There are many titles I could give to this post. For
instance:
Blood, Sweat, and Steers.
The 100 mph Creek Crossing Blues.
Am I red with white spots or am I white with red spots?
Redbeard conquers the Outback.
Hoarses yelling at Cows.
The Dnieper Derby 500.
Steer: 1 American: 0
Or simply (and my favorite)
MOOOOOOOOOOO. WALK UP WALK UP!!!! HEYHEYHEYHEY!!!
MOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! COME ON MOVE UP!!!!! MOOOOO!!!!!
For the past few days we have been working on the big muster in one of the far properties called Dnieper. One of the cool things about this place is that you can drive for an hour in one direction and STILL be on Don's property. All the cattle here are essentially free range (there are paddocks but they are the size of small cities) so mustering is when they round up a certain amount of them into trap yards, draft (sort them) , ear tag them, castrate some, clip horns, weigh and sell ones of a certain size. With between 8500 and 9000 head of cattle, you can imagine this is a big job. We were up before the sunrise and still working a few hours after sunset. I've mainly been helping with drafting the cattle which is sorting them into different areas depending on their age and sex. Calfs are obviously the young ones, wieners are male from 3-5 years (don't think that that means they are small), heifers are young females, steers are older males and Bulls are the BIG ones. Also cleanskins are any cattle that haven't been branded and don't have an ear tag. The yards have special openings on them that let the cattle in to get water but don't let them back out again so they just collect at mustering time. And in the yards there are several different gated areas and a long chute with several different gates along it allowing us to deal with the cattle one by one. If you can't picture it just go to this
It's that but five times bigger. The boss stands at the end of the chute and tells someone which area to let the cow into depending on which type it is. And several more guys work out at the other end making sure that there is a steady flow of cattle coming in to the chute and clearing up any blockages that happen quite frequently by running back and forth, sliding gates alone the chute to make sure that the cattle don't back out of it or just stand there. Very intense work. Especially since many of the cattle in the yards we were working in the other day were very pissy, because there wasn't any food in there for them and not all that much water. (It was supposed to be that way no one forgot to feed them) Normally the cattle always try to get away from you and you just have to yell at them to get them to go where you want but some of them gave us a real hard time. I don't know if anyone reading this has ever had the occasion to have an 1100 pound animal rush at them head on but i guarantee you won't ever forget it. We had gotten down to the last 15 or so steers in the main holding area and we were trying to get them into a smaller holding area just before the chute but these ones were EXTRA pissed off and stubborn and they really wanted to stay in the area they were in. Usually we take three or four people and form a sort of human net from behind them and just sort of lead them into the next area with few problems but these ones would either just turn around and run elsewhere instead. Finally we managed to get them into the next area and just as i was closing the gate they all decided to rush back out with me standing smack dab in the middle of the gate. Now, standing in the middle of the gate and yelling "WALK UP!!" is exactly how we were taught to get the cattle to turn around, and go where they should. But if a tiny shrieking monkey were standing in my doorway, preventing me from going into the kitchen, i would trample it without a second thought and get myself a sandwich. Which is why i promptly (AND NARROWLY) jumped out of the way when one of them came directly at me. It is very easy to think that cattle are stupid, and they probably are, but if they are capable of even one thought or feeling at a time, this one knew only hatred. Followed by the definite knowledge that it could flatten me without so much as slowing down. Afterwards we all jokingly decided that we need to keep a bottle of asprin in the ute incase of the heart attacks that you get when the cattle rush at you. At one point Tom fell over and was almost disemboweled by a steer with some wicked looking horns. We both agree that there is something about the way they are looking directly into your soul when they charge that horrifies you into moving. Anneleen, one of the girls working here is of course not afraid of charging cattle at all some how. The only one among us i might add.
As frightening as the cattle can be though i really enjoy working with them. The exhaustion you feel at the end of the day mixed with the concoction of things engrained in your shirt, pants and skin is an accomplished sort of exhaustion. You really don't feel like you wasted the whole day.
