Hooray! Our cows are home!

What was supposed to be one of the happiest days of 2013 so far ended up being a little miserable.

Our cows were coming home! 8 Bull wagons Wednesday and 7 on Thursday.

Wednesday we were out and ready to see the come in around 10:00. They were supposed to come in our North Entrance and exit the South.

Well, they didn't listen and actually missed the house all together. All of the sudden we see 3 bull wagons fly past the house headed to the refuge  Daniel jumped on big red and finally caught up to the 3rd one to tell them they had missed the turn. 2 bull wagons were already on the refuge and said they would find some where to turn about and come back. Daniel helped the 3rd bull wagon find a spot with hard enough sand to turn around. The 4th semi pulled on the road enough to get stuck waiting for more instructions. It was a wreck!

The 2 refuge were stuck, the 3rd semi tried to pull out the 4th and about broke his drive line and had his bull wagon pretty tipsy angle. Daniel, Mitch and Cinch went to get the portable loading chute a 1/2 hour away.  I brought Chauncey in and had just gotten him to sleep when Daniel called me on the radio to bring the dogs and big red. I had to wake up a sleepy Chauncey and we headed out to the refuge to unload those trucks and push those 100 head the 2.5 miles hike back to the house.

The cows were hot, nervous from the trucks and lazy from being in a feedlot all winter. We finally got them on to our pastures and combined them with the 4th semi's cows and headed them to the corrals. We finally got them in and the other 4 semis were patiently waiting for us to unload them, no worries they had come in the right way.

It was hot and dusty. It felt like moving the cows in September with as much dust was flying around us.

Thursday ended up lots better, all 7 came in the right way. Only problem was Cinch had to leave at 10:30 for school and only 2 semi's were unloaded. So I had to haul and kicking and screaming boy into the house to get school clothes on and back out to the pick up to go to school.

The best part about this whole ordeal was that Cinch let the truckers know how much they had messed up. That they were really stuck! And that he'd help them get out of their mess. Cinch saw the lead trucker, Christian, who had lead them the wrong way 3 more times that week, and every time he congratulated him on not getting stuck! Nothing like a 5 year old to let you know you'd done something wrong.