Moosewatch.com

Just the cow and her calf have been here since Sunday.  Primo, Alfalfa and a single cow were here Saturday evening but left sometime that night.  There was another cow here yesterday morning but all I saw was her rear end as the mother cow chased her off.  Don’t know if any one will be back.  Once they are gone for more than 48 hrs they don’t tend to return.

This makes the third bull so far since I started feeding in early November and the 8th moose! You can see his antlers are smaller than Alfalfa’s whereas last year they were about equal. I assume them to be the same age.

I originally thought this was a younger bull than Scarface, but when I examined the photos last night I saw a nick on the left side of the left ear and what looked like a nick on the right side also.

So I waited to post until I could get another photo of his ear to confirm the identity. It’s overcast this morning, a storm is coming in.

While I would normally have expected Scarface’s antlers to have been bigger this year. It makes sense that they are smaller in that his body used its resources last spring to heal the wound on his rear end rather than grow bigger antlers.

Evidently Primo’s antler shedding has meant a change in his seniority. I frequently witness two cows facing one another both reared up on their hind legs, but have never seen a cow do that towards a bull until this morning. Unfortunately my point and shoot camera was set with a 2 second review time, so I missed the shot of the mother cow and Primo both on their hind legs. This shot was taken seconds before. Note how both have their ears down below the tops of their heads. They are mad. Primo is on the left.

When the ears go down like this they are about to charge. If there is a moose around when I go to refill the bins I am always watching those ears! It appeared that the cow won this confrontation as Primo left my yard for the morning and the cow hung around. Primo returned in the afternoon.

I’ve now set the camera with no review time so hopefully I’ll get a shot with one of them up on their hind legs.