Long before horses came back into my life as an adult, there were cows. The cows are the ones that helped me realize that heard animals communicate in pictures with telepathy. This episode, highlights some of the stories that began the journey, that became The Horse -Human Connection!
For more information on names or materials referenced, or to contact Ishe- please email. iabel.hhc@gmail.com
Long before horses came back into my life as an adult, there were cows. The cows are the ones that helped me realize that heard animals communicate in pictures with telepathy. This episode, highlights some of the stories that began the journey, that became The Horse -Human Connection!
For more information on names or materials referenced, or to contact Ishe- please email. iabel.hhc@gmail.com
This is the Horse Human Connection, a captivating podcast where we extend into the world of equine assisted learning, horse training. and gentleness in working with these magnificent creatures. Captivating stories from the leading professionals and ordinary people alike unravel novel ideas in being with horses. The Horse Human Connection is an idea, a place, and a voice. The idea is to support the quiet revolution and recognize the intelligence and true nature of the horse. The place is a destination farm near the Umpqua Forest and River that slows down visitors and patrons enough to experience the shift. The Voice is this podcast. Welcome to today's episode.
Samson Q2U Microphone-4:Welcome to the horse human connection podcast. This next episode is about cows, not horses. But before I realized what horses were all about. I realized it because I realized about the cows. And having this herd of mixed cows that later were bred with black Angus bulls. To produce a black Angus herd was one of the most incredible experiences of my life. It happened over about a six year period. And the cows taught me what was to come with the horses. So I hope you will enjoy this.
MacBook Air Microphone:I lived on a ranch mostly by myself. It was 206 acres. In about the middle of Southern Oregon. Somehow I decided to raise black Angus cattle kind of on purpose and kind of by accident. When you have a ranch with that much grass, something's got to eat it. Could be the deer and the elk, but it made sense to get some cows. So I ended up buying some cows from a neighbor out there and he gave me a piece of advice. He said, talk to your cows when you feed them, walk amongst them and talk to them. So they know your voice so you can call them in. That was the beginning. That was the best advice I could have gotten from the old doctor liquidating the herd of 16 mixed cattle. So I'd had a cower too before with my ex-husband on the 10 acres that we'd had. And now I had 16 cows on 206 acres, and there was plenty of feed. I wasn't going to have to buy any feed. There was plenty of water. And as I look back on it, the way I describe it, as I became a Taoist cattle rancher. Now I'd had horses before, but I'd never done any roping or, or any cowboy things that go with cattle. And I didn't have any horses currently. So my method of. getting in these cows to cooperate with me was largely my voice in a bucket of grain. And I got pretty good with the voice and I, I took the doctor's advice and when I did feed them, I walked among them. I tried to touch them black Angus cattle. Don't really like to be touched. So they're not warm, fuzzy. Going to be your friend kind of animals. Because I know you're going to eat them one day. But I did walk among them and I did get to know them. And. I would lay down when there were calves so that they wouldn't be afraid and they'd come investigate me. And sometimes they'd lick my long sleeve black or sniff about my legs and my feet. And they were really a joy to me. Cows have a very. Distinct social order. They have a lead cow who's in charge. And they have conversations with each other. And I am 100% convinced that they communicate with pictures in their minds. And there are a couple of doctors. Who study herd animals who agree with me? But I realized this long before I read what those doctors. Had to say. So, what are the cows stories is I had some help. Trying to rope and band and vaccinate some of the calves. I had teenagers at the time boys and they had friends and so they got together and one of them knew how to rope and somehow, or another, we got these cattle on the ground and got the little machine with the band and, and the vaccines. And I was able to do that part. We had the calves caught up in about a hundred by a hundred foot fenced pen. And the mamas were on the outside. And one of the mamas was a first time mom. And her calf was in there and she was throwing a fit. Her calf got separated when we let the others loose and it was stuck in there by itself. And it took some time to get that calf out of there.
Samson Q2U Microphone-2:I used a technique that I learned from reading and watching. A horse trainer named Monty Roberts. He's the one that's credited with the language of Equis. And he learned that by watching wild Mustangs in Nevada. Oh, When he was a very young man. He learned a lot about horse behavior.
