Meet Beef Cake, our steer. Isn't he adorable with those big brown eyes? And oh, those eyelashes! Beef Cake has been a short term visitor to our homestead. When we purchased him early last summer it was with the express purpose that he would soon fill our freezer, so, even though I named him we didn't allow ourselves to develop an attachment to him.
His time on our farm had finally come to an end. Last Thursday Joel and I went out to the barn a little before 3pm. We wanted to allow ourselves a few hours before dark for the task at hand. The moment had arrived to round up Beef Cake and prepare to take him to the slaughter house. How hard could it be? Giggle....
But first things first. We had to figure out some logistics such as do we have the right ball on the hitch of the car to haul this particular stock trailer? Check. Now, to hitch and back up the trailer at just the right angle so as to block off any access of escape from the barn that Beef Cake may try to take. Check.
Swing open the large heavy back door of the trailer against the hog panel that blocks access to the long corridor leading out to the pasture. Check. Hey, we don't want to have to chase a steer all over creation to get him inside the trailer. We closed off gates as best we could to control which areas he would have access to.
That included penning the girls inside the barn so we didn't have to contend with them running interference as we tried to push Beef Cake in the direction of the waiting trailer. Check. Ha!
Sounds easy, right? Except you weren't here when we got our boots stuck in the muck trying to get all three cows in the barn. Then, Joel went into the pen, separated the girls from the steer and drove Beef Cake ahead of him as he shot out of the gate I was holding. I quickly shut the girls inside the barn. At least now everyone is separated and all we have to do it get Beef Cake into the trailer.
What you're looking at is Beef Cake....he's a little put out that the girls are in with the hay and he's stuck outside with us. Let's take a moment to catch our breath.....Check.
Um, yea.....the grin on Joel's face is because we spent almost half an hour chasing animals around the pasture. Why were we chasing cows, you ask? You thought the girls were all penned in the barn??? Of course it wasn't that simple! After rounding up the girls and isolating them inside their pen, Joel had walked out of and closed the gate he is standing next to.....the gate that keeps the cows in the barn.
Now we thought we were ready to herd Beef Cake into the trailer. There was one slight problem, though. Joel forgot to latch the gate and as we were working on getting Beef Cake up to the trailer, the girls pushed their way thru the gate and escaped, creating havoc with all three cows running around the small pasture next to the barn. Instead of just one cow needing to be herded, now we had to start all over again.
Oh, yea, the three of them loved this new game. I had scattered the cows' favorite corn, molasses, and grain feed in the trailer and both Buttercup and Baby Belle casually waltzed right into the trailer and began munching on the feed. The girls had no compunction about getting in the trailer whatsoever. All the while this was going on Beef Cake was stubbornly hugging the back fence line. Uh-uh. No way. He wanted absolutely nothing to do with that trailer no matter how enticing the feed inside was to him.
Ok, so we managed to secure the girls back in their pen, only this time Joel latched the gate so there would be no escaping for them. By now Beef Cake was fully on alert. He knew something was happening here that he didn't want to participate in. And add to that the fact that he has had very little contact with Joel and he was not going to come into the little pasture next to the barn.
Our idea was to lead him into the little pasture and close the gate behind him, giving him smaller and smaller areas from which to plan his escape as we pushed him closer to the trailer. I stood in the trailer shaking a bucket with his feed in it, calling to him the whole time. Usually he runs straight for that bucket as he greedily gobbles up the feed. But not this time. He kept looking at Joel and was not about to fall for our ploys.
Finally he walked into the small pasture and Joel was able to close the gate behind him, cutting off his escape route. Ah-ha! Our plan was working. NOT. I got tired of waiting for him to come to me and walked up to him with the bucket and shook it, willing him to smell the feed and take a few bites. He actually ate right out of the bucket for me and I continued to walk backwards, inching ever closer to the waiting trailer. I would get him to within 6 feet of the trailer and then he would spook and run back into the small pasture. This happened over and over again. And if Joel tried to sneak up to the gate Beef Cake would sense his nearness and back up into the small pasture, thwarting our plan to trap him up near the trailer.
I guess it was another 20 minutes that passed with us trying various tricks to get him into the 9'x9' area we had cordoned off behind the trailer, making it hard for him to go anywhere else but inside the trailer. I went inside the trailer again and dumped more feed in there, hoping to entice him on his own. There was no way we could push him in because he was so quick on his feet we had to dodge him on several occasions so as not to accidentally get bumped into.
For some odd reason, by chance Beef Cake walked right into the 9'x9' area....probably trying to get away from Joel. Joel shut the gate behind him and walked into the tiny 9'x9' area with Beef Cake. The steer took one look at Joel and bolted right into the trailer. Huh! It was that simple. Beef Cake just didn't want that "guy" to get anywhere near him. Joel quickly latched the heavy trailer door shut and gave a victory chant. Check. We had successfully trailered an animal all by ourselves!
All that was left for us to do was to remove the hog panels that had served as fencing to block Beef Cake's escape and pull the trailer up to the house. We were both really glad that we had planned ahead and corralled the steer into the trailer the night before our appointment instead of trying to accomplish that early in the morning.
It's nice that our plan worked this time. We may have had to alter it a bit as we went along, but we got Beef Cake into the trailer alone....with no outside help. Not like when we had to get the pigs to slaughter and it took a couple of days and 7 of us to round them up! Holy cow, I don't ever want to have to repeat that process.
The following morning we drove down off the plateau to the slaughter house where we had an appointment to process Beef Cake. We learned a lot about rounding up animals Thursday, what to do and what not to do. And I have to say we were pretty pleased with ourselves as we gained some new found confidence in our ability to wrangle these animals on our own. Life here is one giant learning curve, one that we love to experience every single day.
Beef Cake is at the slaughter house and they called to say he weighed in at 643 lbs. Now we wait to see how much beef that translates into and will it all fit in our freezers? Guess I had better get busy and make some more room for all the beef we're about to bring home with us next week.
Blessed indeed,
Debbie
