I really think that humans become more attractive as they grow from babyhood. Cattle are quite the opposite. There is nothing more perfectly adorable than a brand new baby calf. Their coat is soft and clean and wonderful to touch. They are playful and curious and just like human babies, they have a lot to learn. Here are some pictures to show how sweet they can be.
When I was eleven years old my parents had 12 milk cows. Janice and I would take turns going out in the field to bring the cows in for milking. We would sometime walk but I mostly remember riding bareback to bring them to the barn. Sometimes the cows would come into the barn on their own, especially if we were late milking them. The cows liked to be milked to relieve the pressure of full udders. A good dairy cow makes much too much milk to feed her calf. If they were to keep their calves, the calves would get sick with scours and die from too much milk. Scours was kind of like really bad diarrhea.
My mother separated the milk using a cream separator. It was a cool machine that spun the milk around inside a bunch of disks and somehow – magically, the cream came out one spout and the milk the other. Here is a picture. This was a hand one which I remember having but the but the one we used was burgundy coloured and was electric. Mom saved the cream in big buckets in the fridge and sold it in big cans on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. The dairy in Brooks bought it and picked it up at the Post Office in Scandia. I have never seen cream to buy like this cream. It was yellow and so thick you could almost slice it. The milk came out fast from the separated and made thick foam. Our barn cats liked to eat the foam. I thought it was like candy to them.
We bought more calves to feed the extra milk to and so we had to teach the calves how to drink from a bucket. To do this I learned to stand with the calf between my legs and got the calf to suck two of my fingers. Then I would push the calf’s head down into the milk. While still sucking my finger, the calf would drink. Gradually I would take out my fingers. At first the calf would immediately throw its head up looking for my fingers but soon it wouldn’t need fingers and would learn to just drink the milk. The calves never got used to not sucking though. They were like babies and needed to suck. After I fed them I would let them have turns sucking my fingers for a soother. They also would suck each others ears and other parts too yucky to talk about.
Each of the calves had a name. I especially remember Ferdinand . He was a tall lanky Holstein who was especially smart and friendly. When he grew up and became a very tall, large steer, he still remembered being a calf and recognized my mother. He wanted her to pet him and followed her, much to her chagrin. I can still remember my easily frightened mother walking quickly away, waving her hand behind her and yelling, “Ferdinand, GO AWAY!” Here are some pictures of Holstein calves like the ones I fed on a bucket.
In the spring, we would also have to round up the cows and calves on the lease (you can see a picture of the lease on our family room wall) and bring them home for branding and castrating. Cows with calves are very frustrating to drive. The calves are little and get tired and soon fall behind, getting lost from their mothers. The cows would then become upset that they didn’t have their calves and would turn around and come back to find them, smelling each stray calf until they found their own. If a calf got frightened by the horse on the lease, and ran away, it was almost impossible to get them back into the herd. They seemed to have no natural herd instinct and would just keep galloping away. The trick was to get them to stop running.
Our lease was on the west side of the Bow River at Scandia and our farm was about 3 miles away. Part of the way home was along highway 36. The last mile was up a coutry road past a lot of farms and driveways. The first challenge was to get the cows to go onto the bridge. Cows were easier than yearlings. They were like teenagers, with a lot of energy. They were kind of crazy and often just got running, sometimes I thought, just for the fun of it. My Dad would get pretty mad if this happened since they ran off fat and beef on the hoof is sold by the pound.
I had a cow that had been my special calf. I had gone to an auction with my Dad and bought her for $35. I named her Mitzi. She was a Holstein cow but didn’t give very much milk so she got to keep her calves like the beef cows. She was kind of an adventurer cow and an athlete. She liked to crawl through fences and was all in all a free spirit. She was great to have in the herd however because she knew exactly where to go and was always at the front of the herd. She never worried about her calf. Her calves just had to keep up. As soon as we let the gate open she would head right for the bridge and straight on home. She made all the right turns, never turning into the wrong gate. All the other cows just followed. My Dad sold one of her calves to pay for our wedding - $600.
Here are some pictures of a roundup that looked very much like our herd of cattle. We had mostly Herefords ( brown with white faces) and a very few Holstein/Hereford crosses that were black with white faces. There are a few other breeds black Angus cattle for example, in this picture. We didn’t have any of those. I am not sure why.
1 comment:
I was thinking of you during that talk!
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