Thurs., Aug. 7, 1975 The Birmingham News
Alabama Amblings
Cattle on loose do present problems
BY LIB BIRD News Correspondent
FORKLAND - Coming in at 1:30 a.m. and finding yourself locked out by a teenaged son... sounds like a big party night doesn't it?
But instead it's just one of those unhappy nights in the life of a farmer's wife when the cattle have been on the highway. The phone rang at 10:30 on Sunday night with the caller awakening us with the bad news.
There used to be the day when the children would go help rather than mother. However, the last one at home is too busy courting to be in that early.
Getting the cows off the road wasn't the time consuming thing. Riding along the fence looking for a hole, Jim forgot to look at the ground and soon the truck was stuck.
AFTER WALKING A mile and a half, Jim came back with a tractor to pull the truck out.
Luckily he left his wife in the truck or she possibly would have slipped on wet grass again and wound up with another broken leg.
While fixing the holes in the fence, the cattleman murmured about how nobody knew how much trouble there was to raising cows.
This time the Birds were fortunate that the cattle got out on a county road rather than on a busy highway where one could have been hit.
The most coincidental killing of a cow on the highway was the night the eldest Bird son came home to supper on his birthday. He ran into one of the cows which had wandered onto the highway.
So he and the other guests had to spend a couple of hours getting the animal ready for the cooler.
Spring is favorite time
COWS GET ON THE highway so much more in early spring when the roadside is lined with luscious crimson clover. The pasture inside the fence doesn't get a chance to grow as tempting because the cattle keep it eaten down.
That was about the time Dusty hit his cow and others were also getting out on Highway 80 in Demopolis. In fact a dinner for the Eutaw 23 Circle men's club was slowed down as the cooks had to answer the phone about 30 times in a half hour regarding those cattle.
A good many years ago, the Birds received a call about a cow being hit on that same section busy highway in Demopolis. They were at a party in Gallion when the message was received. By the time they viewed the cow, someone had obliged themselves of a choice hind quarter.
Highway wanderings are not the only problems with the cattle. They seem to love to break a weak spot in the fence to get into a neighbor's soybean field. They are bad to trample the crop, and the farmer can't be sure how much they have eaten.
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