{"id":11241,"date":"2015-12-23T09:10:54","date_gmt":"2015-12-23T09:10:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.msdn.microsoft.com\/bharry\/2015\/12\/23\/is-your-stomach-bigger-than-your-eyes\/"},"modified":"2024-06-28T10:19:16","modified_gmt":"2024-06-28T17:19:16","slug":"is-your-stomach-bigger-than-your-eyes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/is-your-stomach-bigger-than-your-eyes\/","title":{"rendered":"Is your stomach bigger than your eyes?"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the past several months, friends have been bugging me to write another farm post \u2013 it\u2019s been quite a while.\u00a0 The problem is that I haven\u2019t been able to think of anything terribly interesting.\u00a0 Most farm work does make for a good blog post \u2013 chores, feeding, cutting hay, repairing fences, \u2026\u00a0 Just not great content for an interesting post.<\/p>\n

Well today I had an experience that I thought was worth sharing.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s Wed Dec 23rd and I\u2019m off work.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been doing a lot of farm work but, in the last couple of days, it has been raining like crazy \u2013 over 4 inches, I think.\u00a0 My fields are like huge grassy ponds and there\u2019s just not a lot I can get done so I\u2019ve been kind of doing the minimum and getting some inside work done.<\/p>\n

Any way, it was time for me to move the cows to a new field \u2013 something we have to do every day or two this time of year.\u00a0 I opened the gates and the majority of cows came running through (it\u2019s a lot so you can\u2019t really count them).\u00a0 I saw two calves had gone through the fence into an adjacent field and were \u201cstuck\u201d.\u00a0 So, after I moved the big group, I opened the gate for them and had to chase them around (calves are too dumb to find gates on their own \"Image<\/a>).\u00a0 As I was chasing them around, the big group of cows were mooing a lot \u2013 happy to be in a new field, and I heard a single moo from the other direction.\u00a0 There are woods over that way so I was inclined to think it was just echo off the trees but it didn\u2019t sound quite right.<\/p>\n

So, after getting the two wayward calves settled, I went to investigate.\u00a0 What I found was one of our 6 month old calves (probably ~500lbs) caught between two trees.<\/p>\n

\"Image<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Image<\/a><\/p>\n

As it turns out calves have a simple algorithm for navigation \u2013 If my head fits through it, I can go.\u00a0 The problem is that their shoulders are wider than their head and their hips are even wider yet.\u00a0 In fact, this behavior is one we take advantage of.\u00a0 We catch cows in a \u201chead gate\u201d when we need to work with them.\u00a0 The cow walks down a chute, sees a gap in the head gate and tries to go through it.\u00a0 The edges of the gate catch their shoulders and close, locking the cow in.<\/p>\n

Believe it or not, this isn\u2019t the first time I\u2019ve had cows get stuck (never between two trees before, but it\u2019s not an unheard of problem around our working facilities).<\/p>\n

So, off I had to tromp in the pouring rain up to the barn to fetch my chain saw so that I could cut one of the trees down and release the cow.\u00a0 As you might imagine, cows aren\u2019t terribly happy about someone cutting with a chain saw right next to them.\u00a0 They get quite agitated and I had to be careful not to get kicked, cut the calf\u2019s leg or drop the tree on the calf.\u00a0 In the end, everything worked out and the calf was freed and rejoined the herd.\u00a0 I dragged my soggy, dirty self back to the house to take a shower so I can go finish my Christmas shopping \"Image<\/a>\u00a0 Better late than never, I suppose.<\/p>\n

I hope you vicariously enjoy the silliness that comes along with taking care of a bunch of animals.\u00a0 Have a great holiday and a happy new year!<\/p>\n

Brian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the past several months, friends have been bugging me to write another farm post \u2013 it\u2019s been quite a while.\u00a0 The problem is that I haven\u2019t been able to think of anything terribly interesting.\u00a0 Most farm work does make for a good blog post \u2013 chores, feeding, cutting hay, repairing fences, \u2026\u00a0 Just not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":244,"featured_media":14617,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[6],"class_list":["post-11241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-personal"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"

For the past several months, friends have been bugging me to write another farm post \u2013 it\u2019s been quite a while.\u00a0 The problem is that I haven\u2019t been able to think of anything terribly interesting.\u00a0 Most farm work does make for a good blog post \u2013 chores, feeding, cutting hay, repairing fences, \u2026\u00a0 Just not […]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/244"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11241"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11241\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}