OK, I’ve seen a few photos of HO scale pastures lately that just don’t look right. The reason? The cattle look like each individual animal was assigned it’s own scale 10’x10’ area to graze by the local rancher and told not to deviate from its own space. Every animal is equidistant from the next and also equidistant from the fence line.
Cattle and other common farm animals tend to herd together. There will typically be a fairly close clump of them somewhere in the pasture with a few further out from the group here and there. The herd should not be laid out on a grid system! For examples, do a google image search for small cattle herd or something similar. If you live near farms, pay attention to the animals in the fields and you’ll see what I mean.
If you want a natural looking pasture, pick a random spot and assign five or six cows to that spot, most of them facing basically the same direction. Move out an inch or two in a random direction and add two or three more. Then add a few loners a few inches beyond that. Most of them will be facing the same general direction because they tend to move together.
If you do this, you’ll get a much more realistic looking pasture.
Enough of that. Yes, they do tend to face the same direction and stay in a group. However, some depends on the time of year and time of day. In lush spring pasture they head in and spread out a little as they head across the field trompling down as much as they possibly can as they grab mouthful after mouthful… When pasture is shorter in the fall, they do spread out more and push the fences. Mid day they tend to congrigate in the shade and/or near their water source… They know when it’s milking time and head that way late in the day.
Well, (deep subject) since I was born and raised on a dairy farm… My Father was a great farmer who was outstanding in his field. We even have a photo of him out there.
Seriously cattle also like to “follow the leader” so If one decided to get a drink of water, typically all will decide to get a drink of water and will follow one behind the other all the way over to the drinking trough. You did remember to put in a drinking trough didn’t you. Oh and since the cattle usually follow the same path over and over to the drinking trough and to other places, there will be a well worn “cow paths” crisscrossing the pasture as well. Kinda like this:
I knew a farmer who was dismayed to find that the law where he lived said that creek and river banks were considered public right-of-way, and people walking on said banks couldn’t be charge with trespassing. So he got the craziest, most ferocious bull he could find, and pastured it by the river banks.
I am told that the crazy bull used to like to rub his head in the mud, and this made the bull look even crazier and more ferocious.
OTOH, there was a friend of mine who had a summer job doing mosquito abatement in rural New Mexico. He once got out of the truck to check for larvae in a nearby creek. He then noticed that the cattle were following him. His partner sat in the truck laughing.
Contributing more bull stuff to this thread, here are some prototype pictures.
This past autumn, I donated about 1250 photos to the Texas A&M University Corpus Christi library archives, including photos I took over the last 45 years of railroads, local scenes, news events, TV station operations, old houses, buildings, and motion picture production in and surrounding towns. The university has just put on line a sample of about 100 of the photos and a searchable finding guide to all 1250.
