They say the mind is the first thing to go. I have never been able to figure out who they are, but there are days when I think they might be right.
My calving season is almost finished, but I’ve got a few stragglers that I have to check each morning before I begin my day’s regular activities. So, as I pulled into the creek place, I wasn’t surprised to see a newborn calf lying on the bank of the stream. As I approached the calf in my truck, a red cow strolled over to it. The vast majority of my cows are identified by a four-digit number on their ear tag and that’s the number I use to keep my records, but this cow had lost that tag and I identified her by the tag remaining in her other ear, most likely from the farm where she originated. It read No. 41. I could have sworn that No. 41 had already calved, so I retrieved the records from my smartphone and, sure enough, No. 41, a red cow, had delivered a live, healthy, red heifer…six weeks ago. Was I losing my mind? I’ve seen twins born a day apart, but six weeks apart? I watched the newborn follow the No. 41 cow into the woods while I scratched my head in amazement and began driving through the rest of the herd to see if I could possibly figure out what was going on. After fifteen minutes of driving from cow to cow, I found another red cow, which had lost her four-digit tag as well, and lo and behold, her farm tag also read No. 41. Looking at her udder, I concluded that she was suckling a calf and that was the one I had entered in my electronic records. What are the odds that two red cows (the majority of my herd is black) would have both lost their original tags and the back-up tag on each would be No. 41.
When I got back home that morning, I relayed the incredulous story to my wife and she found it as odd and amazing as I did. “You’d better go back this afternoon and check on the new calf,” she instructed, “You know, you have been known to get confused from time to time.” Now, I was beginning to figure out who they, actually is.
Late afternoon, before the sunset, I returned to the creek place to check on the newborn calf and its mother. I found them in the edge of the woods, with the little calf nursing his momma. They both seemed to be doing fine and my mind was somewhat eased compared to my flustered state of earlier in the day. I was chuckling to myself at the unusual circumstance which had presented itself, with two cows sporting the same number tag, when I looked closer at the cow with the newborn. There, I could now see, as plain as day, that her tag read No. 47, not No. 41.
They are wrong. Eyesight is the first thing to go.
