It’s late spring.
Pastures are deep and lush. Clover is in bloom. Trees are full. Wet-weather streams and rivulets babble in harmony with songbirds’ reveille.
June approaches.
This is the time of year, when I was a boy, that many of our cows freshened. Calving season was in full swing. It began early in the year and sometimes lingered well into winter; but, many calves were born just as grass was coming on.
That meant three or four full milk cans to cool and carry to the road in summer (though just one or two in the depths of winter as cows began to go dry). It meant calves to feed, too, but before that, cows and calves to locate.
No experience was more priceless than finding a healthy newborn heifer and mother hidden in a persimmon grove.
It was never a pure accident, but often an incredible stroke of luck, when we finally found the cow that didn’t come up with the rest at milk time, especially when searching 39 acres of pasture and brush with a kerosene lantern.
It was a greater thrill to find a heifer calf. A heifer meant another cow for our growing herd (bull calves went to the yards, where they barely paid the hauling bill).
I recall often standing by as the calf arose shakily to its feet and wobbled back – nudged by Moma – to nurse from the mother’s swollen udder. Some calves caught on more quickly than others, temporarily confused over which end of Moma housed the cafeteria.
Ultimately, all figured it out, which is something of a miracle in itself.
Jersey calves weren’t big, 50 to 60 pounds, I’m guessing. Generally, I could put my arms under one’s middle and carry it like an armload of firewood. Moma would walk beside, constantly checking her baby.
One of the first chores was to milk Moma out– or a least partially out– to ease the pain of the swollen udder. Her turgid bag and distended teats were tender and sore.
Because we were in the business of milking cows, and not raising calves, in a couple of days, after the colostrum cleared, we saved and sold all the milk, except for that we fed calves from nipple buckets. Dairy cows – even Jerseys – produced much more milk than a calf needed.
Dad, me and my brothers all had our chores to do. Because I was big enough to milk a cow by hand, feeding the calves usually fell to my younger brothers. We generally didn’t have too many calves at once, so we never bought milk replacer. As a matter of fact, Dad thought calves did better on real milk. Usually, they did.
The miracle of birth becomes commonplace on the farm. It was as true then with a small herd of Jerseys as it is today on a big beef ranch, maybe even more so. Difficult births were rare with our Jersey herd.
But, death, even if rare, was also part of the cycle, just as it is on farms today.
I’ve often thought about lessons we learned growing up on a farm, and concluded that understanding the life-death cycle is one of the most important.
To hold a newborn calf, to wipe the mucous from its mouth and help it nurse, to carry it to the barn, feed it and watch it flourish for several days, then turn suddenly weak and listless from scours illustrates how flickering and fragile is the flame of life.
It’s a hard lesson the first time a kid comes to the barn one morning and finds his calf lying dead in its pen. It’s hard every time, but that boy or girl learns that life truly is but a vapor in the wind.
The miracle, I suppose, is that we never learn to accept it.
We learn that life is not fair.
We learn than sick calves may die.
But, they may not.
Every calving season for years to come, we remember those we saved and those we lost. We know we can never take a life for granted.
That’s how it was when I was a boy on the farm.
For every boy or girl who yet has a cow, that’s how it is now.
A former feature writer for Ozarks Farm and Neighbor, Jim Hamilton is a retired newspaper editor/publisher. Hamilton was reared on a small dairy farm in Dallas County, Mo. Contact Jim at [email protected].