MacBook Air Microphone:Licking and chewing is part of what Monte Roberts uses to. Train animals. It's a sign he looks for. So I use this looking and chewing. Imitating an animal. Who is a Grazer by looking at shoeing and moving my jaw side to side instead of up and down. And I must've looked quite crazy doing it. But the minute I started doing this, not looking at the little calf. I'm using my body language to not square off to him, but my shoulders to the side. And looking and licking and looking down. When I did this, that calf trusted me suddenly. I was not a predator. I was another herd animal and he trusted me and I was able to get him out the gate and reunited with the mom. Meanwhile on the outside of the fence. This mama, this new mom has been having this very loud conversation with the lead cow. And in my imagination, the conversation was something like this. How could you possibly let that happen to our babies? Let them by the humans, without us there to protect them. I will never trust you again. And I think that this is the conversation that they had and I. You know, give me some leeway here with imagination because. Although I may be a little clairvoyant at times. I don't know for sure that that's what I was reading, but here's what happened afterwards to make me think that. That mama did not let that calf out of her sight, away from her side until it was over a year old. I know this because I would follow the cows around sometimes because I did daily meditations with them in their wanderings. I know that the hierarchy of the herd and the social structure included a babysitter like. Th this is what most, most cattle will do. Is they'll pick a babysitter to stay an adult cow, to stay with the babies while the mamas can, can make a wider circle and expand out a little bit to get better grass and to graze while the babies are all in one place. Well, with my particular herd, I had one, it was a very mixed herd to begin with. And there was one cow with horns. And yeah, if you don't know anything about cattle, a lot of people think that bulls or mail cattle are the only ones with horns, but actually it's a breed thing. And so within a breed, both the males and females will have horns and less genetically they don't. And that's called polled in that gets real complicated. But anyways, the cow with the horns is the one. That was in charge of the babysitting. When they were like zero to a month old when they were most vulnerable, the lead cow put the. The cow best equipped to protect the babies with the horns to be the babysitter. And and then it would switch off as I got older. So. That's how I know. That this new mama. Was having that type of conversation with the lead cow because she never allowed her calf to go with the babysit group. She took that calf, With her all the time. And the interesting thing about calves is when they are told to sit still. To stay in one place. They listen so much better than at least my human children did. You stay there and they stay. And that was demonstrated in another one of my cows stories, where I had this neighbor who used to help me run them through his shoot. He had one of those fancy round shoots designed by Temple Grandin. And you know what the blind. Shoot at the very end in the circle. And if you don't know about Temple Grandin and cattle, it's a fascinating story. She's one of the doctors that talks about herd animals. Communicating in pictures. Anyway. There's a great movie about her as, as a side note there, but this other cow story. So we were running the mamas through we managed to get half of them through the gate on the side of the cattle guard. And somehow the baby's turned around and we lost him and we eventually got the rest of the herd through. Without the babies. So the babies were told to stay upon this little Knoll, not too far from the cattle guard. And the rest of the cattle were sent over to the neighbors, which I moved them with. Whoops. And yell ups and actually kind of this belly dance call that I think comes from maybe Morocco, where you. I don't even know what it's called, but it's like, ah, And that's the noise that I would use to move my cattle, to scare bears and coyotes away and whatever else I needed to do that was loud on this 200 acre ranch. So, yeah, I was probably known as the crazy yodeling cow lady out there by myself, but I learned a lot. And I feel like what I learned was important. And it's important enough to be telling you a story about it. Anyhow. So the cattle got run through the shoot. Designed by temple Grandin and operated by my nice neighbor. and I came back first. Without the cows, we left them over there for some reason, for a little while I came back. With the babies. Oh, I know I had a helper and they were bringing, the cattle back. So I went back to find the babies and I sat with, I call them babies, the calves. I sat with the calves on this Knoll. They didn't let me get real close. Like I said, black Angus cattle are not real touchy, feely critters. But I sat with them. And they got to know me and I chewed sideways and made a point of not looking them in the eye. And pretty soon the other cattle came back directly to their calves where they had left them, where they knew they would be because when a mama cow tells her baby to stay, it does. And when they found me there, they stopped. They stopped in their tracks and they looked at me and they looked at the calves. And I will tell you from that moment on, I was in, I was part of that herd. I was an honorary member. Have a black Angus cattle herd. That led to some other things. There was another incident where There was a baby calf who was wedged in this drainage canal to the Creek. The property had some Hills. And on a south slope, there were several places where there were Springs along the south slope and they would come down and they would form canals as they got closer to the Creek. And this particular little canal was maybe Maybe 20 inches wide. And about three feet deep, two and a half, three foot deep. And it was surrounded by that bunch grass that grows in wetlands. It's actually a reed, I think. Anyway, it can get really thick. And this calf was stuck and we were up on the hill building something and somebody come down a couple of times for tools and materials and kept telling me, oh, there's a calf down there. I heard it balling, but I just thought it couldn't find it small. And I wasn't