by E.B. Harris

E.B.'s ViEw

from thE Cow PasturE

By E.B. HARRIS

A Leopard Cur Will Show the Way to the Corral

Like I said in my last article, Charles had somewhere around a baker’s dozen of the best they could count that was out of the fence but hanging pretty close to the pasture. We thought the thing to do was not risk the big group of 103 head of cattle over the 13 head. We came up with a plan that Charles would get some feed and have his man William start feeding the cattle over by the fence from outside of the fence.

After about a week of Willaim coming on Charles’s truck to feed these cattle, they were buddying right up to him. I talked to William several times over the next couple of weeks. He said there were two or three of the younger ones that were a little bit skittish. He got to working with them and got them to feed into the pasture. I had moved the wheel corral to another location that would be more convenient to the area they were in, and the cattle would be easy to feed in.

William would feed them late in the evening after it cooled down. I told William when they came on Wednesday evening to close them up. Around 5:30 or 6:00 on Wednesday afternoon, William gave me a call and said they all came in but two little calves. I told him we would head up there.

Shane and I headed up there, and William was sitting close to the road. He said there was one of the small calves right there, and the other was standing over in the bushes watching us. Shane and I went down there and set the corral up where we could get close up to the ones in the corral. We took Charles’s truck that William was driving and eased around the one closest to the corral. The other one in the woods was not going to let us drive to him.

We got that one in the corral and then set the corral back up again. Then we decided to drive down in the lower field and maybe get around the other calf. The calf was probably as good a calf as was in the group. When you say little, little is relevant. It depends on what the others weigh. This bull calf would weigh 550 lbs and was jet black with a spot on his forehead. We got in the truck and drove down below and started getting him back up in the right direction toward the corral where his mama was, but he would not have any part of it. I told Charles to leave the cattle that were in the corral overnight, and they would be fine. I would be back early in the morning.

My plan was to be there early the next morning, so Shane and I made our plans on the way home. He was going to take his dog, or rather Gemma’s dog, Max, and I was going to take Jill from the house. Both of these are Catahoula stock dogs out of some bloodlines of good working stock. We were also going to take the 4-wheeler and see what we could do.

When Shane and I arrived back at the cow pasture the next morning, William and Charles met us on his truck. We parked Shane’s gooseneck stock trailer and truck right close to the road. I asked Charles if I could use his truck. The calf was standing next to the corral talking to his mama. I told them to let us ease down there to see if we can get him to go in the corral.

We went down real slow on Charles’s truck about 100 yards away from the road. Traffic did not seem to have any effect on Highway 1. We got fairly close to the calf, got on the outside, and by his movements, you could tell he was a little skittish. Shane made the comment to me that the calf had a lot of white around his eyes, a good sign he had light feet. I kind of nodded my head.

We eased around him, and he would turn and look at the truck instead of looking at his mama. We got him headed a little bit in the right direction, and then he smelled a mouse, and he wanted no part of that action, so we went to Plan B – Max and Jill.

We went back to the road and got the truck and trailer, and brought it to the corner. I knew that the dogs would want to play a little bit when they were first turned out, so Shane eased on down to the general direction to where the calf had gone. We turned the two dogs out, and Shane headed out on the 4-wheeler in the general direction to where the calf was.

The dogs headed on down to where Shane was, and in a minute or two, they picked up the calf scent and trailed him up and found him. He was standing in dog fennel about 6’ high, and inside of two minutes of them working him, the dogs had his attention. Max is a young dog about two years old and had never been away from home, and Jill is a more experienced dog that had been used on cow jobs. By me listening to their bay, they had the calf’s attention when I heard him blow.

Evidently, while the dogs had the calf in the dog fennel, they must have tagged him because it was just a moment before he remembered where mama and the rest of the cattle were in that corral. When he got there, he stuck to the outside of the corral as a cobweb would to your face on a dewy morning in the barn. He got right up to it and glued his self to the side of that corral. In other words, he was saying he did not want any more part of those dogs doing anything to him.

Max and Jill had stopped working, and I got them off a little ways. They were hanging in the back, just hoping for more action. I got in Charles’s truck and worked a barrier between the calf and the dogs, and Shane took the 4-wheeler and got up behind the calf and pushed him just enough to ease down the side of the corral until he got to the end gate. When he got to the end gate, he made a right hand turn just like a magnet drew him back to mama.

We closed up the end gates and put him with the rest of the cows, and got everything loaded without a hitch. When we got the last one in the trailer and latched the gate, William’s friend Betty, who had also been helping, said, “You all sure know what you are doing.” I said to Betty, “I have caught a lot of cattle and handled a lot of cattle that were out over the last 50 years, but I always say dogs do 90 percent, horses do 9 percent, and I was just the 1 percent they let tag along with them.” You can say the dogs reminded this calf where the corral was this morning.

Max’s genetics, like with all animals, give him the will to want to.

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