Lady with a newborn JoThe dogs stir at the feet of the bed. I look at the clock it is 11 PM. Bone tired I know I must get up and check the heifer. Jerre, my wife, had the 10:00 watch. When she came to bed she reported that the heifer was up and eating and didn’t predict any birthing activity for a few hours at least. Our Irish Dexter cattle are easy calving but any first time mom can often use a little help and encouragement even if they are hearty and rangy like the Dexters. Just five more minutes and I will check on her. Zzzzzzz….
When I decided to write the blog I decided that I would write as often as I could without impacting the farm operation and I wouldn’t sugar coat farming good or bad. Farming is a 7 x 24 thing. You may not need to be active 7 x 24 but you need to remain vigilant as Mother Nature can be a cruel mistress. Aside from the medical field I can’t think of too many other jobs where you get only one chance to fix it. Aside from personal safety, a mistake in the office or in industry and something might get scrapped or a little profit lost. A mistake or oversight on a farm and something or someone is likely going to get maimed or die.
At evening feeding I noticed a cow in the field off alone by herself. This is typically the first sign of either an impending birth or an impending death. I walked out to check on her and sure enough it was one of our heifers. She was calm and let me walk up to her and a quick inspection showed that she was expelling her cervical plug. Expelling the plug typically means a new baby in 12 hours or less. Sun setting fast, I race for home, hitch up the stock trailer grab a lariat and raced back to the field. Back in the field things go my way. My first rope loop fly’s straight and I catch the heifer by the horns. A quick dally to the tie off point on the trailer and the tug of war begins. After a few minutes of fighting the rope (remember she is in labor) I get her calmed down and change my dally point and start to hand winch her into the trailer. “OK girl front feet first and then the back” a little wrestling match ensues but minutes later I have her in the trailer and none too soon as the sun is setting. The recent rain is not helping much and it is a bumpy slippery drive out of the field. I hit the irrigation road (now made up of deep mud ruts) and I slip left to avoid the ditch and with mud flying gun it for the hill. The Jeep writhes as it fights for traction and a way out of the field. Out of the mud now I stop and check the heifer and smear the mud off my headlights and head for home. At home, we make the heifer comfortable with a straw bed, hay & water then go in to the house for supper. Now the wait begins.
Zzzzzzz….I wake with a start... the clock says 11:40, SHIT, I forgot to check the heifer…. I slept thru my watch. I have never slept thru my watch, military, maritime, industry or farm before. I stagger from the bed pull on pants and a flannel shirt tuck my feet into unlaced pack boots at the door grab a hat and head for the stock trailer 25 feet from the back door. I shiver in the 30 degree air. I turn on a small light and squint to help my eyes to get accustomed to the light. The heifer is standing and looking at me. Everything looks OK. Wait, what’s that by her tail, Oh no… I quickly climb into the trailer and get behind the heifer. A calf is hanging out of the heifer, amniotic sack broken, head and front legs out, eyes bulging, tongue and gums blue. I grab the calf’s front legs above the fetlocks, they are stone cold. Gentle traction and a slight rotation to the right releases the calf. Sometimes heifers tire out before completing the job and this is such a case. If the calf gets out past the ribs the calf can expand its lungs and breathe. In this case the calf’s chest did not clear the heifer and with the umbilical cord pinched the calf is starved for oxygen. Calf in hand I climb out of the trailer to get some room to work. First I clear the calf’s airway then grab the calf by the hind legs and give it a couple of good swings. No response…I lay the calf on the ground and start moving it’s legs and massaging it while giving it artificial respiration thru a nostril.. puff, puff, rub, rub, nothing…. I grab a long hay stem and tickle deep in the nose, puff, puff, rub, rub, still nothing…… After five minutes of this with no progress I am starting to wear. I stick the cold wet calf under my shirt hoping a little warmth might illicit some slight response…..nothing…… Only ten minutes into this little drama I admit defeat. Damn….. I lost her….. A quick inspection shows it to be a fully developed girl. She might be a couple of days premature as female calves often are but she has a good coat of hair and fully ruptured incisors and probably weighs about 35 lbs. How could I have been so boneheaded to sleep past the check time? No guarantees but 40 minutes may have made all of the difference. I close the calf’s eyes and carry her away from the trailer and stash the small lifeless body under a tarp. Since the heifer never got a chance to mother the calf she does not appear to know any better. With an older cow in the field the mother will lick off and stand watch over the baby even if it is stillborn. It is heart rending to remove the dead calf in these situations with the mama cow balling and carrying on for her baby. At least I don’t have that to deal with tonight.
I feel sick and I am pissed off as I trudge back to the house. Too tired to have gotten up at 11 now I am mad and can’t sleep. I pour myself a 4 finger whiskey and bolt it. The whiskey burns my throat and warms my chilled body as I pour another. Mad at myself for piss poor management of the situation I pull out my calving books to look for some sort of sign I missed that would have made me want to be more vigilant or would have made me do the right thing. I already know I picked up on all of the signs and this was just pure laziness and poor stewardship with a little missed teamwork mixed in. I pour another big whiskey and I turn to Wendell Berry (an agricultural poet and writer) for solace. This usually helps in times like this. I open the book to a random page and to this…
“To live, we must daily break the body and spill the blood of creation. When we do this knowingly, lovingly, skillfully, reverently, it is a sacrament. When we do it ignorantly, greedily, clumsily destructively, it is a desecration.”
