We had this happen once.
An estrange cow about 900 lbs literally come running through our pasture. With out breaking stride West to East she busted through both property line fences plus another neighbors fence who raises quarter horses. In tow followed our two bulls, one was an old Maine bull and the other was a yearling we were planning on replacing the Old Maine bull with.
At about dark we located the Old Maine bull about a half a mile away, however on another ridge and in a field planted with Christmas trees and no way to corral him :'( We could not find a trace of the crazy cow and the yearling bull. In the morning we were getting ready to load up some corral panels to try to use to catch the Old Bull when we noticed he was back in our pasture already (thumbsup) We got double lucky there for he did not damage any of the Christmas trees during his nights layover.
We spent the rest of the morning looking for the Yearling but had no luck. I spent most of the afternoon “
days work lost” calling everybody I could think of that had cattle in our area again with no luck. That night over twenty-four hours after this cow made her jaunt through our pasture I get a call from a farmer who has an extra cow and bull locked up in old shack. Of course it was my wayward bull and his new love interest. The farmer suggested I get THEM ASAP for he didn’t think the old shack would hold them very long. I told him I didn’t want the cow and he told me he didn’t want her on his place either and that he would greatly appreciate the gesture
if I just came and got both of them. So we made the 8+ mile trip to pick the two up first thing in the morning.
After we got them home we placed them in a secluded barn stall and called the local sheriff and asked them what we should do. We were told to notify any adjacent property owners who run cattle and to run a add in the local paper for two weeks claiming we had her and after two weeks if nobody claimed her we could do with her what we wished. Well we got a call after the ads second day run and a man wanted to claim her. When I started disCUSSing the damage she had caused and reimbursement for my troubles the man quickly decided it wasn’t his cow. The yearling bull had adopted this new cows attitude and it was clear for safety reasons we were not going to be able to keep either of them. So we went ahead and took the pair to the sale barn after the fourth day. We continued the ad for the full two weeks but never received another call. So it is safe to say the one guy that did call was probably the real owner and he just didn’t want to deal with the liability.
p.s. She was so gaunt and rung out looking she only brought around $350.00 at the sale barn and our yearling bull did not even bring close to what we had in him :-\