But by far the most fun thing i have done in a very very long time was getting the cattle from the main holding pen into the before mentioned ones connected to the chute. This is made fun because we Don does it with a landcruiser. AND I GOT TO SIT IN THE BACK. To say that our boss is a crazy driver would be an understatement. He goes at speeds through complete bush, that would earn him jail time on the highway. So when he told me to get in the back of his ute and hold on with both hands, having no idea what was about to happen i was naturally saying my prayers. I thought he was about to drive an hour back to the homestead with me on the back until i flew off. Then they opened the gates to the yards and he floored the truck into the yards straight at the mass of cattle horn ablazin'. What ensued was a gut wrenching series of high G doughnuts through the yards at 30 or 40 miles an hour with me holding on for dear life in the back with a giant smile (and my ipod out documenting the craziness.) Just imagine what a cattle dog does but with a toyota. These cattle were stubborn as well and i had to stand in the corner of the yards and yell as loud as i could to get them to go the right way. Apparently i can yell pretty loud because it seemed to help and Don i think was impressed with the volume of my "baritone" as he called it. Of course I've nearly blew out my voice doing it. But the roller-coaster ride through the yards was completely worth it.
After we drafted probably 150 or 200 steers we started loading them on to this big cattle truck that we have and shipping them to some other yards on the southernmost part of the property. But the truck got stalled and couldn't start again about a km from the next yards. Once again i was ordered into the back of the ute but this time was much more scenic and a lot more bumpy. It was just about sunset as we headed off at 130 or 40 kms an hour across giant wide open plains with awesome views of the Harts Range mountains on the other side of the neighbors property and through creeks and over hills. The only hard part was holding on when we hit bumpy patches and wiping the windshield wiper fluid out of our face when Don cleaned his dirty windows at with Tom and I in the back. There wasn't anything we could do for the truck that night so we left it there with the load of cattle in it and went home for a much needed dinner shower and sleep.
The next morning we got the truck started but when we off loaded the cattle we found that there was one that had been trampled in the middle of the night. It was still alive but it couldn't get up and out of the truck so we had to put a chain on it and tow it out by the neck. You might think that this would suffocate the cow but apparently they have really strong necks and can take a lot of pressure there. Not that it would have mattered if it had been hanged because Don quickly hunted it back down and shot it. Even though it was alive, it would have been badly injured and bruised and would be unfit to sell. So he shot it and gave it to the Aboriginal workers who were there to take home so i wasn't wasted.
We had another full day of drafting and driving around the property shutting the paddock gates, crushing trees growing in the middle of the roads and almost getting stuck in ditches and then drafting some more before one of the steers got flipped UPSIDE DOWN in the chute and was stuck. They finally got it flipped back over but then it was pretty much dark so that put an end to drafting for the day. Of course we still had one more load of cattle coming in from the other yards, so i was ordered to stay behind and make sure that they were loaded in. That means i was waiting alone, in the dark, with 400 noisy cattle 40 or 50 kms from anyone else hoping to God that the others didn't just decide to go home because it was dark. Luckily they eventually showed up (i didn't have a watch but it was a while) and we had to load in the cattle in the dark. I thought that standing in the way of the gate from cattle was scary in the day, and then i did it in the dark. i had to stand in front of an opening to make sure that they went into the right holding pen, and with only minimal light filtering in from the ute in the background. It was pretty intense having to block and direct huge animals running at me in the dark only two feet away but we got it done with out any major incidents. I definitely prefer to see what is about to kill me though i must say.
Today i had to run the shop and make some canvases, so its good that i have some rest for all the sore muscles i've got (just about all of them) and to let my voice rest and to get all of this down in writing. Hopefully i will be back up and helping with the rest of the mustering either tomorrow or sunday as we now have even less people to work with. (Anneleen left today for backpacking in New Zealand)
So I have definitely had a full few days of work and i think many more good stories to come. I will try to get pictures up but i don't think the movie i took of my ute-herding will work.
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