Cows, Coyotes and Donkeys

A friend at work sent this to me and I couldn't resist sharing.

Pretty funny, huh?  I can almost hear the Beatles singing that.  Can't you?  I don't want to leave her now...

Tricia and I drove out to the farm in Oberlin on Sunday evening to check on the herd of beef cattle and check up on Blackberry in her new home environment.  Now I wish we would've put something on her to differentiate her from all the other Angus calves.  We drove around and around looking for her and think we saw her, but we can't be sure.  There's just too many cows to tell.

The pictures below show a pretty sunset and if you look very closely, you can see the herd on the pasture, but most of them are Black Angus cattle and hard to see in the fading sunlight.  The cows have about 200 acres to roam around on and free range graze.  During the summer months, they have all they can eat.  During the winter, we supplement with round bales of hay made from rice stubble.  Last week Dad planted an 80 acre field with rye grass.  We'll fence that off into two separate paddocks and let them graze on the ryegrass on alternate sides, rationing it throughout the winter months.

Here is a picture of me below that Tricia snapped.  Okay, not really, but I know that's what you were thinking.  He's our donkey that hangs out with the herd.  He kind of looks like the donkey from Shrek.  We have had problems with coyotes out at the farm.  They will come close to the herd and attack and eat the baby calves.  After losing several, we got the guard donkey below.  Coyotes fear the donkeys and won't come close to the herd.  In fact, donkeys hate the coyotes and will chase, stomp, and kill any coyotes that come in the vicinity.  That is reassuring to the mama cows and their offspring, not to mention us.  If you've been down the meat aisle lately, you know that beef is a high-priced commodity.


My what big ears you have.  The better to hear you with, coyote!  C'mon over to my old stomping grounds.

The coyote population is expanding.  They are cunning animals that wreak havoc on livestock.  At night if you go outside you can hear them howling eerily in the distance.  Many people use .22 rifles, snap traps, snares, etc. to keep this predator in check.  One of the most creative methods I've heard of was when we used to manage the family grocery store, one of our customers would pick up the bone meal/fat mixture that we got when cleaning the meat saw at the end of the day.  We would save it for them in buckets and they would take it and make "meatballs".  They would run a cable between two trees about 6 feet up in the air and have cables hanging down with large hooks on them 'baited' with the meatballs.  The coyotes would jump in the air to get the meatballs and get hooked like a catfish on a jug-line, just swinging in the breeze.  Sounds brutal, I know, but you ought to see the aftermath of a pack of coyotes attacking a mama cow and her baby calf - not pretty.

I'm not helping you, buddy.