paying a lot of attention. Finally, she went down there. She said, you know, I think. I think something's wrong. And she described the situation to me. She said, there's this mama cow and a and a bull. So the bull was like he was like a little more than a yearling and he had been the offspring of that particular cow that was waiting there with the calf. And it was, that was the mom of the calf, as well as the calf was wedged. In this area so that its head was barely ground level. And I came upon them. And the rest of the herd had moved off and it was just the mom and the brother that were there. And I came upon them and I was like, oh, what am I gonna, how am I going to get this calf out? You know, I looked at the situation and. I had a Bobcat and I thought, why come over here with the Bobcat and dig it out? But that would just terrify the poor creature. So I investigated a little bit more carefully. And I was able to get in there on my hands and knees and move some of the brash and touch the calf. As soon as I touched the calf. The mother and brother walked off to join the herd. It was as if they were saying she's got this. we got her attention. She'll handle it. We trust her. We can go now. And that's what they did. They went off and joined the herd and left me to deal with the problem. Well, luckily. The wedge was mostly created by this bunch grass. And so by pulling the grass back, And kind of giving the calf a little bit of a motivation to move forward. He was able to move forward and then jump out on his own. But it was quite an interesting experience to be. I called upon to help. And trusted to that degree. As soon as I made contact with the calf. There's another story that comes to mind. I didn't always live at the ranch when the cattle were there. Sometimes I would visit once a month with grain and the grain was mostly to say, hello. It's not like they needed the food. And one bag split between anywhere between 16 and at one point 34 head of cattle is what I had. You know, isn't really a supplemental feed. It's a treat. But it was enough that they knew when they heard my car to come running from wherever they were on the 200 acres. And that's the kind of cows I had. So this one day I had arrived and I was going to do some hiking and I set up off the hill where the trail was and the mama cow, the lead cow. Came after me balling. Oh, she was making such a fuss and this is not normal. Behavior was just her. It wasn't anybody else. And she got in front of me a couple of times as if to block my way up there. And when I kept kind of going around her and make her way up the hill, she followed me for a while. Balling the whole time. Finally, she gave up. And went back. So my destination was a Knoll at the top of the property with a lot of Oak trees. And it's quite steep at the top. When I. Got almost to the top. Something made me stop. I heard something wrestling in the bushes and I thought it was deer. I thought they were just some deer up there. So I stopped and approached more cautiously, more slowly, more quietly. And and then I saw what was happening. One of the cows was giving birth up there. And the mama cow had been asking me to leave them alone. So I did that as soon as I saw what was happening, I turned and I went back down. But if anybody thinks that cows don't communicate, if cows don't have an advanced social structure, if cows don't know. What's in your mind and your heart, I'm telling you they're wrong. And I know this is really upsetting. For cattle ranchers. People don't want to think this. They don't want to know this. We don't want to think that our food. Has that kind of consciousness. But it does. It certainly does. In fact, there was a moment with this neighbor. Where he was helping me with the cows and he had some helpers and we had all my cows in a big pen. That had the ability to be split into two. Cause that's helpful for that sort of thing. And his helpers were in there, like kind of prodding my cattle with electric cattle prods. And I was like, what are you doing stops? Do you don't need to do that? Stop that. What are you trying to do here? And he said, well, what do you want to do? And I said, well, let's separate them and run the moms through first. So I jokingly, like this was about midway through some of the Cal stories that I just told. So I didn't feel like. My perceptions about my relationship with the cows was really cemented. But it was good enough. And I did this as a joke. At first, but I got up there. And I did my my thing to get their attention, which was to move like a cow. I did that a lot. I did a lot of imitating animals, and so I imitated this moon. Got their attention. They all stopped was when you put them in a pen, they do two things. They mill in circles. Which is what temple Grandin's like circle thing is based on. And they make a lot of noise cause they don't know what's happening and why they're caught. So when I got up on this fence and I mood. They all stopped and looked at me. And that was probably enough to make the neighbor and his hands. Drop their jaws. The thing I did next. And again, I say I was half joking when I did it. I didn't expect it to happen. I said mama's over here and baby's over there and motioned to the two opposite ends of this rectangular pen. And they did it. And these men looked at me like I was a witch and they started calling me the cow whisper. The fact that. I had exposed cattle to be intelligent. Loving interactive creatures. Was probably too much for their world of raising them for
Samson Q2U Microphone-3:Come to the horse human connection. This podcast is mostly about horses. So though it's about asking questions and answering questions, and I have to include the stories about the cows because before there were horses, there were cows. And that's where my awareness of herd animals began. So onward with the cows stories.
MacBook Air Microphone-4:So this podcast is about. Horses. And more than horses, but it.
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MacBook Air Microphone-2:When our belief systems become challenged.
MacBook Air Microphone-1:Especially the belief systems that drive our behavior or our financial livelihood.. Either. We have to make a shift. We have to acknowledge new truths. Or. We just can't hear it. And I think what happened is they had so much invested. They just couldn't hear it. And so eventually I became the bad guy. The messenger.