Wendell Berry – The Gift of Good Land
Well, that didn’t help…..
Drunk & depressed, now I really feel like crap. I go to bed and fall into a fitful sleep.
Morning comes way too early. Even after two cups of coffee, my head throbs and my eyesight is blurry as I put on my boots and hat to head out to do chores. As I complete the morning chores I eye the blue tarp but I am not ready to deal with it yet. In cases like this I have a hard time coming to terms with putting the little calf on the compost pile or just digging a hole and burying it. In some way I feel this little dead calf needs to be treated with reverence and respect, an offering to Mother Nature or the coyotes or the bald eagles. I drive the heifer back to the field and cut her loose with all of the other cows. Out of the trailer and 35 lbs lighter she kicks up her heels and races out to meet the other cows. I wish I could be so light… Back at the farm I wrap the little dead calf up in the blue tarp, place her in the back of the jeep and head for the south 40. In this case the south 40 is a small meadow way back on some of our leased land with some juniper trees and a good view of the rim rock. I take the calf out of the back of the jeep and place her in a natural resting posture under one of the juniper trees. I am behind today with a whole lot left to get done before I end the night at a meeting around 6:00 but I really need a break. I go sit under a juniper tree opposite the calf. I pull out my pipe and load it with tobacco and strike up a match. Puff….puff…puff. The tobacco cloud rolls out over the brown grass in the gentle breeze and my mind starts to ease.
Only now resting under this tree with some sense of closure do I assess the financial impact of my oversight? Assuming this calf had made it thru calf hood she probably would have sired 13 or 14 calves. Had she not been calf worthy she would have brought around $1,000 in 2 years at market or around $1,400 as a cow calf pair. Either way the impact will be a big difference from an industrial loss. In industry, profit and loss is a fiscal quarterly affair. In farming the impact of this calf may be slight now but it will echo for years to come. Aside from the gain in forage this calf would have eaten I won’t see the financial burden of my oversight for at least 2 years. Our farm like all small farms works on a very tight margin. Every calf, every lamb, every egg, every chicken, every potato or every garlic clove matters. Waste is anti ethical, anti stewardship.
On this spot last year I found a beautiful set of 4 point horns left by a shedding buck. This set of horns now has a place of honor on the table in our yurt. With luck I may not visit this place in this manner for another 6 months or a year. I will leave this place now and within the hour the ravens will be here to pluck out the eyes of the carcass. The bald eagles will be here too tearing at the soft parts of the flesh. Whatever is left by nightfall will be the domain of the coyotes. Any bones left scattered after a couple of days will start to bleach and will eventually be ground down to nothing by the voles and field mice looking for minerals.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
Drunk & depressed, now I really feel like crap. I go to bed and fall into a fitful sleep.
Morning comes way too early. Even after two cups of coffee, my head throbs and my eyesight is blurry as I put on my boots and hat to head out to do chores. As I complete the morning chores I eye the blue tarp but I am not ready to deal with it yet. In cases like this I have a hard time coming to terms with putting the little calf on the compost pile or just digging a hole and burying it. In some way I feel this little dead calf needs to be treated with reverence and respect, an offering to Mother Nature or the coyotes or the bald eagles. I drive the heifer back to the field and cut her loose with all of the other cows. Out of the trailer and 35 lbs lighter she kicks up her heels and races out to meet the other cows. I wish I could be so light… Back at the farm I wrap the little dead calf up in the blue tarp, place her in the back of the jeep and head for the south 40. In this case the south 40 is a small meadow way back on some of our leased land with some juniper trees and a good view of the rim rock. I take the calf out of the back of the jeep and place her in a natural resting posture under one of the juniper trees. I am behind today with a whole lot left to get done before I end the night at a meeting around 6:00 but I really need a break. I go sit under a juniper tree opposite the calf. I pull out my pipe and load it with tobacco and strike up a match. Puff….puff…puff. The tobacco cloud rolls out over the brown grass in the gentle breeze and my mind starts to ease.
Only now resting under this tree with some sense of closure do I assess the financial impact of my oversight? Assuming this calf had made it thru calf hood she probably would have sired 13 or 14 calves. Had she not been calf worthy she would have brought around $1,000 in 2 years at market or around $1,400 as a cow calf pair. Either way the impact will be a big difference from an industrial loss. In industry, profit and loss is a fiscal quarterly affair. In farming the impact of this calf may be slight now but it will echo for years to come. Aside from the gain in forage this calf would have eaten I won’t see the financial burden of my oversight for at least 2 years. Our farm like all small farms works on a very tight margin. Every calf, every lamb, every egg, every chicken, every potato or every garlic clove matters. Waste is anti ethical, anti stewardship.
On this spot last year I found a beautiful set of 4 point horns left by a shedding buck. This set of horns now has a place of honor on the table in our yurt. With luck I may not visit this place in this manner for another 6 months or a year. I will leave this place now and within the hour the ravens will be here to pluck out the eyes of the carcass. The bald eagles will be here too tearing at the soft parts of the flesh. Whatever is left by nightfall will be the domain of the coyotes. Any bones left scattered after a couple of days will start to bleach and will eventually be ground down to nothing by the voles and field mice looking for minerals.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
These posting remind us that your job is a difficult one in so many ways. The responsibilites are endless. Again I can only say, I don't know how you do it but I am grateful that you do. Thank you
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