It was a dark and stormy night. I'm sorry. I know that's a terrible old line, but it was! Our first calf was born just after midnight on the first day of our second Spring at the farm. Not having a lot of experience with calving ('none' would be accurate) we were watching anxiously for signs, and on a late-night check, realized that Janet (the cow, not the neighbor) was in labor.
It was a very exciting time for us, although I suspect Janet would have happily foregone the experience. After much straining and groaning (from all three of us) Janet produced a couple of tiny hooves and two legs. But nothing more.
Have you ever been inside a metal roofed building when the rain is teeming down, striking the metal with the force of bullets? It's a deafening racket, you can't hear yourself think! Now add to that, the sounds of the other cows mooing their concern about this unusual nighttime activity. We had to shout at each other to communicate.
We decided it was time to help. Grasping just above the tiny hooves carefully (and with the squeamishness of a novice, it must be admitted) for they were very slimey, Joe began to pull each time Janet strained to push. That was just what was needed. After a bit of that assistance, the calf slowly oozed out in one long, smooth, messy movement. Janet mooed a huge sigh of relief. The little calf shook it's big head and we cheered. I quickly wiped it's mouth and nose clean, we rubbed the worst of the guck off of her with burlap sacks, and then placed her up by Janet's head. To our delight, poor exhausted Janet instantly began licking her clean, just as she was supposed to do, mooing softly all the while. Something we would never tire of seeing happened next.......
Those skinny, trembling legs struggled to stand. First the front legs would get part way up. Then down they'd go and the hind end would start to rise. The front legs again. I guess it took time to sort out those 4 independant appendages! But then slowly, cautiously, the calf stood, and tottered about like a drunk having a great night. Janet mooed her approval. Her newborn progeny, led only by instinct, bumped and poked its wet nose along her black body and eventually found a teat. This was quite a surprise to first-time mother Janet who jumped, and side-stepped a bit nervously, but the little one persisted and soon enough, nature took its course. I will spare you details about the afterbirth in case you're planning to eat soon.
Castration anyone? Male readers might want to cross their legs for this part. There's a dirty little secret regarding male farm animals - too many males are just not a good thing. I know! It's sexism at it's worst, it's grossly unfair (not to mention - gross!) But the fact is if you are born an 'excess' male, the punishment far exceeds the crime. You have your cows (a female that's had at least one calf), your bull (an intact male), your heifers (a young female that has not had a calf yet) and your steers. Steers used to be bulls, if you get my drift. You don't want a whole bunch of young bulls running around annoying the pretty heifers, so..... oh, but it makes me wince, still!
You put a special castration band (like a rubber band, but small, thick and very strong) onto the prongs of a small, hand-held device. Squeezing the handles of the castrator forces the band open. It's slipped up over the offending dangly bit, the handles are released, and the band snaps into place. The offending appendage willl now shrivel up since the blood supply is cut off, and will wither and fall away in good time.
Does it hurt? Do you really have to ask? Yes, they jump about and moo piteously, but only for a very few minutes. We always gave them a tasty treat to take their minds off it. I've been talking about the cows here, but lambs got the same treatment - too many rams aren't welcome either. Those poor, sweet lambs - we won't go there.
We had several different bulls on the farm over the years, but none were as mean or nasty tempered as those you see in the movies. One of my older brothers had a habit of dropping in when he was making an Ottawa to Toronto business trip. One day, the gate being locked, he climbed over and began walking in. (No cell phones then, to call us on of course.) Suddenly, he told us by phone later, a 'mean looking bull' stepped out of the trees ahead of him. (We sometimes grazed them in the front section after the haying was done.) He didn't care for the sight of that bull one bit. He turned right around, went back to his car, and made the half hour drive back onto the 401 highway. Later, after we'd heard from him, I sent a photo of little Sarah and me patting that 'mean bull'. He was actually very young, and friendly!
Now sheep..... Baaaaaa! Sheep function as a flock. It's like all their brains are hard-wired into one computer and as a result, what one does, they all do. Show me ten different sheep, I'll show you one annoying personality. As you may have guessed, they became our least favorite farm animal. I remember one day they were out grazing, when a sudden rain storm came up. When they didn't return to the barn as they normally would, we went looking for them.
