Early snow and the un-welcome guest

We got home from Church on Nov 16, and it started to snow. Opened the corral so the nursing mommas could bring their babies into the shelter of the loafing shed.

We were ready with wood outside the door...

...and a warm fire inside.

The un-welcome guest showed up the following day - my neighbor's 2,000 pound black angus bull. He could smell our momma cows in heat, so he invited himself over. Thank goodness I heard him and my smaller Dexter bull bellowing at each other across two paddocks. My bull only weighs about 1,200 pounds, but he's got sharp horns which might have evened the odds if they battled. 

It took three attempts, but my neighbor and K2 finally got him moving off our farm. I was driving my truck and honking the horn behind him, but he would run to the stream bed on the right and circle back around us. Our dog Daisy came down to help. 

I stayed in the road between our farms to keep an eye on him while my neighbor drove home to get his 4-wheeler in order to herd this guy far away from our shared boundary. We found out that he pushed under their water gap fence in the stream, crossed the road, and pushed under my water gap fence to get on my farm. It would have wrecked my breeding plan if he had gotten to any of my Dexter girls.

I have been waiting for Christmas Day to move my bull in with the nursing momma cows, so we will have a batch of calves born the end of next Sep or early Oct. With this year's calves, plus the girls I already have due in the Spring, and another batch due in the Fall, we'll have several cows for sell in 2015 and 2016.