Reignmaker Miniatures
Well-Known Member
Well, we decided this fall to buy a couple of heifers from a neighbour who was culling his entire herd to restart it with registered stock. He delivered them last Saturday, a black yearling (she scaled at 1100lbs
) and a red angus weanling. I was so excited to add them to our farm and had already picked their names (lol, it helped to know they were girls and so not for meat) The neighbour (from about 5 miles away) delivered them late which worried me, it was already dark when they arrived. Unloaded them into our corral and left them alone to settle in. We went in and had coffee and a visit and after a couple of hours he headed home. We got a call from him shortly after, the heifers got back before he did. It was too dark to do anything so we left them and went to check the fence the next morning. They had jumped out of a rail fence (made originally for our stallions so it was solid and over 4.5 feet high) the top rail was snapped , I assume by the yearling when she jumped, making it possible for the littler one to jump out too. So the next day he and his sons tried to round them up and run them in to the holding pens again and the yearling was happy to join the older cows still there, The calf however, bolted (I suspect the kids pushed too hard - on snowmobiles or 4 wheelers- and panicked her but won't say that to them) so my husband went up to help find her and they tromped thro the bush for hours and it looked like she was heading towards another farm about 10-15 miles from us (closer to our neighbour cross country but not sure if she could hear those cows or not) They called that farmer and he related that they had lost a cow 2 days earlier to a wolf pack but would keep an eye out for her. Now of course we were worried but when they called it a day the tracks had turned towards home again - her old home not ours. Then yesterday we called him and were relieved to hear they had seen her several times feeding from his round bale stack. The decision was made to just leave her for a day or two and hope she would settle down and want to be with the older cows again and we breathed a sigh of relief that she was not wandering alone in the bush where the predators would find no deterrent to taking her down. Well, today they called my husband at work to let him know, the calf wandered away from the farm again and out to the edge of the road well away from the buildings, and either wolves or coyotes got her
Poor little thing, she was so lost and afraid at the end. Newly separated from her momma and then all the other changes in her life. The yearling is still fine but we have decided we'll probably just have her processed and eat her (better us than the wolves I guess) Anyway I am really feeling down about it, we can not really afford to spend money on wolf food for one thing but mostly it is just too sad to see her end this way.