We found them clustered tightly togther on a slightly elevated bit of land. The hard rain had created a bit of flooding all of two inches deep, between them and their path home. No way would they cross that water! We ran around them, waving our arms and screaming like banshees, but they refused to budge. Just looked at us like we were perhaps ready for the men in white coats to pick us up. Finally, we decided we'd each pick up a sheep and carry it across the water. A totally sodden, unhappy sheep. So we did. There was much baaing and indignation. We set them down on the other side of the water, so they could head for the barn, and hoped the rest would follow.
That was the plan. I would not credit sheep with the brains God gave a goose! The reality was that those two damned sheep turned right around, ran through the water and back to the flock. Insert every profane word you've ever heard here, and that's what we two drenched, frustrated, cold and out-maneuvered guys yelled at those sheep.
Lambs are, of course, an entirely different matter. Sweet, frolicsome, utterly charming. In fact, there's really only one drawback to lambs: they turn into sheep!
We kept the sheep for only about two years, then sold the lot. No matter how many times we carefully explained to them that if they did not shape up they'd be shipped out and converted into mutton stew and wool sweaters, they ignored us. We were treated with disdain, Joe and I, by those sheep! Sometimes a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. Admit defeat. As they rolled down the lane in a truck headed for the auction barn, Joe and I were silent. We just looked at each other. Sheepishly.
Perhaps we would have more luck with pigs. Just two at a time, surely we could manage that. Buy them small, feed them, sell them big. Pigs are exciteable animals, especially at feeding time. They snort and squeal, wiggle and push each other, shove their snouts into the trough and rummage like kids with a bag full of Halloween treats. You've no doubt heard the expression, 'happy as a pig in shit', but it's a fallacy, they're one of the cleanest animals. Given enough space, they will choose one area as a 'toilet' and go nowhere but there. The rest of their pen will remain clean. (If only cows had that attitude!) That is not to say pigs don't enjoy a good roll in the mud on a hot summer's day - who doesn't? Great way to cool down.
During the hottest days, we had a small fenced enclosure just outside the barn where the pigs could wallow to their hearts' content. One steamy day, we discovered a pig was missing. Vanished into thin air. We couldn't figure how he got out, and never did. We were forced to drop everything and search for that bloody pig, all day long. But to no avail. We again spent the following day looking for him. The heat was stifling, the sun unforgiving. No luck. We could only hope he stayed in the shade. To tell the truth, by the end of the day we'd have given just about anything to have that pig in our arms.... just so we could strangle the damn creature! Hot, miserable, sweaty wasted time.
A few days later I was at work in the garden, and Joe was out in the 'back 40' with Diva, cutting more hay. I began to hear outraged squealing. Then Joe's voice, gradually growing louder, calling my name. I ran towards the back and there he was, struggling with all his might to carry our very sunburned and angry, wiggling pig in his clearly exhausted arms. I grabbed Miss Pig and she immediately settled right down as I rubbed her head with my chin. "Bitch!" Joe shouted at her. "I think I'm going to have a heart attack," he went on, grabbing his chest dramatically.
"You can't have a heart attack!" I said over my shoulder as I headed for the barn. "It's your turn to get supper."
"It's going to be bloody PORK CHOPS!" he screamed. He collapsed to the ground in what I'm sure was an Oscar worthy performance but I didn't turn to look.
"Don't be getting irrational on me!" I shouted, the very thing he always said to me. He shouted a reply but I didn't hear it. Probably a good thing.
My favorite farm animals by far were goats. Even though one almost killed me. We never planned to have goats, never even considered it. However, a day came when we were at the auction barn to sell some calves, and there they were..... a billy and four females, just as sweet and adoreable as can be. Of course we discussed buying them, calmly and rationally:
"Joe, we've just got to have them!"
"But we don't know the first thing about goats."
"They're cute!"
"And that's our Number One priority is it?"
"They'd eat the weeds that cows don't eat!" (Wrong!)
"Just one more chore. Five more mouths to feed."
I sighed. " You're right I guess, we shouldn't buy them." I sighed again. I went over and jumped into the pen with the goats and began petting them. I looked as woeful as I possibly could. "Sorry guys, it just wasn't meant to be," I said sadly (but loudly). "Joe can't help being a miserable, grumpy son of a bitch, it's his nature. Don't blame him."
