Shocking, Simply Shocking

As you know I was pretty much raised on a small farm outside of Boise Idaho. We ran about seven or eight head of milking cows and related steers. Little less than half of our property which was about 17 acres was taken up with pasture for the beasts. For the most part bovines, cows are docile beasts they pretty much stick to themselves and that they have grass, hey, water there fairly happy and content. Oddly enough will never thinks about it but cattle also have personalities. And there are good cows and mischievous cows. Crumple, was a bit of a mischievous beast. I don't think she meant to be this way. And see certainly was not mistreated while she was part of our heard and to be honest with you I don't know where my father got the beast but crumple was mischievous. You can surmise how she got her name. For one reason or another when she was de-horned whoever did the horn amputation did a poor job and what was left was a knob of the horn and looked quite crumpled ergo the name. Anyway, Crumple had to be watched—crumple was a kicker. Whether I was using the electric milker or I was milking Crumple by hand (as one does when stripping the cow which is gleaning whatever milk is left after the milker seems to be finished. There always seems to be a little milk left which needs to be stripped are milked by hand from the udders. Crumple would kick you if she could at this period of time. Counsel kick you on reflex if you hurt them for one reason or another and that's okay I can forgive something like that Crumple on the other hand what actually aim her kick and you had to watch out for her. Whenever I was that close to the beast I would My head in the flank if I was sitting at her side with the bucket between my legs stripping her udders.

Crumple was the same way out in the field as I said most cattle are content but Crumple was always trying to escape and encouraging her bovine companions to escape with her, which led my dad putting up an electric fence. The installation of the fence was a real job. My dad, brother and myself had to nail pieces of wood to each one of the fence posts around the pasture. Insulator was on the end of the wood and then we strung wire all the way around and of course everything was hooked to the fencer which lived in our barn, the milking barn. Something about electric shock which kind of freaks me out. I don't think I've ever really been hurt by an electric shock. I've never experienced the burn or anything like that that's sure but knocked down a couple times by either our electric fence or the electric fence one of our neighbors whose field we often crossed on our trek to the river. Even if you know you make it shocked, like when you're crawling under the fence are trying to avoid the wire when trying to crawl between the regular fence wires and for one reason or another you touch electric wire and you get that jolt! We did not run enough juice to our fencer to really jolt you down that there are a couple farmers who are running the fence is on high juice and that would literally knock you to the ground when you happen to touch the fence. It was not a pleasant experience.

Our cows weren't happy that first week or so after the fence was turned on. You could see them jump when they in a vertically rubbed against the fence or stretch their heads through the fence to try to get to the grass on the other side. They would literally jumped back and bellow at the fence and sometimes crumple would turn her head, if we were in sight, and I swear glare at us and I knew I need to be on guard at the evening milking it should be looking for revenge from the electric fence…