From Point A to Point B

Reader Contribution by Sue Dick
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So there’s been a lot of traffic to and from the loading corral at our farm. In my last post I mentioned how we’ve had to cull very severely due to drought and this past week saw the last of the intended cattle go, leaving us with just half our original herd. 

Now loading is something I dread. I’ve been many places (bigger operations where you can see they’ve put in lots of thought and money) where loading animals is a snap and a breeze. Now, we’ve put lots of thought into ours, but next to no money. It’s certainly more of a headache to load, but it’s doable, and all we use are 4 panels.

I guess I should throw in a caveat here and say, our system works because we use good animal handling principles, we remain calm and quiet, and ultimately, our cattle are very sweet and generally good tempered. As well, because they are so small, they pose little threat to us physically. Not that they couldn’t hurt us if they wanted to. They do weigh 500-600lbs, they do have horns, they could still kill us if they had a mind to but that’s just it, working with Dexter cattle is like working with sheep who respect that you’re bigger and stronger; the Dexters think the same thing. If we had 1 ton continental breeds, I would NEVER try to load the way we do.

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