We’re lucky to have amazing friends, like Simon and Natalie from Busy Men Cattle Yard Hire, who had booked a site at the Murrumbateman Field Days and invited us to join them with some cattle.  Normally it’s a massive undertaking to take all your own yards and ramps along with you, but the portable yards from Busy Men made this job a lot easier.

The MFDs are one of the biggest events in our local area, with some 30,000 people passing through the gates over the three days.  Being not far from the outskirts of Canberra, the event attracts a lot of people coming for a day in the country, so we answered a LOT of quite amusing questions (are they born with horns?   [ouch, no] ).  We took along a young CCC Elizabeth H, with her first calf at foot.  Elizabeth was as usual, beautifully behaved, but was unfortunately at the end of a scruffy winter coat, and stressed a little with her new calf at foot so she didn’t really glow like we would’ve hoped.  These are the lessons you learn as you do more of these things – prepare really early!  Big Sly was really the #1 hit of the weekend, with more people asking at the event office for directions to ‘the longhorns’  than any other site!   Sly is a steer we bred and had originally team roped, but he was bought a long time ago by friends of ours at Valhalla Longhorns, Crookwell.  We borrowed the big fella to display because he’s a true sweetheart and a guaranteed head-turner.

It’s always a buzz seeing people react to these beautiful cattle, but it’s amazing how an event like this can tire you out…