Chapter 137: The Trouble Brought by the Deer Herd

  When the plane landed at Lewistown Airport, as soon as he got off the plane, Ju An felt the coldness of Montana, which was much lower than New York. After leaving the airport, he found that Er Zhuang had come to pick him up and threw his luggage into the back seat. Ju An sat in the passenger seat, and Er Zhuang started the F150, taking the two people towards the direction of the ranch.

  "By the way, has Thomas arranged for those Americans to go home for Thanksgiving?" Ju An asked.

  "Ah, it's all arranged. Once the cattle are rounded up tonight, they can head back. In two days' time, they'll be returning to the pasture. The people at the pasture need to round them up twice," Er Zhuang said.

  "That's when it'll be a bit more difficult to round up the cows tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, so let's wait for that group of Chilean cowboys from the east to finish rounding up their cows and then have them send a few people to help you guys round up the cows on this side."

  "An Ge, don't worry about it. The cows on our side are actually easier to manage than those Chilean cowboys. The grey cows are a given, but the strongest one is like a leader, and if you drive him, all the other cows will follow. Even the ordinary cows that were separated from the original group are more or less the same. Those grey bulls that were separated have a lot of energy and spend their days fighting with the original bulls, naturally splitting the original herd into several smaller groups. As long as we drive these cows, it's easy to gather them up. The only problem is that some of the ordinary male cows got injured over the past few days, but Thomas said they're basically useless now."

  "Hey, what's going on? Those bulls are useless now. If we raise them up and sell them later, they'll still make money and have more meat."

  The two men laughed and replied, "In the pasture, the main purpose of keeping male cattle is for breeding. Generally, young males are sent to the slaughterhouse at around two years old. Now, some of the original male cattle in the herd don't even have a chance to breed. The ones prepared for breeding fought with the gray bulls that were brought over and got hurt quite a bit by those bigger gray bulls. Thomas said it's better to just wait until you get back and discuss sending them to the slaughterhouse then."

  "Ah, that's not bad, but don't send it to the slaughterhouse, just raise and eat it yourself, save money on buying beef. By the way, the weather is getting colder and colder, I reckon it'll snow in less than a month. Has the pasture grass withered?"

  Two robust men said with a smile: "Other pastures have all dried up, our pasture grass looks like it's dry, but the roots are still growing slowly. Although they're not as tall as before and the leaves are wider and more yellow, they turn yellow soon after sprouting. The cows love to eat the dry grass on the ground, but don't really like to eat the dried hay we stored ourselves. Thomas has been putting the cows in a few wooded areas at night and feeding them hay, afraid that if they gnaw on the grass roots it will damage the pasture for next year. Taylor's three pastures have some parts similar to ours, two days ago they came over to chat with Thomas, saying that if their pasture can grow full next year, their lives will be much easier."

  He smiled wryly, thinking that he had deliberately let the pasture expand to avoid drawing attention to himself. If he were to fill all of Taylor's pastures, he would need to bring in at least a dozen neighboring pastures. Did his buddies have such connections? Not only would it be like this next year, but also considering his own pasture still had some unexpanded corners, how could he consider others? He asked, "So, should we have enough hay stored for this year? How much of the corn and oats do you think Thomas can consume?"

  "Half is enough, and there's too much corn and oats anyway. Thomas estimates that a third of these two will be sufficient, wait until you come back to tell you to sell some." Er Zhuang replied while looking at the road.

  "Ah, this is nothing. In Montana, the winter nights can drop to minus 10 or 20 degrees Celsius. It's not a big deal, just stay in the pasture for now and if it gets too cold, we'll feed the cows some hay to keep them warm."

  "Thomas said, by that time it will be snowing early, and once the snow falls, the temperature under the snow is much higher than above the snow. Who knows, the grass may turn green again and grow even faster." Er Zhuang replied with a smile.

  After hearing this, Ju An thought about it and felt that Old Cowboy's consideration was indeed reasonable. Since he didn't have to worry about the pasture and other things, Ju An felt more at ease and followed Er Zhuang to understand his family situation. The two of them chatted and chatted until they arrived at the ranch.

  When the two of them returned to the ranch, Er Zhuang stopped the car in the warehouse, saddled up his own horse, and went to attend to his own affairs.

