A Very Dangerous Cow
- March 19, 2024
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- Jan Swan Wood
Posted in: Featured, Ranch Life
Calving had been going along for several weeks. There were about 500 head of cows that we calved
every spring on the ranch. We had been there for several years so had a pretty good handle on the cows
that were worth keeping an eye on when they calved. One cow on the place had such a reputation that we had been warned about her when we hired on. Her tag number was, appropriately, D8. She would
definitely bulldoze you. We didn’t have to wonder why she was at the ranch we were on and not at the
home ranch! Rumor had it that the owner’s wife had given an ultimatum about her being at their place
after a brush with death she’d had on a night check.
When she was getting close to calving and in the heavy bunch, we did our night checks very
cautiously, kind of like if there was a Bengal tiger lurking in the dark. Day checks were okay as we did
those horseback in the pasture. All during calving, until D8 was calved and out with the pairs, those night checks were nerve racking. In amongst maybe 200 heavies, one could stumble on her way too easy without knowing it. Just a snort and she’d come out of the dark like a rocket.
Some of the nasty cows we’d gotten rid of by grafting their calf onto a nicer cow that had lost hers.
We just couldn’t do that with this cow though, as she belonged to the boss’s middle son, and besides liking the kid a lot, he was the unluckiest young cowboy we knew. If a dead cow or calf was spotted, we could nearly foretell that it would be his. If lightning struck in the horse pasture, it would be his pet saddle horse that got struck. We felt bad for him as it’s pretty hard to build a cowherd if they kept dying. So, we put up with that deadly D8 cow for his sake, and hoped that the next dead cow would be her.
She was just your standard issue black brockle faced cow, average size, no horns, thankfully. She
was a little watchy on the ground all year, but when she had a new calf, she changed into a seething,
predatory, meat hunter that would stalk us. If she calved at night, it would be in the deepest, darkest
shadow available.
Much to our relief, she finally calved one night and we had lived through it. First thing every morning, we’d let the springers out the north gate into the calving pasture, leaving the new pairs in the calving lot. So D8 and the others with new calves, were to go out the west gate to the pasture where the
pairs were. Getting her calf tagged was a challenge, but that morning, we thought we had it figured out
and that if it went well, we’d both live to tell about it. We’d gotten the other calves tagged with no problems, so that just left hers.
She had bedded her calf down in the corner where the woven wire fence came up against a short
section of the big wind break corral. In the northeast corner of that windbreak, was a narrow walk through gate. About 30 feet from the windbreak was the wire gate going west that we paired out of.
This big windbreak corral also had a gate open to the west so that the cows with calves could
come in and water if they wished. The gate they came through to drink was way around the corner and
down the fence from where D8’s calf was bedded. It was easily 150 yards between the two gates.
We fed the pairs about 100 feet from the wire gate out of the calving lot. Our thinking was, that maybe D8 would go eat hay with the others and we could slip in and tag her calf before she realized we were even around. Acting like we hadn’t even seen her calf, we got the others fed and went the long way
around the corrals and barn to get out of sight. We parked the tractor and slipped back through the barn and corrals to the wind break corral. The wind was from the cows to us, so she couldn’t wind us.
We watched, tag ready, as D8 finally wandered out the gate, with many looks back at her sleeping calf, until she was with the others eating hay. Moving in full sneak, and checking for D8, at every crack in the fence, we darted out that walk through door in the windbreak and grabbed her calf. Here she came like a mad hornet! I didn’t know a cow could run that fast while screaming threats. The calf was big and
struggled furiously, but we finally got him dragged over to the walk through door as she came through the gate 30 feet away. The walk through door literally slammed on her nose!
Feeling pretty smug about outwitting the old rip, we nearly danced! We were calmly proceeding to
tag the calf after catching our breath. Suddenly, through the west gate came the cow! She was at full kill
mode by this time, tongue out and yelling at full voice. No tag got placed so quickly as that one, and then we struggled through the walk through door, fitting two where there was room for one like Abbott and Costello, and pulled it shut behind us in a shower of mud that she raised when braking to a stop on the other side. One would almost deduce that she was upset with us!
That day proved to us that she was not only a deadly, dangerous cow, but also extremely smart. Most
cows, and even some people I know, would have beaten their heads on the walk through door in
frustration. Not D8. Nope, she remembered that open west gate from the springs before, and went to it at a dead run, after going back around through the wire gate. She probably set an overland speed record for domestic livestock.
Her ability to problem solve kept us on our toes every spring. Close calls were the norm. If we didn’t
have a heart pounding, near death experience every spring with her, we wouldn’t have known what to do
with ourselves. Naturally, she nearly lived forever, too. You know, it’s kind of funny, I sure don’t miss her
at all.
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Posted in: Featured, Ranch Life
About Jan Swan Wood
Jan was raised on a ranch in far western South Dakota. She grew up horseback working all descriptions of cattle, plus sheep and horses. After leaving home she pursued a post-graduate study of cowboying and dayworking in Nebraska, New Mexico, Montana, Wyoming and South Dakota....