A Stubborn cow, sale of the lambs and loading cattle backwards...

We are weaning some of the calves at Wallace field. We need to keep them separate from their mothers for several days and a field apart wont cut it. The cows will jump the fences to get to their calves. There are two pens adjoining that we can put them in so that they can still see and talk to each other but the calves can’t suckle. We are doing two at once, a bit of company helps the animals. Anne however has decided to cause us problems. We get her calf into the pen but she is determined not to follow. It’s likely the calf is part weaned anyway but we still need her in the shed. It turns into one of those battles of will that involve a lot of cursing. Sooner or later we will win but a cow with a will can be stubborn for a long time. There are eight of us and several gates and hay hecks, it still takes us the best part of an hour. I look forward to picking up stones in the field where the oats have just been sown after this, stones don’t argue back.
I’ve never been to a sheep sale and today we are taking some of Willowford’s Suffolk cross store lambs to the mart at Longtown. They are loaded easily and we make it to the auction and drop them off. They are herded out into the pens, paperwork is signed and they disappear from view, bye lambs. We have a wander around the pens and look at some of the others for sale, a strange assortment of lambs and old ewe’s of allsorts of different breeds, shapes and sizes. Some look a little worse for their journey others look very good. There are some really odd pens, mixes of Wensleydales, Swaledales, Mules and Herdwick in one batch and what I can only assume was a Swaledale cross Herdwick came trotting past at one point. Our lambs are in tip top condition and hopefully will find a local home and fetch a good price. I’m quite taken with the Herdwick lambs who are frankly wonderful looking creatures. I’m reliably informed that if I thought our wild Swale’s had no respect for fences then I should see the disregard the Herdy’s have for any kind of barrier. They are truly hill sheep. I also spot some Zwartbles which despite having a name that sounds like a kids TV program are quite neat creatures with a white stripe down their faces. After a chin-wag with some of the other sellers we check out the actual auction where I stand extremely still and try to understand what the auctioneer is saying. I catch the odd price and the word lamb every now and then. It’s a massive and very efficient bustle; it’s almost incomprehensible to me but fascinating all the same.
The water meadows are getting a little bare, and somewhat swamp like so we have started giving the cattle there a bit of hay in the morning. It has to be a carefully planned task as a hungry Longhorn charging towards you is a formidable sight. They wouldn’t mean to hurt you but might do in their eagerness to get to the food. The best bet is to drive the quad and trailer into open space and jump into the trailer to dispense the hay. That way you are less likely to get accidentally poked when the cattle catch up to you.
We have kept the two cows and calves apart for three days at Wallace field, its time to release them; the ladies are going to Aglionby. We get the trailer in the open side of the pen and get the cows heading in the right direction. But it all goes a bit wrong when they both turn to face us, had enough of small spaces, not going sorry. What follows is the weirdest cattle loading I have ever seen, we get them in backwards. Cattle do not like to reverse and I would prefer to push the back end than the pointy end of one of our cows, but reverse up the ramp they do and finally they turn around and walk in. Job done, in an extremely strange fashion.