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Apr. 16, 2011 Living in the country is different in ways most people just can’t imagine. I’ve always lived in rural areas, most of them tropical or semi-tropical. And I’ve always had dogs and horses. When I married a cowboy, I learned what living in the country is really all about. It’s about cows. At the moment we have seven head of longhorns at the house and 11 head of Brangus/longhorn cross cows on acreage about a mile from the house. Cows with huge sets of horns, we’re talking 36-plus inches here, are kind of frightening. No, I take that back, not kind of frightening downright scary. And the cows know they have those horns and they know how to use them. When cowboys go into herds of cows with horns, they take their lives into their hands. The husband has had a horse gored while he was riding it. Riding horses is the only reasonably safe way to move among the animals because for the most part, cows are afraid of horses. Four of the cows in the home pasture have calves. If you walk out among them with dogs, you will get cow caught. That means exactly what it sounds like. They’ll come after the dogs and get you. Long horn cows are smart. They can survive on little feed, forage well and protect their offspring. I always knew that, but I never knew other cows are not that together. Big fat Angus cows do not have those protective instincts. Maybe it’s because they don’t have horns either. One day me and the cowboy were out checking fences, a chore with no end by the way, and we found one of the cows wandering around lost, looking for her calf, ignoring the feed we had so kindly provided. She was pretty stressed out. So, we began to drive around the 80 acres looking for the tiny thing. In the weird way animals have of figuring things out, she immediately understood we were trying to help and followed the truck mooing and bawling. The three of us, cow, me and the cowboy searched, all of us worried, only one of us mooing. We finally found the heifer calf sleeping under a clump of dog apple. The cowboy spotted it, but the cow didn’t. So he had to get out of the truck and get it on its feet. Once the cow saw her calf, her savior had to haul buggy for the truck because now he was a danger to her child and she had four-feet of huge, pointy horns.
Taking care of cows is very rewarding business. The part I don’t like is when the cowboy loads up the calves and takes them to market. He sells cows as well. According to the agriculture agent I interviewed when I was a reporter, people sell cows for three reasons, the three Os; open, ornery and old. I can verify this. But the cowboy also sells them because he wants money. This is what I mean when I say living in the country is all about cows. They eat the grass, we use cow manure to fertilize fields and pastures, we eat beef and drink milk and we live off the money we get by selling calves. You gotta love cows. They’re like dollars with four legs. As long as you have cows, you aren’t broke.
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