Cows don’t have much to think about, I guess. I wonder sometimes…when I go careening by on the Kubota, singing at the top of my lungs, wearing an old cowboy hat and giant sunglasses, my braids flopping on my shoulders..I wonder…what do they think? They turn and stare, never stopping their chewing or swishing of tails.
Our new neighbors across the road were building a driveway. Someone hauled in fill dirt to help level out the pad for the road. The cows found it and climbed on top of it, one by one. Some of the younger ones began playing a cow version of “King of the Mountain”, lowering their heads and butting the smaller ones back down to the bottom of the small hill. They lost interest quickly and moved on to graze, but for a day or so…it was like Disneyworld for cows.
At our old house, there was an old barn that was just about falling down. It was old and creaky and scary. Clint decided to burn it to clean our place up. The next day, there stood the cows, on top of the still smoldering ashes, looking around like “where’d the barn go?” Do cows remember? Do they miss old barns?
We had a new baby calf a few days ago…I had been watching mama cow carefully, never leaving the safety of my Kubota. I learned my lesson last summer. I noted mama cow was in early labor. She would breathe steadily, with her head low to the ground. Her back would arch up, and she wouldn’t take a step. Just breathe and focus. Then it would pass and she’d graze lightly…then again with the focusing and breathing. It’s amazing and primal.
Clint checked her that morning, she is what I call a “panda cow”. She’s black (mostly) with a white face and dark circles around her eyes. Like a panda. Clint will say “check that white face cow for me.
Trouble’s mama. Now there’s a story. Trouble’s mama is mostly black, with a white face with borders of cloudy gray. She had her calf a few years ago, in the middle of a cold rainy day. The calf died without even nursing once. She had a large, glorious Holstein “bag” (udder) full of nutritious milk. Clint called a man down the road who ran a dairy to see if he had any calves to sell. He did have one, a red one born very recently. We drove to get it and Clint picked the calf up and put it in the front seat of the truck with us. I wasn’t very happy about having a wild, kicking calf laying in Clint’s lap as I drove, but it was so cold and rainy…so on I drove, with Clint holding the calf.
Suddenly the calf jumped and bucked. Clint held on tight and kept the calf from jumping all over us in the front seat of the truck. What he was unable to stop, though…was the steady stream of POOP that erupted from the tail end of that calf, covering the dash board and Clint. I groaned and drove, Clint laughing, covered in poo.
We got him to the cow. She stood, grieving, over the body of her dead calf and paid no attention to the new baby. We put them in a pen together, coaxing the mama to the pen by placing the dead calf onto the four wheeler and the mama following it in. Still, she paid no attention to the new red calf.
Clint got the idea to cut the skin off the dead calf and tie it to the new calf, which would make the scent of the biological calf mingle with the new calf. So, that’s what we did, me pulling the skin back away from the muscle of the calf as Clint cut it away. It was very much like working in surgery, I remarked more than once and Clint told me I was a good scrub.
We tied the skin to the new calf…gave the mama some feed….waited and watched. Tentatively, the new red calf, now covered partly by black and white skin…began to suck and the mama took it and allowed it. We knew then the calf would be fine. And it was for a couple of days.
I went to check the calf on my way to the chicken houses. By now we had pulled the skin off and the mama was taking the calf as if it were hers. The calf’s eyes looked sunken and he looked weak. I called Clint and he said he’d check him when he got home. By the time he got home, the calf was listless and wouldn’t suck.
We gave him antibiotics and Clint milked the mama cow in the head chute, as she was wild and not a milk cow at all. We “gut fed” him, running a tube down his throat and into his stomach. He barely noticed the shots and didn’t fight us when we fed him. I cried and told Clint he was a goner. I suspected he had pneumonia, something that kills calves often. “That calf’s nothing but trouble.” I stated one day as I tried to get him to stand so I could bottle feed him some electrolytes I had made out of warm water, salt, and sugar and that became his name. Trouble.
He mended and was soon big and strong. Mama cow bred back and had a calf that lived, but she is forever Trouble’s mama. I see her now, out in the pasture, grazing, her calf at her side. Does she remember Trouble? Does she know how hard we fought to keep him alive? Does she still grieve the calf she lost?
I will check the cows for Clint and I’ll name off who was close to calving..who the bull was flirting with…what calves look like runty little knots and what calves look hale and hearty…and I’ll say “the stripey cow was fine….Tara’s cow looks good…that panda cow with the big splotches is ok, and the panda cow with the little splotches is in labor” He’ll ask about number 36 and I’ll be confused and ask what the cow LOOKS like, and he’ll say “it’s that lighter tan one, not the white one or the brown one” and then I’ll know.
But the calf we had the other day…it’s mama is a delicate, ladylike panda cow with a sweet disposition. I drove out there. She had birthed it within moments of Clint checking on her that morning, right in the middle of all the other cows. She licked it, her afterbirth hanging out of her, signaling a brand new baby, barely an hour old. She knocked the other cows away that came over, curious. The new baby tried to stand, nearly flipping completely over. It finally stood, trembling and stumbling, instinct guiding it to the panda cow’s udder. The afterbirth came out in one great push, the act of the calf sucking causing a contraction just for that purpose. I could see it was a little bull…tiny, white head…rings around it’s eyes…pink, sweet nose. I edged a little closer and the calf looked at me. That’s when I noticed he had two dark patches under his eyes, looking very much like the dark swatches football players put under their eyes. I called Clint. “he’s got foot ball player marks under his eyes!” Clint laughed and asked me his name. “Tebow.” I said.
Welcome to the world, little Tebow. May you be healthy and happy here on the Soggy Bottoms Farm. Welcome to our world.
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