Cows are amazing, sweet, docile creatures. In the winter, while they chew their hay, I like to close my eyes, smell the hay and listen. It's peaceful. And sounds surprisingly like water lapping against a bulkhead.
We raise gelbeigh cows. They're a large, sweet breed with a tuft of curly hair right in between their ears and large, dark eyes.
Occasionally I'll peek out my window and cuss those sweet creatures for romping across my back yard, chomping my garden or stomping holes in the yard. But they rarely escape, and it's usually the calves that find the way out.
Yesterday we rounded up 12 of our 18 cattle and took them to the market. It took three strong and one 85-year-old wise man to load them into the stock trailers. Cows don't like to be rushed. They don't like change. And they're not stupid. Humane slaughter houses build a maze of walls leading to the end. Otherwise, the cows will refuse to move forward.
Our cows will go anywhere there's grain, since they are mostly pasture-fed. When it was all over, we had one man headed to the hospital for a suspected (but luckily not) broken hand, an exhausted 85-year-old, my redneck husband covered in cow crap, and his brother looking at a two hour drive to the market and back.
Most of our cows will face slaughter. A few of the bulls will go on to wonderful lives as breeding stock, and maybe one or two of the young female calves will join them. But for the most part, by the time they leave our pasture, they're past their prime and have trouble keeping their weight. Some of them can be a pretty sorry sight after 15 years of bearing a calf every 15 months.
The day the cows leave doesn't bother me. I don't name the ones that will leave. I name the ones that stay. Daisy will always stay. I can't find anyone who knows the natural life expectancy of a cow. I'm assuming that's because no one is insane enough to keep a cow as a pet. But I don't care. She may have horns, but she's sweet, and loving, and mine.
It's the night after the cows leave. One of the female cows had her calf leave, and one of the calves we kept lost its mother. And they cry. Nonstop. For at least three days. They only time they stop calling for their mothers and babies is while they eat. Which means they woke me up at 3 a.m. last night, crying outside my bedroom window.
This morning, their cries were a little less loud. That's because their throats become sore from strain. Tonight, they sound like a robotic version of themselves. Their voice wanes in and out. And by tomorrow morning, half of their cries will come out silent. But still, they cry.
Daisy's calf died a few weeks after its birth last spring. It's not unusual, but heartbreaking. She nudged it, sniffed it, pawed at it with her hooves. She cried to it for a day, until Jasen came home from work to haul it into the woods. Daisy charged the ATV, and he had to whack her between her horns with a shovel. He wasn't trying to be mean, but let's face it...a charging half-ton cow with horns is not exactly easy to handle. She shook her head, and kept running after her calf. But she couldn't keep up. Her utters were too full of milk, and she stopped about 10 yards from the gate. She stood there for almost two days, crying for her calf. Searching for a way into the woods.
People tell me I give my animals human emotions that they can't possess. But I don't know. It seems very human to me to cry for a lost baby. It seems very human to me to mourn for a lost loved one. And it seems very human to me to fear the unknown and to sense death.
I feel more pain for my animals because I assign these human emotions. But I think I also find more joy in them as well. And I know we can't keep every cow or save every calf or house every stray. But for the ones we do keep, it's a pretty good life. Especially when they break into the young fall garden.
