A Yak, a Snack, and a Whole Lot of Guilt

Zero.

Dang it. I hate when our animals get hurt. I hate it even more when it was totally preventable and we didn’t do our part to prevent it.

This time, it was our sweetest (but still occasionally moody) yak, Jolene, who ended up in the crosshairs. She was just minding her own business in the back pasture, doing what yaks do—searching for something green and delicious to munch on. Unfortunately, there’s not much left back there since they’ve grazed it so far down. We're letting the front pasture grow in nice and tall before turning them loose in it again. In the meantime, they’ve had to settle for a giant bale of hay, which—if you're a yak—just doesn’t hit the same as fresh grass.

When Jolene spotted a patch of luscious, tantalizing green grass just on the other side of the fence she couldn't resist it. So close. So beautiful. So forbidden.

She reached her tongue through the wire fencing as far as she could. No luck. Then she pressed her head up under the bottom of the fence—success! She was able to snag a few sweet blades. A forbidden snack. A thrill. She wanted more.

We didn’t see the accident happen. In fact, my husband stumbled across her completely by chance—and thank goodness he did.

Pool of Jolene's blood but the picture doesn't do it justice. It seemed to come from her nose.

Poor Jolene had gotten one of her horns stuck in the fencing. While pressing forward to reach the grass, the wire caught on the ridge where her horn meets her head. When she tried to pull back, the wire only dug in deeper. The more she struggled, the deeper it cut. She was in distress and stuck in an awkward position. A surprising amount of blood was pooled on the ground beneath her. It was also clear she'd been stuck there for a while.

My husband jumped into action, cut through the fencing, and freed her. She was clearly shaken and upset—but thankfully, not seriously injured. We couldn’t get close enough to examine her fully (she wasn’t in a trusting mood, understandably), but she seemed mostly okay.

Cue the crushing guilt.

I should’ve known better than to leave tempting green grass just outside the fence. Horns and wire fencing do not play nice. And what if we’d been out of town? I don’t even want to think about how that could’ve ended.

I don’t know if Jolene learned a lesson through all of this… but I sure did.

Moral of the story:

If you’re going to fence in a snack-loving yak, make sure there's not a juicy buffet just out of reach.

Jolene after her traumatizing accident