Cleaning the Pen and the Social Order of Cattle

Today was a nice day to clean out a pen and spread the manure around the farm. We are keeping two Angus-cross steer, Doggie and Red in a large open pen in the barn because we have a small calf, Monty, outside with his mom, Annabelle, and dad, the Dun, and we don't want too much horseplay/cowplay around him.

We are afraid the steer and the bull might accidentally step on him when he is sleeping. They tend to push each other around and but heads and jump up on each other when they are out in the field. The cow never participates in their sophomoric behavior.

Well anyway, My son and I moved the steer into a small pen and began cleaning the big pen out using manure forks and wheelbarrows. They had been in the pen for two weeks, so we had quite a bit of manure and wet soggy bedding to remove. It took us about half the day to complete this task.

We hauled out the wheelbarrow loads of manure to many fruit trees and the gardens. The chickens were also out today helping to spread it around. It was about 50 degrees fahrenheit and partly cloudy with a nice breeze today, a rare December day on our mountain in Pennsylvania.

Once we got the pen all cleaned out we let Doggie and Red back into the big pen. They ran around and gave their cleaned out pen a good sniffing and started to eat their hay. Annabelle, the Dun, and Monty the calf all came in to visit them. They could hear them in the other part of the barn during the mucking out time, but they couldn't see them. They have adjoining pens, but the Scottish Highland family go in and out as they please.

We plan on having them all loose out in the fields again once the weather gets a bit better and Monty gets a bit bigger. We can't have them all going in and out the barn as they please because Monty would probably get hurt. Out in the field he runs like a deer and he can escape, but not in the barn.

Also, we can't have Doggie in the barn with the Dun. For some reason the Dun loves Red, but he always chases Doggie. We had to lock them all out of the barn this spring because the Dun just plasters Doggie up against the wall if he gets him trapped in the pen.

So in other words when the weather is nice enough to lock them all out of the barn again and when Monty is a bit bigger they will all roam the fields again together. I think I just typed a lot to say a little, but it was a long, good day today on the farm.