A preamble to this post:
It’s the tired end of the day. We managed animal nutrition, feeding systems, pasture rotation and bovine eye care today! Much of our knowledge about just *how* to do these things comes from our intense research, and also common sense. I treat myself often with herbal or other alternative modalities, and so we can transfer alot of this knowledge, simple things, across to animal care. Aloe Vera assists healing. We use it for cuts on Maybe, and for teat care. Garlic is a great vermicide. We worm the dogs with this, and will do so with the cattle. But we have a great arsenal of books (thanks Michael and Amazon!) which we rely on every day and we put together our own systems taking what we need from all these sources. We love the book “The Healthy House Cow” written some 20 years ago by Marja Fitzgerald who resided in this region. She’s very cool, plays guitar and sings to her cows, stuff like that! She had a diagram of a great little bucket feeding system just made out of wire rings and buckets for calves, so we set one up, and while, as Charlene says, this wasn’t a raging success this afternoon, at the tired end of the day, in a new paddock, I’m convinced the calfeteria will be well patronised as soon as they understand that *this is where the food is guys!* I understand Charlene’s flagging enthusiasm right now, but i also feel happy about our work today…

Soooooooooo… to follow on from some themes in Charlene’s post, not so much about the order aspect (which clearly, for those of you who know me, is integral to my continued survival!), but about modes of communication, the sensitive treatment and understanding of animals and about sensory *fields* i guess. About energies.

Today we were reading in our new favorite book Small Scale Livestock Farming about the emotions and senses of the beast, particularly about working with your animal to communicate what you need from it. The book refers to the “point of balance”, and one can use this, in addition to 2 specific “zones”, the flight zone and the pressure zone, to manipulate/communicate/choreograph the movements of a single or a group of cows. One of the things we have to do alot of is working just one animal, moving mum away from her babies, getting the cattle into a different paddock, things like that. The point of balance is at her shoulder. stand just forward of this point and the animal will move backward, stand behind this point and the animal will move forward. In addition to this, stand too close to the animal, interfere with its personal space, and you will activate the flight zone, and have no hope of working with the animal in a harmonious way. Move further away, but not too far, and you begin to “guide” in a kind of energetic way, the animal, and sometimes you can just wander along together if it all meshes right. I’m not sure you can learn this from a book, though it is clearly theorised. I think it’s a very “felt” thing, and you know when you’ve “got it”. One just hovers along the edge of these zones and quietly becomes part of the animals comfortable space.

This doesn’t mean that we don’t have plenty of times when we are frustrated in our attempts tomove a cow, or move *with* a cow to a desired location. This frustrated energy makes everything get pretty messy in terms of choreography and we will usually end up with a ballet of cattle in full flight kicking up their heels and tossing their heads scattered all over the paddock. Then we start again.

Anyway, all of this ruminating reminded me of the documentary of Temple Grandin ( link to part 1 of the documentary Woman Who Thinks Like a Cow), who suffered autism, and is a magical cow whisperer. This documentary, especially the parts about animal handling, and her ability to understand the behavior of cows through feeling/thinking(?) more like a cow than exhibiting or expressing or even understanding human emotions and motivations (an aspect of her autism) was very fascinating to me, and somewhat resonant… I find myself thinking about this documentary quite often. There’s this great image of her lying down in the dirt with a huge herd of cows gathered around all looking down at her in fear/curiosity/fear…

She also has a good look going on for a cowgirl… those shirts and neckercheifs are really somethin’

I always used to be afraid of cows, but now I just find them great fascinating ruminants, often graceful, and i feel quite comfortable with them, though i still sometimes don’t trust Hinimoa’s horns… a little respect for intstruments that pierce is a good thing… *smile*

Ok, on that note, goodnight Vxx