Rule #2: Always leave the fencer on!

Hubby and I had a simultaneous exhaustion-inspired brain fart related to the amount of fence that was down behind the pig pen and whether or not the cows would go through it Wednesday night... 

These would be my neighbour's fields...
They not only went to the back of this field, but over
to the right the same distance,
then back even further,
then into the wooded trails! 

They did.

After an hour & a half of chasing the cattle up & down the neighbours field (had them at our gate 3 times and they refused to go in!) I had to call hubby home from work, and we both proceeded to chase them for another hour. I think hubby reminds the cows of their former owner, so they responded as soon as he showed up, and started coming back home after I'd lost them in the woods. Then one of the calves took off on his own, so hubby had to go chasing after him... It was quite the morning!!

Things would have been MUCH easier if my former leaser hadn't taken off with my bridle, I could have just saddled-up Meg and gone off on a cattle round-up! Of course I'm not quite sure what I would have done with the kids... (as it was they sat patiently in the car yelling "GO HOME COWS!"). But Meg would have trampled a minimum amount of the crops & allowed me to get in front and beside the cattle to get them going in the right direction.

As it was, the dogs "helped" but they aren't trained to herd, so mostly the just got the cows going forward, frequently in the wrong direction.

Heading off to get the cows.
The dogs thought this was
GREAT fun!

This little Adventure lead to an entire afternoon of fence-repair, fixing the hole and we strung the whole back of the big paddock as well. Now it's ready to be divided so we can rotate all the animals and hopefully no one will ever get out again.

The cows founds some LOVELY trails behind our neighbour's property; but I think I'll wait to apologize for all the crops they trampled before asking to ride the pony back there!

Back home where they should be.
The farmer warned us they'd probably
go off looking for the herd, and they
definitely did!

We've been trying to come up with some names for the momma cows, "Hilda" (because they headed for the hills...) seemed like a good choice after 2 hours of cow chasing before my morning coffee...