T-Bone Gets Justice

Yesterday's post ended with T-Bone escaping without his injections.  Herb put some feed in the round pen and left both the gates open overnight so the cattle would be able to go in and eat, thus getting the idea that the round pen is a nice place.

This afternoon we went down armed with feed, raw sweet potato peels, cooked sweet potato discards, injections, halters, and camera to attempt to raise our score to 4 out of 4.

There really wasn't much for us to do.  We used our cattle-panel-sweep-gate to cut down the size of the round pen.  T-Bone is afraid of Sara and a little afraid of us, so he took the route that was farthest from all of us . . . right down the chute toward the head gate!

When he got to the end, he reared up on his hind legs and tried to jump through the higher, wider part.  Of course, all that went through was his head.  When his shoulders hit the closed gate, he dropped down to all fours--right where we wanted him!  All we had to do was put a large fence post behind him to keep him from moving so much.

First, I put one of our great halters from Mini Cattle Supply on him so Herb could try to hold his head still.

Then I pulled out the shots and set to work.  T-Bone has no extra flesh at the base of his neck, so I had to pinch some up.  I got the first shot for free.  Then T-Bone realized that a pinch meant an "owie," and he began struggling every time I tried to get some skin.

Some of the second shot ran down his skin so I had to try a new stick.  More bucking and struggling, and I got a hit . . . on me!  Fortunately, I didn't really inject anything.  The same thing happened on the third shot, too.  I got some nice little veins (on me) because the blood was really pouring out.

I figure I'm dewormed and immunized to blackleg and brucellosis now!  I just hope T-Bone doesn't have mad cow disease!

Speaking of which, here's a tool to check and see if your cow has mad cow disease.  Moo-hoo-hoo!