Farm Sitting Part 3: Moo--Shriek = I'm Hungry

Meet the cows: There are four mamas, four babies, and one steer. As far as I know, they don't have names. The steer will end up in the freezer. I don't know what will happen to the others. The mama that makes all the noise is behind the fence post. Did you know that cows would make that sound? She was hungry.



These cows got two bales of hay morning and night and took the longest to feed. Two bales is a lot of hay and I seemed to get half of it on me and inside my clothes. I was amazed at the places I found hay later on. The cows got a lot on them, too; watch what happens in the video. You can also sort of see how the bale is divided into flakes. Another thing of note, though you can't really see it in the video, is that the cows would go after the hay that I was currently shaking down. They seemed to vie for the "freshest" despite the fact that I tried to put some hay all along the trough as quickly as possible. I even noticed that they weren't so happy about the bale of hay that had been sitting directly on the ground, preferring to sort through to find the hay from the bale off the ground. Man were they picky!



I don't know about your mama, but mine always told us chew politely and not eat like cows. Cows are noisy eaters. The sound on this video doesn't do it justice; you get more hay rustling and less chewing noises. It was the opposite in real life. Listen carefully and you can hear them chewing their cud.



As they ate, they seemed to eat as much as they could right where their head was leaving a indent in the hay. It was most noticeable after the first bale of hay, but you could still see it after the second which is when I took this picture:



Those weren't the only cattle. There were two visiting heifers penned with the bull--I'll let you draw your own conclusions about that. Here's one of the girls:


There were also Honey and Cow in the front pasture. I don't know if this is Honey or Cow. If it's Honey, she's safe. If it's Cow, well there's a reason she doesn't have a proper name.

Okay, so for some reason I deleted the picture of Cow/Honey. That's sad since they deserve some recognition as part of a benign mistake. It was the morning of the last day, Friday, and I had finished the chores, fried up some fresh egg and new potatoes for breakfast, and was reading my scriptures. All of a sudden, I realized I hadn't fed the girls up front yet. It was about 9 am--at least an hour after when they normally would have been fed. I raced out there to find them not-so-happily waiting for me. If Cow has a little less meat on her bones, well, they can take it out of my portion.

I was informed when I went to be trained that I would get some of the meat when the animals were slaughtered. Fresh meat and eggs-YUM!