Wednesday 29 January 2014

Tonne of fun?!

At the beginning of September, one of our landlady's bulls came to stay in our larger paddock. 

The grass was definitely greener then and it was hard for Tea (and Nick with his mower) to keep it in check, so the bull did his bit to munch down the excesses.

For a while we had a second bull visiting also.  They provided a lot of amusement and we did enjoy seeing them at close quarters.  Well, we liked seeing them at close quarters with the double, electrified fence between them and us.  There was some excitement this week.  Often the bull sounds very close when he bellows.  On Monday afternoon he was very close - right beside our house!

He'd gotten out a couple of times previously but hadn't wandered far, so it was easy for Nick to escort him back to quarters.  We weren't so sure how he would behave over a greater distance, so called our landlady expecting she would herd him back with the quad-bike.  She arrived ten minutes later but just walked behind and shoo-ed him along in front of her.   We did the same yesterday morning.  Erin woke up thinking Tea was rubbing on her caravan - but when she looked out it was the one-tonne bull and not the 300kg "horrible heifer"!   

Once again Mr Muscle was restored to his rightful place but has since been moved to other accommodation, further away from us.  Nick walked the fence-line of the large paddock yesterday afternoon.  Our landlady had said electric fences are less effective in dryer weather.  That makes sense however upon inspection the electric fence had other issues, so Nick will fix those and then install Tea in that, hopefully escape-proof, area.

It was quite late on Monday night when a car drove up our driveway.  From the darkness a lady enquired whether a black heifer lived here.  She had found Tea on the road and very kindly returned her to the main paddock.  Seemingly the lady and her daughter had spotted our "horrible heifer" along the road the previous night also.  (On Monday morning Tea was inside her paddock, dozing beside her water barrel so we assumed she had been a good cow overnight)! 

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