Long time readers may remember that our pastures have been the summer home for 3 different yearling heifers from a neighbor’s farm for each of the past 2 years. This year is no different.

The 3 cows arrived in late May. Their names are Jean, Raven and Faith.

Jean at the start of the summer 2017.

Raven and Faith at the start of the summer. Raven is in front and Faith in the back.

Shortly after arriving at our farm, they actually squeezed through a loose gate and escaped from the farm. They had quite an adventure.

A couple days after they first arrived, the cows got out of the pasture either over night or very early one morning. They managed to venture down the road at least 2 to 3 miles in the general direction of their home farm.

Luckily, the local highway patrol spotted them (or may have been notified of loose cows)  and knew to call our neighbor who owns the cows. Our neighbor was on his way to his other job and had thought he had seen loose cows in the distance but wasn’t sure (and the call from the highway patrol confirmed his suspicions that they might be his cows).

The cows were very stressed out with all of the morning rush traffic and not knowing where to go. It took a couple hours to get the cows calmed down and loaded onto a trailer. All this happened in the early morning hours before we woke up. I didn’t know anything was wrong until I couldn’t find the cows during morning chores.

Our neighbor took the cows back to their home farm for a few days to relax. After a few days rest, he brought them back to our farm for the rest of the summer. This time we added a second chain around the gate where they originally got out. The cows have been happily eating our grass since then without further incident.

The cows taking a drink.