There goes the neighborhood

I'm feeling rather irritated at the moment. Why? Because the cows are back again. Cattle baron came and led them away Sunday night, but they were back yesterday morning. Cattle Baron's younger sister came over with her dogs and traipsed around my yard this morning trying to push said cattle back home... again. This set my dogs into a protective frenzy while I was on the phone with a client. Five barking dogs trying to get through the window to kill the interlopers can be quite loud. Eventually, the cattle left, only to return an hour later. Apparently, no one around here knows how to repair their crappy barbed wire fence. And it's not that the Cattle Baron doesn't feed his cattle. He feeds them plenty. In fact, they have about 30 old, moldy, smelly hay rolls sitting in their driveway. The cattle march right past those rolls to get to our grass.



When the cows were here on Saturday the very hefty bull decided to break into our little shed where we keep hay for the bachelors. Not only did he eat all the hay and poop all over the building, but he put a rather large hole in the top floor of the two-story shed. Now, there is a heifer with a leg stuck in this hole.






And please note the mud in front of the shed. That was grass a couple of days ago.







And lest you think I'm being unfair to the Cattle Baron, let me show you a pic of this little heifer. She can barely walk because her feet are so long and curling up at the ends like elf shoes. Cattle Baron says she's been like that since birth and its a defect. I agree. But he's the defect. And the way he cares for his animals is defective. I tried to get a better pic of her feet, but Thor thought I was getting too close for comfort and caused her to shuffle away on her knees.




I called Cattle Baron's little sister today and told her to get her brother over here to get these cattle out of my yard and shed, and to keep them home this time. I tried to be nice because I really don't want to make enemies of people that I will have to live next to for the rest of my life. But enough is enough.


We learned something about our own crappy barbed wire the other day as we were walking down the road to go get the horse trailer. We have two spots where a tree has fallen and taken down the fence. But you know what?? Not ONCE have our horses escaped. NOT ONCE. Gee, I wonder if it's because we actually FEED them??