December 2000
Baptism by calving (among other things!)We moved in to Vowley Farm, Wiltshire on 1st December, 2000. We were both a little nervous of taking on something we knew so little about, but the previous farmer had assured us that it was easy. Just feed the cows a bag of barley each day, put in a bale of silage (wet grass which smells like hops!) every other day and clean out the cowshed and yard once a week. As the moving date had arrived, we realised that what might have seemed like a simple task to an experienced farmer, was potentially a challenge to us... I mean, how do you drive a tractor... and what's the best way to scrape out a yard... and what do you do when your slurry lagoon is close to overflowing?
Within days the old tractor we had bought with the farm was dead. One of the hydraulic connections on the loader was leaking and the battery had given up completely, in spite of us buying a nice new battery charger and a reel of extension cable to connect it to the power.
Also within days (seven to be precise) whilst feeding the cows one morning we saw one with a trail of something hanging from it's backside. Well, even to us uninitiated that didn't look "right". Mark said it looked like afterbirth, but as we had bought beef cows (which weren't supposed to be pregnant or intended to have babies) we dismissed the idea until we were back in the house, when we phoned a neighbour and told her what we'd seen. Her first comment was, "has she calved?". "Don't be silly", we said, "these are beef heifers, they're not in calf". But just to make sure, we had a closer look in the barn and sure enough, there lying in the deepest, shittiest part of the cowshed was a little black and white calf.
All my "yuckiness" about cowshit and cowlick went out of the window from that point on. He was still alive so I bent down, picked him up (they're very heavy new born calves... and very floppy). He was also still quite warm. Now, what would YOU do in this situation? Here we are 7 days into farming and our learning curve has taken a sharp turn up. In fact it was to remain vertical for several weeks (make that months!).
Our memories of "All Creatures Great and Small" came flooding back. We rubbed him down with straw. We went and got "mum" and made a makeshift pen for them at one end of the cowshed. She wasn't going to let us near her udder - and how do you milk a cow anyway? He wasn't standing up, despite our encouragement. He didn't suck our fingers (can't blame him for that!) but without a sucking reflex and without him getting up, we didn't see much hope.
We called the previous owner, who came round and declared that there wasn't much hope for this little one. He was born premature (about six weeks he reckoned), the mum didn't have any milk so that was that. This was our first hit on the reality of life and death that farmers face every day. It was tough, really tough... we cried.
We got in touch with the vet and discovered there were another three in calf. With the help of the vet we ran most of them through the cattle crush (a sort of cage where you can examine them closely and safely) to check them out. It's amazing how agile these animals are. There was one (turned out to be "Bluey" who was in calf) who tried to jump the eight foot wall into the muck heap, another that just clean ran over the vet and dumped her in a puddle of poo! Very different from handling horses, cows like to go into small spaces and will attempt to squeeze through the tiniest of gaps (wishful thinking, I know the feeling).
Because the heifers were small, the vet was concerned that they might not be able to calve if left full term so she was very keen to induce them in the hopes that we might get live calves, but at least the heifers would survive. This goes against our wishes and beliefs, but we took the vet's advice and had the heifers induced and moved "Daisy", "Bluey" and "Simmi" onto the "maternity ward" at the back of the cowshed. We also got stuck in to meeting neighbours, connecting with farmers on the internet and via email, reading books, magazine and web sites for information.
Although the injections should have had a fairly quick effect, we waited an agonising week before the next one calved. "Daisy", a Belgian Blue Cross. We found him one morning lying rather limply but still warm and alive on the hay with Daisy munching rather disinterestedly with her mates the other side of the yard. We moved her and her calf to the calving pen we'd rigged up. She was definitely not impressed (until we appeared with some barley). A neighbour had popped by and suggested that we milked her and got some colostrum into the little one. By now we had a cow halter and a couple of bottles with teats at the ready and we got our first hands on experience of milking a cow. Now Daisy didn't like this at all, but she had plenty of milk flowing out of her. The little white calf was lying on the straw, like the first one, he didn't have any strength in his legs and didn't have any sucking reflex. We poured the warm, rich milk from Daisy into the bottle and set to trying to get some into the calf. Some made it, a lot dribbled over me and the surrounding straw. We had an encouraging audience and things looked to be going OK, then suddenly it was as if someone turned the power off and the little calf that a few seconds ago had been watching and moo-ing and dribbling just went limp in my arms and that was it. We'd lost our second one.
