Operation Moo Moo

As the days have passed and no rain of any magnitude has fallen, our grazing paddock where we graze the boys, Baxter and Dexter, has grown progressively browner and the grass cover has just about died off. Although we've been hand feeding them now for a couple of months, it was time to bite the bullet and transfer them into our other, larger paddock on the eastern side of McGuinness Road. Our neighbour, Bill, has been grazing his beef steers on our paddock for the past year or so, as there is a gate on our common fence, but seizing an opportunity to close the gate when his stock were elsewhere - and after walking the fenceline to make sure there were no breaks, accompanied by our friend Liam, on one of his weekend trips to Larnook from Karragarra Island, it was time to organise the transfer.

We decided to act two Sunday mornings ago. Not only was Liam staying here but so too were Glen and Vaughan. So, with Steve and I that made five. Five against two...the odds were in our favour. It helped that they are a tad hungry all the time now (although I hasten to add that they are still pretty rotund and downright obese in comparison to most other cattle around here at present). Anyway, the plan was for me to enter their paddock with a wheelbarrow carrying some nice green lucerne and hope that the boys would follow me all the way down to the bottom of the paddock and then out through the gate, up McGuinness Road and into their new premises.  No sooner had I wheelbarrowed my way into their paddock did they gallop up to me, heads tossing and saliva dribbling in thick mucous-ey ribbons from their open mouths. They were a little more exuberant actually than I had been anticipating and it was difficult to wrestle the barrow away from them. Nevertheless I managed to move away from them and then literally run down the slope with the barrow in front of me, followed by two seriously hungry bovines.

Glen and Vaughan were positioned further down McGuinness Road to stop them from heading the opposite direction. As I expected, Dexter had no qualms in leaving the security of the paddock which has been his home for the past three years to follow the trail of lucerne but Baxter, being the sensitive and somewhat delicate younger half-brother, needed a little more coaxing. Once they were both out they calmly headed up the road, though at a slightly quicker pace. Than I had been expecting. Fearing that they would wander too far ahead and down towards Bill's place I yelled to Liam to run back up the paddock and come out of our driveway to make sure they went into their new paddock and not keep heading up the road. As their speed which seemed to reflect their general enthusiasm for loping up the road increased, I began to worry that Liam by himself wouldn't be able to do much to stop them, and I didn't want them to try and access our driveway via the cattle grid because they might have broken their legs. I jumped over the barbed wire fence and raced back through our house paddock and met up with Liam. We both guarded the road trying to shepherd them in through the gate into their new paddock.

However, they seemed reluctant to obey us and instead headed in to the rainforest garden we have at the drive, gaining access rather delicately in between a couple of large tree ferns. By this stage I was close to apoplexy as I was sure they would trample over my beloved rainforest plantings. I also new that they could actually gain access into the house paddock via this garden if they kept pushing their way through the shrubbery. I hugh tailed it around the other side to attempt to stop them. But magically they suddenly were overcome with bovine commonsense and retreated out of the garden and trotted across the road and through the gate. We closed the gate behind them and Project Moo Moo was achieved.

They've been in their new paddock for almost two weeks now and seem to be enjoying themselves. There's a fair bit of (short) grass over there and they are now spending their days grazing again and then relaxing, while they chew their cud in the shade.