Progress and Patience...

Well, already our Belties have (apparently) gained a small following. As we were grocery shopping yesterday we had a few people stop us to ask about them and we also were met with questions at church!

On Friday I went to water the cows because I knew their water was low... well, it was a little lower than I thought and they were having trouble reaching it. As soon as I showed up, so did they! They were close... closer than they've ever been! RIGHT on the other side of the fence. It took a lot of self-control to not try to pet them, but I knew I still needed to bide my time on that.

Saturday when my sister was here to see the PBR with us, the cows wanted little to do with us and kept a "safe" distance.

But yesterday... ah-ha! We had a breakthrough! We knew that these cattle had been raised grass-fed and weren't familiar with grain. We've been trying to bribe them with sweet feed, which obviously isn't working out so well. So Kevin suggested we try giving them some of our good second cutting hay in the feed trough. I was a little skeptical, but it was snowing like crazy, we had to go get hay anyway, and I was having fun spending time in the snow with my husband, so I agreed we should try it.

We showed up at the field with an armload of second cutting hay and 1104 immediately trotted for the trough. He was interested!!

The other three cattle were at the other end of the field, but their ears perked right up when they saw 1104 headed for us and the trough. It didn't take long before two more had joined him.

(As you can see, 1001 is pretty happy with his treat...)

They didn't like for us to be RIGHT beside them, so we backed up about 10 feet and they were satisfied with that distance.

While everyone else was excited about their hay and didn't mind us being there too much, 1102 is pretty wary of us still, and he decided he wasn't quite sure about this ploy on the humans' part, so you can see his progress in the pictures below... pretty comical. He wanted that hay so badly but just wasn't sure if we were safe...








"I don't really know about this..."












"But I really want some of that hay..."

"Okay...I got a little.. this is good... but those people are still standing there..."











"Alright...I'm not going to miss out just because of the people...I guess I'll just keep an eye on them and eat up!"








Anyway, we were pretty excited! It seems that after having been a week since we dumped them off the "tin can," as Kevin calls the trailer, they're finally settling in to their surroundings and to us!

(After 1102 finally settled in... that's the look of contentment we were hoping to see!)

(You can see the crazy March 24 snow in this one! We were getting pelted out there!)

The lesson Kevin says we learned yesterday is: When trying to befriend grass fed cattle, don't try to bribe them with grain they've never seen before! Huh! True! Wish we'd have thought of that about 5 days ago... Oh well! Just one of the adventurous lessons we're learning as we go!