Because Daisy had so much milk, one of our neighbours suggested we might like to get a calf from another farm and try her out with him. Whilst we cleared up and called the hunt, he went off on an explore and returned a few hours later with a little Hereford Cross bull calf. He was about ten days old and bounced around the pen gleefully. Daisy was still unimpressed. We were assured that he would get very persistent when he was hungry and to leave them to it. So we did for the rest of that day.
Daisy got fuller, the calf didn't seem bothered and we got concerned that we hadn't seen him suckling. Daisy had a good kick on her (as we could testify) and we were concerned that he might get hurt in the search for nourishment. So we devised a cunning plan. We encouraged Daisy into a cubicle with a bucket of barley and put the head collar on her then she would grudgingly let calfy suckle whilst she ate the barley. When she was done, so was he, like it or not!
A few days respite and we found "Bluey" one late afternoon puffing and blowing. We hastily made another makeshift calving pen and moved Daisy and Calfy to it whilst we took Bluey into the first one ('cos it had light and a place to tie the cow up if needs be) and waited. I had never seen a calf being born other than on the TV so Bluey gave us a real gift.
Soon we saw one hoof. By now we knew this was NOT a good sign. Two is good, pointing down, with a nose following on. She puffed and panted some more and a little nose appeared, but still only one hoof. Now, when do you step in and when do you let nature do it's thing? We were watching and waiting when a friend arrived who had grown up on his dad's farm and helped several cows to calve. She was bellowing and pushing and the little one seemed to be rather stuck. The bad news was that she soon seemed to get tired and the nose appeared then disappeared, then appeared again and so on. Our friend advised us to find the calving ropes suggesting that this cow needed some help. So, with much haste and little ceremony, Bluey's calf was born, sadly dead on arrival and Bluey also flooded with milk. She paid a lot of attention to her calf which made us wonder if she would make a "better" suckler mum for Calfy. Daisy had had enough and attempted to jump out of the makeshift pen getting stuck halfway across the gate, so we let her and Calfy back into the pen with Bluey to see if he would choose which mum he preferred.
Although Bluey would also kick out, she was much more docile and didn't need a head collar, so we let Daisy out with the herd and brought Bluey to feed Calfy each day. It was not a match made in heaven, but both of them taught us a great deal about handling cows and calves. We learned about feeding and one day when Calfy just had too much to drink he got sick. He also got the scours and gave us an insight into the life of a little one. One day he got out of his pen. We were sitting in the house having lunch and suddenly saw the herd charging out of the barn into the yard. Then they all turned round and charged from the yard back into the barn. As we were wondering what had got into them we spotted four tiny feet in the middle of it all! They were having such fun frolicking around with this little chap. Because we were concerned about him getting out of the yard and potential harm coming to the cows as they charged around, we put a stop to his little game and settled him back in his pen where he curled up and went straight to sleep!
Just between Christmas and New Year (Christmas did happen somewhere in there, but we were running rather fast through this whole time so we sort of passed it by, despite having family visitors), Simmi had her calf. She was the most beautiful baby of the lot. A pretty light brown colour with a little white forehead. But, like the others, she was small, almost hairless, didn't get up and didn't suck. Simmi didn't have much milk either. We found her early in the morning and within half an hour, this little one had passed on. It was as if their bodies had been born, but their spirit's hadn't.
We remain especially and eternally grateful to these four cows, Mum, Daisy, Bluey and Simmi for teaching us what they have about looking after cows, calving, milking and suckling, life and death, being present with what is and acceptance.
Whilst all this was going on, we were learning other things about farming:- how to keep the tractor going - where to find the cheapest battery, how to fix a dodgy terminal connection
- that you can't jump start a tractor from a Shogun (desperate measures you know!)
- the wonders of plastic pipe joints and what a really bad idea it is to have water pipes run along the roof of the barn by the ventilation holes in the winter
- that a cow will drink a litre of water for every kilo of live weight each day (twenty-six cows averaging three hundred kilo's that's a lot of water when you're needing to ferry it from the house to the barn 'cos the pipes are frozen!)
- that rats love barley and will eat through almost anything (including concrete!) to get to it
- the flow of slurry and dirty water around the farm
- and last but definitely not least, the value of good and caring neighbours
And so we ended the year 2000 on our farm with twenty-six cows and a little calf (who was a bit off colour) and frozen pipes in the barn.
At 9:30pm on New Year's Eve, we were in our overalls and wellies wearing our "plumbers" hats fixing some unwanted water features which had appeared in the dairy as the freeze of the previous day began to thaw. We did make it to a friend's party around 10:30pm. It seemed like a good place to find out where we would find a plumbers merchant open on New Years Day in this neck of the woods!