“I’M sure those heifers were in a different field when we drove through,” I commented to John as we bumped our way home over the fields from feeding the pheasants and ducks on his shoot.

I have surrendered overall command of feeding the birds to John now he is home, but still like to go out with him to make sure he is doing the job as competently as I did when he was away.

Not really, but it is pleasant to have a ride down the fields and nature watch from the virtual anonymity of the gator cab.

It is amazing, you can be almost alongside roe deer before they raise their heads and think "Ummm, might be a good idea to head for the woods”.

The heifers in question have only just been put out into this particular field.

There are a dozen of them, bought to add to the other pedigree Aberdeen Angus heifers destined as soul mates and more truthfully passion mates for Mr Stud Aberdeen Angus when they come into season.

Till then they have been turned out into a well fenced field, with plenty of grass, sheltered by hedges and the ideal place for a week or two to make themselves ready for 850

kilograms of passion. Or indeed the bull.

So in theory these heifers should have been content and secure in their field. No desire to break down the fence and clamber into the next identical field; identical except for the fact that it wasn’t fenced and the heifers would have had the freedom to roam and trample over newly drilled crops, green lanes, a silage clamp, a lawn and into the woods and the pheasant feeders.

A phone call, and what a good job I had my new mobile with me, and assistance drove into the field in the form of yet another gator.

Plans were quickly formulated, via mobile phones, nothing so old fashioned as actually talking to each other, for rounding up the cattle and getting them back into their proper field.

Remember all the cowboy programmes that seemed to dominate the television schedules many years?

In my case the music of Rawhide came to mind when we started to manoeuvre the cattle to stay in a bunch and push them through the gap in the hedge that they had broken through to gain freedom.

All the magic of the Wild West, but with gators and mobiles, not horses, lassos and six shooters. Not bad eh?