The cow thread

The farm I worked on was huge. We had dairy and beef cattle, but we also had different breeds of cattle of each. The owner told us that he takes orders for his beef and then raises the breed needed to suit the orders. As for milk herds, most were Holsteins, but we also had a small herd of Golden Guernseys that were mainly for show, but also their milk was in demand by several customers locally. Guernsey milk is higher in content of protein and Vitamin D than the Holstein milk. GG milk is also more expensive.

I told stories before about our Angus bull named Satan. I gave him the name because he was mean and ornery. Satan was a huge, 2000 pound Angus bull. He was the longest bull I ever saw, even at the fairs. I never enjoyed taking him out to pasture, so our foreman, Randy had a ring put in his nose. We had a rope with a hook on the ends and I would put one hook through his nose ring and one hook to the back of the smaller tractor and lead him out to the pasture that way. By the way, he also still had his horns on, so he was dangerous.

I went to get him one day and I noticed he was limping on his left hind leg. I stopped the tractor and went to check him out and to see if I could see any blood coming from his leg. I didn’t see anything, so I very slowly took him out to pasture and released him. I went and found Randy and told him that Satan had a bum hoof or leg. He looked at him, but Satan wouldn’t let him raise his leg to check his hoof, so he decided to call the Vet and let him deal with it.

The Vet had to sedate him. It took that bull almost a half hour to go down. When the Vet checked his leg and hoof, he found a kind of large stone wedged into his hoof. After he got the stone out, the Vet had to clean out the hoof and cut some of the material around where the stone was. He put some kind of powder (copper sulfate) on the wound and wrapped it. My first and only question to the Vet was, who is going to remove the wrapping he had just put on. He said “You are.” I shook my head no and the Vet said that Satan would get it off by walking or dragging his hoof, but he would get it off.

We left him out in the pasture the rest of the day, so he could get rid of the sedation. After that, I took him back to his stall just before dark and gave him some Alfalfa and a mixture of corn and beans. He ate good that evening. A few days later, the limp was completely gone and the wrapping was slowly coming off.
 

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I was never around farm animals much, but one of my high school friends lived on a farm and when I would go to his house for whatever reason, I felt like holding my nose. It seemed like every time I went there, they were either spreading manure or commercial fertilizer. It smelled bad.

His family had a large dairy herd. I had just got done playing a baseball game and decided to stop and see my friend. He noticed I was kind of dirty so he said to follow him, he had something to show me. One of the cows gave birth the night before and he wanted to show me the new calf. I didn’t know why, but I went along with him. He had to run back to the house and said to wait there so I did.

He yelled from the house to come up there. As I turned to walk, the mother cow stepped back and stepped right on my foot. It hurt like the dickens. The next morning, I couldn’t walk on it. I missed the next two weeks of baseball, which really upset me. After I was able to play again, all was forgotten. I was more careful when I was around cows after that episode.
 
I grew up with a dairy farm across he street. We played there and made friends with the animals, My first cat came from there as a kitten. When the farm was developed in the late 50s much of it was saved as green space. The old homestead now faces a pretty park.
 

Cow-related Words Used on Australian Cattle Stations​


Cleanskin - cattle with no brand
Scrubber - cunning wild cattle that hide in scrub (land that is covered by small bushes)
Muster - gathering the cattle together in a mob
Rush - group of cattle that take fright and rush off (stampede)
Pad - track made by cattle.
Cow Pat - Cow dung
Cow — adult female
Bull — adult or young adult male
Bullock — adult male that has been castrated
Steer — young adult male that has been castrated
Heifer — young adult female that is old enough to breed, or nearly so. Heifers have not had a calf, or they have only just had one.
Weaner - a calf that is old enough to be weaned from its mother
Calf — baby bovine, too young to breed
Poddy calf — a calf that has lost its mother so it has been handfed — usually starting on milk, then hay and/or calf pellets (or just good grass).
Cracker cow (northern Australia only) — scrubby, poor quality cow good for not much at all (usually too bony even for the meat-works). Cracker cow is a term also used in Florida and southern Georgia (U.S.) to mean a poor quality scrub beast.
 

Clarabelle the Former Dairy Cow Finally Gets to Keep One of Her Babies​


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Cows have strong maternal instincts, forming close bonds with their babies. It’s no wonder dairy cows cry out in distress for hours, even days, when their calves are torn from their sides within hours of being born.
Clarabelle spent the first several years of her life on an Australian dairy farm, enduring this heartbreaking cycle every 9 months: forcibly impregnated, carrying her baby to term, giving birth, losing her baby so that her milk could be harvested for human consumption, and forcibly impregnated again.
But then Clarabelle’s luck changed …
Instead of being sent to slaughter when she was deemed no longer ‘productive’ enough, a very pregnant Clarabelle was welcomed to Edgar’s Mission Farm Sanctuary.
And despite her growing trust in her human carers at Edgar’s, she had her own plans for this birth…
Clarabelle gave birth to her dear Valentine quietly in a wooded corner of her paddock, and actively hid her new baby — moving her around to a different inconspicuous spot on the property each day, ever watchful of the humans who approached her baby.
It was clear to the team at Edgar’s Mission that Clarabelle, scarred from the trauma of having every one of her previous babies taken from her, was determined to ensure that this time around was different; and indeed it was.
For the first time in her life, Clarabelle has been able to raise her calf with the all the affectionate love you’d expect from a doting mother, and her baby will be by her side for the rest of her life.
 

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