Loading calves with your wife
A couple times a year we haul calves off from this rent pasture place we have. The lot is the junkiest panels we have and some old wire cattle panels. I'm afraid to put anything good over there in that lot or it will get stolen. So, whenever we load calves it's always a nerve racking experience.
If a calf or cow hits the lot fence very hard it's going to get out. Also if you happen to be standing behind the fence when a cow hits it you could get crushed. So we have to handle the cows and calves really easy whenever we get them up.
A few years ago the electric company was putting new telephone poles up down the road by the rent pasture. I asked the guys working for the electric company if I could have the old poles. They said if I would just drag them off a little ways they wouldn't have to fool with hauling them thirty miles back to their office. So, I got the bright idea to cut these poles up and make me an ally that was really stout.
It works pretty good once we sort out what we are selling. The sorting though, well that's where things go south as far as marriage and working cows go.
We just about had everything sorted, but we still had a crippled cow and a calf in the lot. That calf got crippled when it ran into a post and bunged up its shoulder during the sorting. We needed to get these two crippled ones sorted off from the calves that were going to the sale. My wife got them over to the cut gate I was manning. I turned them back to her. That's when it happened.
It never fails, it happens every single time. One of us gets mad and the shouting starts. When I turned those two crippled ones back into the lot she yelled at me, “what the #%* are you doing? Those needed to go out!”
“I couldn't tell which calf it was so I turned them back. I can't read your %#+ mind! You need to tell me what's a coming.”
We finally got the two crippled ones turned out and were finally ready to load calves on the trailer. It wasn't much work to get those calves into the telephone pole and orange cattle panel ally. They can't get out of it, but calves are dumb. We liked to never got them all pointed towards the trailer. Once we had them headed the right way they then decided they didn't want to step up into the trailer. I ended up having to get in the ally and twist calf tails to get them to move. I got kicked in the shin once and then a big calf kicked me right at the top of my front jeans pocket, dang now that sucker hurt. I stayed hooked, cowboyed up and kept twisting them tails. Finally, they all got on the trailer. We unbaling wired the cattle panels from the back of the trailer and jumped in the truck.
We didn't say too much to each other on the way to the sale barn, our nerves were kind of shot. She was driving and pulled into the line to unload. I was starving, so I headed to the sale barn cafe. I asked her if she wanted a cheeseburger.
I went in and ordered the food and got us a table. The burgers arrived just as she walked into the cafe. We ate in silence for a while. Then we kind of began to laugh about it all.
We survived another rent pasture calf loading. No one got hurt and we got them to the sale without blowing a tire or having a calf fall through the trailer floor. All in all it's a good day.
There ain't nothing worse on a marriage then loading cattle in a junky lot. If your marriage can survive that it can survive just about anything. If those calves bring enough I might get her a new fiberglass cattle prod. On second thought maybe I shouldn't do that. She might hit me with it next time.