Escape artists

Got up this morning to find a little black cow in with the yearlings. Thought it was probably Arnold Betsy's big bad autumn baby and left 'him' there. Some time later I realised it was Amanda, escaped from the high fences in with the mares.

Further examination shows that it was no small achievement escaping from that paddock, the top of the netting has been pulled away from the top wire and bent over leaving a fence still at least a metre high that the little black biddy had gone over.

By mid afternoon she had got as far as the cows - through two electric fences - and was chasing her mother round intent on suckling despite being weaned five months ago.

So husband came home and we determined that we would separate Amanda and Arnold and put them in the paddock behind the garage which would be handy for Arnold who is leaving home this weekend and while they were both in the general vicinity of the yards we could tag them which is somewhat overdue.

It went exactly to plan (yeah right!) - we put hay out for the cows and started moving the calves out the gate - at which point the calves bolted down the other end of the paddock and the cows all ignored their hay and shot out the gate. Well I guess that separated them. Good thing most of our paddocks have more than one way in and out - with a change of plan we sent the calves in the other direction, chased the cows three or four times round and back through the gate, chased the goats round the garden where they had escaped to and returned them to the paddock before they ate all the fruit trees, and yelled at each other in a heated manner. In the meantime little Gemma came through the fence (she's good at that) to eat the cows hay and had to be returned.

Eventually they all got to where they are supposed to be. But it took ten times as long as it should have.