I admit that I’m more than a little superstitious. I’ve been known to turn around in the middle of the road and take another route to my destination just to avoid the path of that black cat that had scampered across the highway ahead of me and I try to avoid any important plans whenever Friday the 13th rolls around. As far as stepladders and umbrellas go – they scare the heck out of me. It’s precisely because of these phobias that I knew I’d made a major blunder a couple of weeks ago when a neighbor asked, “How’s your calving season going, Jerry?”
Before even thinking, I enthusiastically replied, “It’s the best spring calving I’ve ever had.” My mistake was obvious but, unfortunately, I couldn’t grab those words and cram them back down my big mouth. Everyone knows you don’t get prematurely giddy over something that’s a long way from being completed. Remember the tortoise and the hare?
It was true, to that point, that this spring’s birthing bonanza had been successful. The unusually dry winter accompanied by much warmer than normal temperatures had enabled my cows to shell those babies out like spitting watermelon seeds. Of the first 110 born, I had lost only two calves. The very first calf born died on the fifth day from no apparent cause and I found another cow bawling over a dead calf a few weeks later. Comparing this season to the blizzard of 2011 when I lost 12 of the first 60 born was a no-brainer but, again, I should have kept quiet.
The very next day after making the comment, I had to call my veterinarian to dart a cow in a far, back pasture to retrieve a monster calf that she could never have delivered by herself. It was dead, but the cow was saved.
On the next day, I observed a cow in trouble with a head and one leg exposed. I got her to the corral and proceeded to extract the calf. It was alive, but when I went back to the cow, I found that she had prolapsed far beyond anything I’d ever witnessed. She didn’t make it.
Twenty-four hours later, a neighbor left an ominous message on my machine telling me that he had happened by and saw yet another cow in trouble beside the road and he had stopped and delivered it, but I’d better get to that farm quickly. The calf was dead and the cow was paralyzed. She did get up that afternoon and I was able to bring her to the home place and graft onto her, the orphan calf from the prolapsed cow.
The next morning, after coming up a cow short on my count at the north place, I searched the woods and found a live baby and a severely crippled momma. The calf was about two weeks past due and surely was the largest calf ever born on my farm. It’s now a bottle calf and we’re still hauling water and feed to the cow on a daily basis. If only I’d told my neighbor, “Eh, it’s so-so.”
So, now, all of you non-farmers know why farmers are so pessimistic when you ask them any question about their business. When you’re sure they have received a bountiful rainfall, they’ll most likely answer, “We’ll need it this summer. I hope it keeps raining.” We don’t want to jinx the climate into a drought.
Or if you ask them how their crops are doing, they will recite a litany of pestilence or blight that will most assuredly attack the plants that are doing good so far. Again, this procedure should help to ward off the possible catastrophes.
Yes, my calving troubles are nobody’s fault but my own. I will never make the mistake again of feeling good about a situation that is yet to be completed. And, just as a comment to my city friends that don’t know any better, who are constantly asking me if I love the current high beef prices, I say, “They need to go even higher so I can pay my bills for higher feed, fertilizer and fuel prices.”
Jerry Crownover is a farmer and former professor of Agriculture Education at Missouri State University. He is a native of Baxter County, Arkansas, and an author and professional speaker. To contact Jerry about his books, or to arrange speaking engagements, you may contact him by calling 1-866-532-1960 or visiting ozarksfn.com and clicking on ‘Contact Us.’
