Runaways

Runaways

Two yearling heifers belonging to Alan the MP escaped into the forest and try as he might, he couldn’t retrieve them. He owned a couple of paddocks with good grass so he bought the heifers to utilize the feed, which in the end would produce beef for his freezer. But his fences weren’t up to scratch, so the young cattle bounded over them and headed for the trees! Something, more likely someone, must have spooked them because the grazing was good enough to hold them there despite the broken-down fences.

In those day the boundary gate to the forest was locked, so Alan asked Henry for a key to go in with his two sons to muster his young cattle, but after several attempts, his paddocks remained empty. The heifers were both Hereford cross, one was black with a white face and the other was more typical Hereford, red with a white face. They must have been happy in the forest because they refused to be mustered! Or perhaps they were nervous. Every time Alan and his boys went into the forest, the heifers sought refuge among the pine trees. Alan believed them to be lost because he knew there was the ever-present danger that they would be shot by hunters, especially those illegally night-shooting. 

The only food available for cattle in the forest is on the roadsides. There is nothing to eat among the pine trees because when they crown out and there’s not enough light under them to support grass. Even on the roadsides there wasn’t much grass, because of the bracken fern and gorse flourishing there. In their search for food the cattle ventured further and further into the forest, following the road. Their migration was urged on by vehicular traffic, legal and illegal, often chasing the cattle on until they found a place to duck into the trees. Henry kept track of them, an easy task, by just following the cowpats!  

Alan and his boys decided to try ‘one last time’ over the Easter break when they were all at home together. One of the boys had a couple of sheepdogs so they were fairly confident of success this time. Easter is the traditional red deer roar, so every half-wit hunter and their mongrel pigdogs took the advantage of the long weekend and were on the prowl looking for game. Some of these guys were legal, with permits while others were problem-poachers. In the end Henry decided to the place down because he tired of legal hunters calling at his backdoor demanding he sort out the confrontations and chase off the illegal ones. Anyway, Alan and his boys failed, probably because all the activity upset the cattle so much!

The next weekend Henry was helping Alan by blasting some rock that he was going to use in a wall of his refurbished house. Alan told Henry about their cattle-chasing picnic, and added that it had been their final attempt to muster them! Henry just smiled and told him sooner or later some bugger will shoot one or both of them. Alan agreed and told him that he could shoot them if he wanted. Henry wasn’t too keen on the idea because it was a bad precedent, someone was bound to see him and the bush telegraph would light up. He reckoned he could muster them though! This made Alan laugh, and he told Henry that he was welcome to them if he capture get them.

During the week following, Henry spotted the heifers towards the end of Queen’s Road and had no doubt he could get them. At home he separated three of his old quieter nurse cows. Among them an elderly, red Ayrshire with big forward-facing horns. She had been a house cow belonging to a cocky who had died, and Henry bought her for a nurse cow instead seeing her go to the meat works. She reared many a calf for Henry! He used to buy bobby calves – calves born to dairy cows and normally slaughtered not long after birth for the veal market. She would take them like any kindly mum, rearing three at a time. Henry hoped he quiet nature would settle the heifers.

It didn’t concern Henry that it was going to take all day, he strolled along behind his cows, allowing them to graze on the way, driving them up into the forest to where he knew the runaways would be. When they met, the two heifers joined up with Henry’s old cows and he left them to introduce themselves while he ducked into the trees to skirt around them. At his approach, the black heifer looked at him curiously, but the red one was skittish and afraid. Henry just stood back a little and the old cows knew that they were on their way back home. It was a leisurely walk, in the warm afternoon sun, with the bellbirds singing and cicadas chirping. Henry knew he had won, but the red heifer regularly took backward-glances at him.

Heifers are generally curious and the black one displayed plenty of curiosity on the road beyond the forest. She sniffed at every mailbox, gatepost or power pole, but the red one shied at anything that moved and showed no sign of settling down. She just seemed comfortable to walk with the others. Henry’s big fear was that if a vehicle came along, she might make a run for who knows where! Good fortune smiled and Henry happily closed the gate into his paddock after the cattle had passed through.

The black heifer was going to be a good animal to breed from, but the red one? Well she was two- bob watch silly, and she was going to be trouble for Henry!