Headstrong children = headstrong cows...

Aeryn is teaching Alex how to make duck
noises to call to the ducks in the pond.
At this point Alex is almost able to
mimic the sounds his sister makes.

The quality of stubbornness is not in short supply in my life. I face it daily with both my children and my cows. Cows are often just like children. At least we treat ours like children...Maybe we are doing it wrong. Nah I don't think so . 

Last night Aeryn tried to take Rachel for a walk. The girls have not been on a halter much since we came home from Cheshire fair due to time constraints on our part. Needless to say it was a bit of an interesting experience. 

A few of the ducks in
the pond.

They are getting much better about the barn. They come right in now when it is time to eat with no hesitation. Before, the small ones were a bit scared. Now they associate the barn with getting food so its all good.Having them in an enclosed space makes it a whole lot easier to catch them. We have no problems getting their halters on and off any more. 

So last nights task was to get them all in the barn, get their halters on them, and get them out walking on show halters. In my mind it sounded like a really good plan and it sounded super easy. We started with Rachel who walked really well out of the barn for me. However when Aeryn took the halter Rachel seemed to remember that she was over four hundred lbs heavier than Aeryn and managed to get away. So there she was running around on the lawn with her show halter on. 

She wanted nothing to do with coming to a bucket of grain and even went so far as to jump over the electric fence to get away. (I am now thinking that the electric fence may not be so productive after all if my heifer is able to clear it like a horse. Maybe I should look into show jumping cows?) It took a little patience (and a lot of Aeryn running around the field) but we finally managed to catch her. 

One thing that I have learned in all of my years of working with cows is that when they break away like that it is NOT time to stop the training session. If we had let her go and just do her own thing it would have taught her that she could do it every time and get away with pushing Aeryn around. So after we caught her I am the one that took her for a walk. The made the evening not as productive as I had wanted it to be because I had wanted to be able to take more than one animal out. But I would rather put a kink in my original plan and change it up a little than to risk one of my children getting seriously injured.

Alex wanted to walk down the road with us and Aeryn managed to get a few pictures of him walking along holding Rachel's lead. He is quite the little farm boy.