. Birds and nature . ge herds to be seen west ofthe Ohio river on the great prairies of thecountry once known as the NorthwestTerritory. But as men came with theirplows the herds were gradually drivenfarther and farther west. Cattle are veryinteresting animals when we once get ac-quainted with them. The writer, when a boy, had some ex-perience herding cattle on an Illinois prai-rie. In this particular herd of which Iwish to speak there were about sevenhundred head and it required two of usand also two good shepherd dogs to keepthem in control during the early part ofthe herding season or until
. Birds and nature . ge herds to be seen west ofthe Ohio river on the great prairies of thecountry once known as the NorthwestTerritory. But as men came with theirplows the herds were gradually drivenfarther and farther west. Cattle are veryinteresting animals when we once get ac-quainted with them. The writer, when a boy, had some ex-perience herding cattle on an Illinois prai-rie. In this particular herd of which Iwish to speak there were about sevenhundred head and it required two of usand also two good shepherd dogs to keepthem in control during the early part ofthe herding season or until we got thembroken in, as the old herders used tosay. These cattle had been wintered onvarious farms surrounding the herdgrounds, so when they were brought to-gether in the spring there were about fif-teen different clans to contend with, eachclan having its recognized leader. leaders are always a source oftrouble to the herder, and especially isthis true for the first few weeks afterbringing them DOMESTIC ANIMALS 35 The whole herd would be grazing andmoving slowly along, seemingly perfectlysatisfied, when suddenly one of thoseleaders would raise his head very high inthe air and act as if he saw somethingvery interesting a mile away and wouldimmediately start off in a rapid walk, bel-lowing two o^ three times to notify hisfollowers that he was out for a the whole of his clan would followhim at once. They would not go far un-til the leader would set the pace in a rapidtrot. But we always had the remedy athand for these fellows and immediatelyone of us would mount a horse andtaking a dog make a straight run for theleader and begin to give him the busi-ness end of a long, heavy whip, theliorse being trained to this sort of per-formance would keep close to this leader,:allowing us to pour on the whip until hewas so completely run down and faggedout generally that he would never aspireto that ofifice again; in fact, he would loseall interest in cattl
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