One person moves 1,425 cattle across rough ground using a lead animal and dogs to keep the herd moving. The key is patience and letting them find their own momentum. Fifty stragglers got left behind, which the speaker calls acceptable.
Just wanted to show a little video of what's been going on, what I've been describing to you, Bob. See over there, we got the cows. They're all bedded down up here on this ridgetop. Pretty, pretty big bunch, fairly tight. So I've had, I don't know, about 200 cows over here off on the edge a little bit. I've just been starting them to moving. I don't know, maybe I can zoom in on it. Movement down there is already starting. What I've discovered is if I decide I need to control everything and run over there, try and make it happen, then everything up here falls apart. But if I keep this lead going, Everything, I mean everything, will pick up and follow. So a little patience, a little bit of work smarter, not harder. Yeah, there's the very end over there. They're picking up. They're coming. So that's what I've had going on. Yeah, we are— we got some good movement coming. So there you go, that's it. Okay, so here's my lead going. Like I said, about 200 cows or so that I just pulled off the edge and got pointed. And I'll zoom in on the bunch up here where they've been bedded. And I'm not sure if you can see it very well, but they are coming. I've got their attention, and I'm 100% confident that everything is going to follow if I just stick with these and keep the movement going. Okay, here we are again. We got the lead. And, uh, we got a vein coming down right there, down this draw. You can see up there we got another vein gonna start pouring down this direction soon enough, soon as they catch the— Nobody up there, no cake wagons. We just got cows pouring down to follow the Here we are at the next step. We're gonna cross this, this creek bed. Lead kind of got bossed up here a little bit. That's them. It's pouring down. Still coming. So now we've got a lot of energy in the herd, so I'm not having to be as attentive to the lead. The dogs kind of— they're kind of working the side, keeping the energy going. And then we got a lot of free-flowing movement coming up the Backside. It's quite a ways in the distance. There's still a fair— fairly good-sized jag up on that far ridge behind the TV tower there, but they are moving. They're coming along. And formerly I would have been out there really focusing on that bunch of cattle, feeling like they maybe needed tuned up, but mostly they need left alone to do the right thing because the more I leave them alone, the better they get. So this is what we got. This is how it looks. So now we've got a lot of energy in the herd, so I'm not having to be as attentive to the lead. The dogs kind of— they're kind of working the side, keeping the energy going. And then we got a lot of free-flowing movement coming Coming up this backside. It's quite a ways in the distance. There's still a fair— fairly good-sized jag up on that far ridge behind the TV tower there, but they are moving. They're coming along. And formerly I would have been out there really focusing on that bunch of cattle, feeling like they maybe needed tuned up, but mostly they need left alone to do the right thing because the more I leave them alone, the better they get. So this is what we got. This is how it looks. Okay, I weakened. I had to come back and get these last 50. They just were not paying attention. They'd have come. I mean, there's the, there's the movement right there in front of them. You know, it's— I think they would have come. It's just I didn't want to wait the 6 hours that it would have taken to get their attention. Anyway, so I loped back and got them, but I think 50 out of 1,425 isn't too bad odds. And here we are taking them across the county road through a couple of gates.
