In this monologue the speaker recounts his experience handling a small, reluctant group of cattle over two days. On day 3 he used a drone and a mile‑and‑a‑half ride to block the animals, but the drone ran out of battery, forcing him to manually herd them. By day 4 the cattle were still unsettled; the speaker attempted to merge them with the main herd too soon, causing the group to split into two separate herds. He reflects that he should have spent additional days acclimating the animals before mixing them, emphasizing the importance of reading cattle attitudes, using blocking techniques, and timing herd integration to prevent fragmentation.
Chapters
If you've seen the video, you'll recognize this from day 4. The small group didn't want to go in and join the rest of the cattle. I had managed to block them up that morning and get them to go to the same water, but this right here is from day 3. As you can see, they're sitting out here kind of by themselves, scattered out, and I ride on down to get them to get together, and then they go running off, and the drone ran out of battery and had to go back. But I wound up going out about a mile and a half from here to get them blocked, brought them back, blocked them again. And then on day 4, they blocked up a little easier, and I shouldn't have blocked them up and put them to the herd at that time. I should have spent another couple days playing around with them before putting them into the herd, which would have prevented them from just leaving to go back to where they were comfortable at. They were not comfortable being around the other cattle because they still weren't quite settled down enough. As you can see here, I rode past them in a way to make them go join up with the other cattle rather than trying to drive them, and then rode off to the side to let them join up. And they're just running off, and you'll see me manage to stop them once or twice and slow them down. But basically, these cattle were still pretty much wild, and when they left, the cattle that they went by decided to just pick up and join with them and stayed with them. And that is why we wound up with 2 herds instead of one. You really have to pay attention to the attitudes of your cattle before you mix them in on a deal like this. But still, it shows just how much that you can change the behavior of the cattle in a short amount of time.
