April 2012 – Cast Iron Farm

We’re Going on a Cougar Hunt

Yep, you read that right. A COUGAR. I’ve been flapping my lips lately about how our location close to the city means that we have few predators. While I did deal with a skunk last June, I haven’t lost any thing to any of the usual suspects. We can hear the coyotes call out the bedroom window regularly, but our professionally built fence keeps them on the outside.

Enter the cougar. I was alerted about 3 weeks ago that the News Register had run a story about some sheep and house cats being killed by what looked like a cougar. The kill matched a cougar’s MO, and they had some tracks verifying. Concurrent to that, a cougar was seen walking down the road. What’s more the kills and the sighting were less than a half mile from our property. I started to lock the livestock up tight at night thinking that the danger would pass eventually and that that would be the end of it.

On Tuesday, we discovered that our neighbor had a ewe and a lamb killed that night. It looked to be the same cougar and the kill happened about 45 feet from our property line. My reaction–HELL NO. I called it in to the police and fish and game and then I called all the friends I have that hunt. Very kindly, one of my dear friends headed out that night and had a go at calling it in, but it had just got a big kill the night before and wasn’t interested.

This all led me to hone up my shooting skills and get out the rifle. I headed out and got a cougar tag myself. While many of the people around here have livestock just for fun or for lawn mowing, my livestock is valuable breeding stock, and a loss of just one animal is a huge loss for me. That coupled with the fact that I have small kids and I spend a lot of time outside at night (cougars are nocturnal), has led me to decide I’ll be doing a little hunting of my own.

We have a friend who has first hunting rights on our property each year, and I called him up, and he was game to catch a cat, so we headed out at midnight to have a go at it. We got some things set up and potentially saw something in the distance, but it never came in close enough to get a good shot on it. We had a few visits from some other wildlife and almost got a shot or two off at a coyote, but no cougar.

And so, until I’ve got myself a cougar rug, I’m going on a cougar hunt!

Meet Pascha

We had another adventure at Cast Iron Farm this morning. Yesterday, we had a large gathering to celebrate Greek Easter or Pascha. We were all having a great time, but my cow was getting ready to calve any day, and on Saturday, I was starting to think that she might calve during our large party. I pulled her into the barn as the party was drawing to a close, and I got the idea that she was really ready to calve. Her udder was rock tight and she was acting kind of funny. In fact, she stuck her head under the gate and was trying to get out. Silly cow.

I happened to get chicken pox on Saturday as well, so I was laying in bed at 4 something this morning feeling kind of crummy, and then I had a thought come into my head “I’ve got to go check that cow.” I then tried to talk myself out of it, and the calling from the barn was too strong, so I opted to head out and check. I told myself that of course she wasn’t calving and that I would get to crawl back into bed when it was all over. I also happened to be wearing my standard calving check attire, a shirt, no pants, a house coat and some flip flops. The rain started again in the night so it was wet outside. I grabbed Jared’s big flashlight and headed to Fancee’s stall only to discover that the stall was empty! The cow had lifted the gate off it’s hinges and escaped.

I searched the entire property for her, and I couldn’t find her. Oh great! I had just happened to leave the gate open to the big pasture last night, so I thought I’d check in there again. Finally, the flashlight shone on two big eyes down by the bottom of the field. I rushed down through the wet grass to see that she was laying down working on pushing a calf out. To the looks of it, she’d been working at it for a while. I rushed into the house, woke Jared and got the OB straps and some towels and we drove the John Deere down to the cow. He left the lights on while I got the straps around the calf to pull her out. I managed to get the straps on, but even with all that force from the cow, the calf wasn’t budging. Finally, with all the strength Jared and I had, and all the force Fancee could give, we got the calf out. That’s the thing about extremely small cows like Fancee, sometimes they have calving problems because they are just so small.

After a little clean up, we got the calf in the John Deere and brought mama and baby back up to the nice clean barn with a heat lamp. The calf, a heifer we have named Pascha, got all cleaned off by mama, and was up nursing like a champ while I was milking the other two cows. And so, meet Pascha, the most recent addition to our herd.