  As soon as he pushed open the door and returned to the house, Ju An was warmly welcomed by his two comrades, Teddy and Wu Song. After a good reunion with Teddy and Wu Song, he took a look at the two small eagles on the gun cabinet, which had grown quite fast in just a few days. Their black feathers had increased significantly, and their white downy feathers were almost invisible. He put away his luggage and placed the bird's nest in the space, then went to the cloakroom to find a thick coat to wear. After putting on the coat, he went to the stable to saddle up Dou Grass, a horse, and rode it to patrol his own pasture. Along the way, he greeted the cowboys and told them that he was back. However, as soon as he rode Dou Grass for a distance, he felt cold, so he turned back to wear a windbreaker before continuing to patrol the pasture. After circling around, Ju An was very satisfied with the situation. He took a look at the pasture and found it just like Er Zhuang had said. At the edge of the pond, he saw that several leaves of the dwarf willow tree were green and shiny, full of spirit. The geese and ducks under Xi Si's care were still the same, fat-headed and big-eared, swimming in the water. They would be able to play their role fully when eating hot pot in winter.

  Just after lunch, Ju An was playing with Teddy and Wu Song on the sofa when Old Thomas pushed in the door, put his cowboy hat on the coffee table, and began to talk to Ju An about the Thanksgiving arrangements at the ranch. Apart from a few American cowboys nearby, Lawrence would also return to town to spend the holiday with his family, but only for one night. Since Thomas's old partner was no longer around, Wayne and Andrew were not married, so they all stayed behind to take care of the ranch.

  After finishing the Thanksgiving story, Thomas thought for a moment and brought up another thing: "An, there are thirty or forty deer that have come to the ranch near the foot of the mountain, just on the east side of the small river upstream. I guess they know the grass is good there, it's the grass from the pasture that has grown over, and it's close to a water source, looks like they're preparing to spend the winter there."

  "Let them be as long as they don't come into the pasture, who has the energy to care about deer? If there's a deer with ten or more antlers, I'd be interested." This guy didn't consider this situation at all. Deer also eat grass, and in winter when there's so little grass outside, even deer know to go to the edge of the pasture to forage.

  "Haha, you can forget about that, Taylor and the others have already gone to hunt a few large deer. This is what they told me, larger deer like moose and elk are too big to get through, but smaller ones like white-tailed deer can make it through. If there are too many of them, we need to chase them away, otherwise they'll compete with the cattle for grass. And if the wolf pack in the mountains finds out that there's a herd of deer here for the winter, who knows, they might even come over." Thomas added.

  "Ah! This guy is so good at raising cattle, he's even attracted wild deer. This might attract a pack of wolves too. The side effects are huge!" He patted his forehead and thought for a moment before saying: "If the wolf pack comes to eat the deer, that's fine. After all, they're just wild deer, what do they have to do with us?"

  Thomas shook his head and said, "Deer can run fast after all. After the snow falls, it will be even more difficult for wolf packs to hunt deer on snowy ground. I'm afraid that by nightfall, the wolves will shift their target to the young cattle in the pasture."

  It's really a troublesome thing. After thinking for a moment, he said: "Then what suggestions do you have? Let me hear them."

  "The key is that we now have too few cow dogs, so we can only take a few heads of cow dogs around the fence every few days, leave a scent, and then the wolf pack of seven or eight will know that there are cow dogs on the ranch. At that time, everyone will be vigilant at night when they sleep, and basically nothing will happen," Thomas said.

  "Alright, if we find the wolf pack near the pasture, let's do this: one comes in, one gets beaten; two come in, two get killed." Originally, he hadn't planned to raise so many cows from the start. According to his original plan, after more than a year, there would be 40 or 50 pastoral dogs on the ranch. Who knew that suddenly so many cows were added? Should he go back home to get some dogs? Forget it, let's just have the dogs serve as an alarm system; when the time comes, if we're quick-witted, that'll do. Do seven or eight wolves really need to make him this anxious?

  "Later in the afternoon, we'll also go buy some turkey and stuff. Tomorrow night, everyone at the ranch will have a small turkey to celebrate Thanksgiving. What else do people usually eat on Thanksgiving? You make a list and I'll go buy it in town this afternoon," said Thomas.

  "Thomas thought for a moment and said, "It's turkey, pumpkin pie, that kind of thing. When the time comes, you can ask the store clerk and they'll know. The main things are just two: turkey and ham. Oh, and when buying turkey, be sure to buy breadcrumbs, that's what goes inside the turkey's belly. Remember to also buy honey. Just get two larger turkeys, one we'll send to the east side for them to roast themselves, and we'll just roast one here."

  Yu An nodded and then the two of them chatted a bit more before Thomas got up to leave. Leaving Yu An listing items on paper, thinking about what he needed to buy in the afternoon.