We bought the goats. You see, that's one advantage of living with someone a long time, you learn how to manipulate them to get your way. Guilt works! But you have to do it carefully. Notice I agreed with him (verbally). I said 'we shouldn't buy them'. That way, if anything went wrong later I could point out that I said we shouldn't buy them, but he went ahead and bought them anyway. Relationships require effort!
Curious, affectionate, mischievious, playful, clever - goats are all these things and more. As usual, we named them, using our our greatest powers of imagination for the billy. Him we called....... wait for it....... Billy. Arriving back at the farm, we put Billy and the girls in a small fenced area adjacent to the house, and went inside to eat. It wasn't long before we heard strange sounds coming from the garden. The garden! Holy Crap!! It's amazing how much five goats can demolish in a very short time. Clearly, split rail fences weren't going to do the job.
Nevertheless, they added a great deal of fun to our days. Dawg didn't know what to make of Billy, who refused to be ignored by some ole dog. He would run to the wall of his pen, or if outside, to the fence, and slam his head against it whenever Dawg appeared. This would make Dawg jump. Then he'd look around with a foolish expression to see if we had noticed.
We had a lot of cats around by then, some quite tame, others as wild as the winter winds. When the goats had their kids, one - Heidi, was very amenable to being milked, so we'd take some for the cats. They came to look forward to it, would sit and watch, and you could actually point a teat and squirt them with the milk.
Billy was always rambunctious, it was his nature, but not a mean bone in his body. One night, I reached down into his pen to retrieve his water bucket. He rammed his head against my arm in his playful way and gored my wrist with his horn. Blood poured out. It shocked me more than it hurt. So much blood, I was sure he'd pierced the artery. I dipped my arm into a pail of water to wash the blood off and inspect the wound. Luckily and to my relief, it was off to the side of the wrist somewhat, but very deep and bleeding profusely. To make a long story short, it meant we made a flying trip into town to the hospital to get it stitched up. At least I made the doctor's day. He'd never before had a patient gored by a billygoat. He thought it was a lot funnier than I did!
We never did make a cent from those goats. Even selling the kids, which we forced ourselves to do, probably didn't cover the costs. Neither of us liked goat's milk or goat's cheese. For us they became what no serious farmer would ever permit..... pets!
Possibly the most heart-stopping time we had with our animals was the day our neighbor called to tell us our cattle were in his pasture field. They weren't doing any damage, but of course we'd have to go and get them! Sounds so easy.
The front fields along the laneway were good hay fields, but each year after the hay had been cut and was regrowing, we'd let the cattle graze them a bit. A change of scene was good for them, we believed. The gate was locked at such times, but unfortunately they'd found a weak spot in the front boundary fence. They had then gone up the dirt road, past our neighbor's house..... and lawns..... and flowers..... (not touching them, amazingly enough) crossed the main road, and moseyed into an open pasture field. Now, we had to get them back, and through the gate with no harm being done to our neighbor's unfenced and very manicured grounds.
We took a pail of grain, a 'treat' they'd recognize, opened the gate and went very reluctantly up the road. When we got to the pasture field, they greeted us with a few moo's. Joe shook the pail and Suzie, a recognized leader in the herd, came trotting right over. Joe gave her a small taste. I kept calling the others and sure enough, they all came ambling over.
With Joe in the lead, shaking his pail and calling them the way they were used to, by name, the long walk back began. To our intense amazement, they walked quietly across the road, past the neighbor's house, following Joe placidly while I brought up the rear in case any of them had thoughts of turning around. It turned out that it was easy! They were very good. Of course we were holding our breathe the whole way and praying to the God of Farm Animals to help us. We also hoped our neighbors had observed our calm, professional demeanour and successful recovery. Cool and collected, that was us!
The minute the last cow was through the gate, I slammed it shut. Joe immediately dropped his 'Mr. Nice Guy' act and we both began screaming and whacking at them, and we chased those poor, shocked cows clear up the lane and all the way to the barn.
__________________________________________
Here is a photo of the 'mean bull' that made my brother high-tail it back down the lane, with me and Sarah.
In these photos, the cattle wait behind a gate to be allowed back to the barn. We needed many gates, and made them from skinny cedar trees and barnboard to save money.
