Last Calf

The first calf of 2021 was born just after 10pm on a Friday night, March 19th, and the last arrived shortly before midday on Sunday 27th June, just in time for Ian to go on a family walk.

When I arrived at the farm to feed the calves soon after 7am on Sunday morning, Ian was sitting on the stone wall beside the gate into the paddock.

“She’s not getting on,” he sighed, nodding towards the black cow lying in the shade beneath the special ash tree that has a secret hole at the base of its trunk. Elle finds owl pellets in this hole and a tiny deck chair sits within the hollow in case a passing grandchild needs a hiding place.

“Hmmm,” I said in the absence of any useful knowledge whatsoever. And then - feeling anxious about my poor quality communication - I snatched at a random piece of information, “Could it be another twisted uterus?”

“No,” said Ian. “She’s not even started pushing yet.”

“Right,” I said, in a tone that I hoped sounded both sage and steady.

Ian yawned and pushed himself off the wall. “Her slacks have gone though so it can’t be long now.”

I nodded my partial understanding and turned towards the dairy, “Right then. I’ll put the kettle on for the calves.”

Ian went to the barn to fill the yellow bucket with barley cake for the cows in the paddock while I took the lid off the big blue barrel and scooped milk substitute powder into the calf buckets, one mugful for each calf. The milk substitute for bucket-reared calves looks and smells like custard powder and leaning into the barrel to find the measuring mug leaves my hands sugared with a soft primrose dust.

The kettle in the dairy takes forever to boil which gives me time to open the door to the calf hull and say good morning to the calves. On Sunday morning, I leant against the door of the dairy, listening to the kettle roiling to a crescendo, and considered the very little that I know about calving cows. I am pretty sure that ‘slime’ is a mucus produced when the cow’s cervical plug comes away and I understand that loosening of the slacks means that the cow’s pelvic ligaments have relaxed. The black cow that wasn’t getting on had been bagged up for days and, after three months of calving, I know that this season involves daily Udder Watch for signs of bag development. When I first heard the phrase ‘bagging up’, I thought that Ian had x-ray vision that allowed him to observe that the cow’s uterus was at full term stretch. Or perhaps that cows did something peculiar with large black plastic bags before giving birth, just as human mums-to-be pack a bag for the hospital.

And then there is the mysterious matter of sugar puffs. I first heard about sugar puffs during lambing and because it was breakfast time, or thereabouts, I assumed that Vicky was talking about cereals. The context (a ewe’s bottom) did seem a bit odd but I put Vicky’s confusion down to lambing time exhaustion and thought no more of it. Then the phrase popped up again but this time it was far too late in the day to have anything to do with breakfast cereal so I summoned my courage and asked Vicky, “Um, sugar puffs …?”

“Lady bits,” she said. “Vulvas.”

“Ah.” I nodded.

“They puff up before lambing. It happens with cows too.”

Armed with this excellent knowledge, I texted Ian about a swollen pink sugar puff sometime late in April after I’d spent ten minutes studying a cow in the barn. “The red cow is going to calf in the next few hours,” I wrote. “She’s all sugar puffed.” His reply came swiftly: “She’s just sitting down.”

Since then, and realising that cows’ genitals are not so easy to read, I have refrained from sugar puff analysis. I did read that the veterinary term is a ‘springing’ of the vulva but I am going nowhere near the topic ever again. Instead, I hold tight to the lesson that I learned one afternoon while mucking out. Passing the calving barn, I spotted that one of the cows had a hoof-in-a-bag poking out of her bottom. I yelled at Ian who was moving a bale with the tractor. He leaned down to shout, “Check that its two hooves. It needs to be two hooves with the front of the hooves pointing upwards.”

I grasped the fact that the almost-born-calf needs to be in a forwards dive position and ran back to the barn to check. Then I puffed my return to the tractor, my waterproof trousers rustling furiously as I jogged across the yard. “It’s one hoof and its upside down.” Ian shook his head, sighed, then turned off the tractor engine. He climbed down from the cab and turned towards the barn, rolling up his sleeves as he went.

On Sunday morning, I fed my calves, gave them fresh water and granola and scattered sawdust over the most urine-soggy patches of straw. Then I went home for breakfast, taking the route that passed the paddock. The black cow rested beneath the tree and there was still no sign of a calf. It didn’t look as if Ian would be able to go on his family walk because, as he put it, during calving he has to be “there when it matters.”

As it turns out, he was there when it mattered and my phone pinged at 11.50am with a picture of a tiny grey smudge in the shade beneath the ash tree and a short message: “At last a little calf hope its not twins.” I interpreted this message to mean that the calving had been straightforward, the calf was well, the mother was doing all the right things and that Ian could go on his walk as long as I checked on the cow and calf later, just in case an unexpected twin emerged during the afternoon.

Bruno and I reached the paddock at about 3pm and stood at the little gate closest to the farmhouse. The new calf wasn’t under the ash tree. I frowned, worry stirring immediately. I cut through the yard, passing the empty bull pen, and stood at the big gate into the field. Still no glimpse of mum and calf. Bruno and I walked alongside the cow cubicles and passed the redcurrant bushes behind the silage pit. Guessing our route, Bruno panted at the gate into the second field and then gambled along the wall-line, chasing rabbit scents. I went after him, dodging thistles, and stopped by the entrance into the paddock. And there was the black cow, grazing at the back of the Dutch barn, her pale grey Charolais calf stumbling at her side. I watched the calf for a few minutes: a heifer as far as I could see, long-legged and determined even though brand new and wobbly. “A wick calf,” I muttered to myself. “Good lass.”