hadn't found their babies yet and yes, that calf was the baby of 1 of them.   We just sat and watched the other cow for a while, as she went to the gate where we brought them in and was mooing.  We're hoping she stays in overnight!  After she left the gate, we headed home.  By this time, it was nearly 10:00pm.  We left home at 1:00pm, so that means that I was on a 4-wheeler for most of 9 hours.  No wonder I'm tired of bouncing around and just sitting still feels oh so good!

SO, the day could have been worse (had people gotten  hurt worse, or had we lost more than 1 calf), but it still was pretty trying......

Please pray for us to find that calf tomorrow.  Our neighbor was going to look through his herd and call us if he found it, but he never called.