Cows and other deep thoughts

A beautiful Jersey bull calf was born this week. He must have been born right after evening milking, because by the time I met him the next morning, all the birth goop had been cleaned off and he’d figured out how to use his legs. I first met him when he poked his head into the milking parlor after his mother, Rose Marie, had come in. He stuck his wet pink nose in the door, then solid brown eyes with long eye lashes.  He hopped right in, then slid in the muck on the milking parlor floor, much like a child’s first time in ice skates. The little guy seemed to think that escaping outside was a much better option, so hightailed it out the door. I followed him out, hoping to herd him back inside, but instead, the little bugger bolted up the lane. Visions of chasing this wobbly legged, 12-hour old calf all over North Yorkshire flashed before me. First chance I could, I picked the calf up, and carried him back to the farm. I could feel his heart racing, pressed against my arms. His fur (the part that wasn’t sopping from the holding pen muck) was soft and thick. I had to catch and carry that feisty little bugger once more before we were able to really secure him.

The tragedy is that the farm has no use for male dairy cows, and it’s really not financially worthwhile to hold on to them.  The meat on dairy cows is perfectly good eating, but they just don’t bulk up like beef cattle do. By the time small-time farmers (in essence, small business owners) have fed and raised dairy cows for meat, they’ve lost money. They can occasionally give them away, but even that is difficult.

 On the morning the knackerman came to collect the Jersey bull calf, we all went about in a state of silent mourning. The knackerman is the bovine version of the grim reaper. When called upon, he comes to the farm, quickly and mercifully kills the cow, then disposes of it. Apparently, Harry is a really nice man, but he smells quite bad. I’ve avoided meeting him the two times he’s visited the farm during my stay. Not because of the smell, I just haven’t really wanted to see him do his job. I avoided visiting the calf, too, even though he was right next to the milking parlor. It was a heavy knowledge, knowing this beautiful new creature would have such a short life.

I avoided the knackerman’s other visit to the farm as well. Days before I arrived, a cow had a difficult time giving birth, and the calf ended up being still-born.  John thinks a nerve in the cow’s leg was pinched during the birthing process, and consequently, she wasn’t able to stand up again. After two weeks of feeding her, turning her over because of her ‘bedsores,’ and even trying to help her stand up with the aid of a tractor and huge net borrowed from the vet (that was a pretty interesting experience, trying to get a net under the belly of a lame, unwilling and heavy cow…), she showed no progress. John and Eileen finally gave up on her. I guess this happens about once a year. Either the cow recovers and eventually stands and walks again, or it doesn’t. That was the case with #18.  It’s interesting to see John, Eileen, Ruth and Rachel’s reactions to having to euthanize cows in the herd. Yes, these dairy cattle are their main source of income, but they also deeply care for the animals.

Despite the knackerman’s two visits to the farm in the last month, not everything cow-related has been  cause for mourning. I’ve developed quite an affection for calves. Just days ago, another calf was born—a female, thankfully! I was the first to get to meet her. I’d gone to collect the cows for the afternoon milking, and she was still rather goopy and very trembly. Sadly, I didn’t get to see the cow give birth, which would have been interesting.

Older calves are kept in a small pasture across the lane from the house. They’re weaned from their mothers, but we still feed them milk from buckets.  Anyone and anything that comes into the pasture will be subjected to their trying to suck milk out of you, it doesn’t matter where from: each other, fence posts, fingers, kneecaps, hamstrings. I love watching the calves; one will sometimes get spooked by something, like a fly, and they’ll all go galloping to the end of the field. When they run, calves will arch their tails and stick them straight in the air. It’s really quite funny to see them running and frolicking in a pack, tails up.

I spend most of my quality cow-time with their back half. I’ll give you a little tour of that region, as I’ve come to know it quite well. Rumps I smack with a stick when I need to get the stubborn ones moving in the field. For the first two weeks, they all treated me like the student teacher, as John liked to tease me.  They’d look at me when I called them in from the field, then go back to eating. I quickly learned that sticks speak far louder than yelling at them.

 Udders are for milking, of course. Some cows have really warm, furry udders. Rachel says in the winter, she likes warming her hands by jamming them between the udder and the cow’s leg. I don’t blame her. Teats come in sets of four, though occasionally, there’s an extra one to confuse people. Some cows seem to flop down in goopy muck just before milking, coming in with their teats and udders dripping with it. I bet they do it on purpose.  I’m proud to say that I can milk a cow with my own two hands! (Before we put the milking units on, we get a milk sample from each teat to check for infection) Some cows are definitely easier to milk than others. I call them the beginner cows for rookies like me.

Some of the girls really don’t like to be milked, and will kick up a storm as I clean their teats and put the milking units on. The really wily ones will kick the milking units off while I’m tending to the other cows. Getting kneed by a cow in the milking stand isn’t really so bad as long as my face is out of the way, though it usually just means that I get even more smeared with muck.

The business end: I very nearly got baptized with urine last week as I was fiddling with getting the units on. I caught the tail going up just in time to move my head.  It’s only a matter of time, I know it. I’ve narrowly missed slipping in deep muck in the holding pen and falling right on my backside. It was really soupy after a week of rain my first week here.

Rachel is the family’s trained AI (artificial insemination) expert, the “surrogate father,” as she likes to call it. Cows who are ready to be "served" are held back after milking, then have a date with the straw. Bull semen is kept in short straws, frozen with nitrogen. Rachel uses this really long metal tube that she jams pretty far up the cow's backside. I’ve watched her do it enough times now to not want to put the long, arm-length gloves on. The vet came a few weeks ago to do a bunch of pregnancy tests. It was pretty amazing to see little cow fetuses on her portable ultrasound. Rachel felt like a proud father. 

I helped deliver this little guy. He was huge and had gotten stuck and we had to pull him out. Sadly, he was a bull calf, but luckily, Rachel was able to convince her friend Lee to take him to raise for beef.