Stampede!!!

Well, good evening everyone. I thought I would write a story about our cows and give you a break from our chickens!

We do a rescue cow business. We adopt cows from a local dairy that have either fallen or have been injured at the dairy and the employees don't have time to retrain the cows to go back into the milking parlor. These poor cows are either adopted out by us or the end up getting sold at the auction. We try and rescue as many as we can. We retrain them to be hand milked and machine milked and get them used to be handled by humans. They are somewhat "wild" when we get them...just ask Avram (our dear friend who cow sits for us from time to time)!

We had just rescued this one cow Ebony, she is our main milk cow right now. Her nickname that the guys at the dairy called her was "Baca Loco" and she earned every bit of that title! She was a two year old who had just calved there at the dairy. She had slipped going into the milk parlor at the dairy and she was limping from the fall. They could not get her to go back in to be milked and they didn't have the time to mess with her, so we went and picked her up. She was probably one of the most stubborn cows we had ever taken in. I was convinced that she absolutely hated me! She seemed to do better with Nathan or the boys, but would rather not be anywhere near me.

At the time, we had a bull on the premises. Btw, bulls and I go round and round. They think they want to be the boss of me and will try and show dominance and aggressiveness towards me. I won't tolerate that one little bit. Once they think they have the upper hand, you're in for a lot of trouble, so I learned early on not to take any guff from them at all and to nip things in the bud before things get way out of hand. I learned that a baseball bat placed strategically between the eyes sounds exactly like a baseball being hit out of the park! You may wonder why I am telling you all this...this info will come in handy later on in the story.

Well, we brought Ebony home and put her in the pen with the other cows and the bull we had on loan. The bull thought he would go and check her out. She completely freaked out and ran through the fence to the other side. We have 4 foot field fencing with a double strand of barb wire at 5 foot off the ground. She ran through all that to get away from the bull and mangled the inside of her thigh, not to mention, she was still limping from her fall at the dairy. We had to call the vet out because we couldn't even get her up to walk and her leg and thigh were so swollen. We found out that she didn't break anything, but we had to give her injections twice a day for about 2-3 weeks. Before this incident, she would limp-run away from us whenever we got anywhere close to her. After the injury of going through the fence, the poor thing just lay there. She hated the shots, who could blame her? Eventually she associated painful shots to humans whenever someone got close to her. So after she all healed up, she would run away at the sight of us. We went to go get her for milking and the bull was trying to check her out again. She wasn't too happy and we wanted to move her away so she wouldn't re-injure herself again. As we were going to get her, the bull followed. She was walking right alongside some fencing panels we had up and it was about a 4 foot path between the panels on both sides. Ebony and the bull went through the narrow path. I went after her to get the bull away from her and Aaron and Jordan were following behind me. All of a sudden, the cow and bull turned so they were facing my direction. In slow motion, I could tell what was going to happen. I saw the bull sniffing her and I knew he was going to try and mount her and she wasn't going to have any part of that. I immediately turned around and shoved the boys away and shouted "RUN!!!" as the bull and cow started stampeding towards us all. Aaron was the first on away, Jordan was next as I shoved him ahead of me. The cow was running behind me and the bull was running behind her. The cow's nose nudged my back as I'm running for my life. The nudge was enough to knock me down. I instantly curled into a fetal position and I remembered praying, "God, help me!!!" When I opened my eyes, Faith, (Aaron's dog) was barking in my ear as the cow stopped on a dime standing right above me. She had come to my rescue while Aaron ran for the bat to chase the bull away! He arrived the same time Faith jumped in to save me. I had landed on my "bad" wrist that I had had surgery on and couldn't get up after I had fallen. I was lying there helpless on the ground as my son and his dog protected me. Jordan was so angry he chased that bull around with a bat for days. That bull knew what was coming and ran away! After I was able to get up and around, I did manage to have a one-on-one session with the bull. I don't think that bull stood a chance! He never once chased me again! Every time I went in the pen, he would cautiously run away!!

I thank the good Lord for his protection that day! I believe my sons and the dog were angels sent from heaven that day! I believe God heard my desperate plea and seemed to answer it before the words were uttered from my lips! What an awesome God I serve!

Well, how am I supposed to go to sleep now??? Just recounting that story got my adrenaline going as if it just happened! Oh we'll...just another day on the farm!

Blessings to you all!