Cow Heist

The calves love to keep things interesting, especially on hot days like this one! It was a very humid day at the farm, one which you stand outside and profusely sweat from doing nothing and the recently weaned group of calves decided to plan a heist. Once our calves were weaned off of milk and eating silage, we made a large open pen with fresh bedding for the girls to play in. It appeared that the girls were happy about their new big playground and after we finished moving the cows we took a lunch break. Upon my return to the barn I was looking for any possible new calves that could have been born while I was away and that was when I noticed a pair of large ears peeking across from me. I quickly identified this as one of the weaned calves that we moved earlier in the day and noticed that she had a few escapee friends with her. While I was busy thinking of how to coral them back into their pen, I began to feel a strange tugging on the backside of my shirt. A cow was licking me! At this point I determined that I needed to investigate how these girls got out of their pen and found the gate to be completely knocked over. After a quick text I got some reinforcements and together we managed to get all the calves that escaped back into their pen with ease. 

I hope the girls had fun, and we made sure to attach a chain to the loose gate to prevent further heists. And yes, the photograph below is of our clever escape artists. 

Today we shipped 5,791 gallons of milk and had one new heifer calf.