On Thursday morning I received a call from Bruce, a local farmer who has given Geoff and I permission to search on his farm. He had lost a handle from a borrowed ‘cow turner’ in amongst the straw of his barn. He had a injured cow in the barn, the turner is attached to the tractor and used to move the cow to a new position – something that has to be done several times each day.
I arrived on the farm at midday as arranged, met with Bruce and we walked to the barn.
I was initially faced with a number of problems:
1. The barn had steel sides!
2. There was a large trailer and a tractor also parked in the barn.
3. There were two recumbent cows – one of which kindly hobbled off when I started searching.
Firstly, I searched too close to the trailer, then too close to the barn wall! Stepping away from the wall I searched around the recumbent cow getting a loud signal from the tractor on the way round! Towards the rear of the cow I got a good signal and Bruce recovered the missing handle from the straw.
After just ten minutes we were sitting having a cup of tea in the farm kitchen. Job done.
