Milking Time

When you raise cattle you have to be ready to deal with the occasional emergency. During calving season, which for us in early spring, you tend to spend a lot of time in the barn supervising deliveries. If you are lucky, then the reward is seeing a wobbly calf take it's first steps and nudge mom's udder for his first meal. Then you can take a step back, congratulate the proud mama and return to bed. However, occasionally things don't work out like you expect.

For some strange reason, you will sometimes get a cow that just isn't too thrilled with the idea of being a mother. Usually, these are first time heifers, or cows that haven't had a calf before. Now if they had already done this a time or two, I might be able to sympathise with the problem. After all there have been a few times in my life when I've questioned the decision to be a mother myself. However, there is that rare time, when instead of murmuring coos of encouragement to the little, unsteady creature trying to get to the milk wagon, the new mom will take one look at her offspring and decide to take a different career path. She usually signals this by side-stepping away from the calf or even going so far as to kick it away from her. It is truly a pitiful sight to see the little fellow trying to totter after mama as she sidles away.

We were standing the barn in the wee hours of the morning facing just this problem. It had been a long delivery but mother and calf were both healthy and fine. Now we stood watching as the little black calf struggled to get his long legs organized and stand up. It is always amazing to me to see them figure it out. Soon he was on his feet and taking his first steps toward mama. Up to this time she had been watching him patiently, if a little apprehensively. He took a few steps and nuzzled up to her flank, trying to figure out where the faucets were. She turned her head and looked at him with a look that said, "You want to do what?" Right then we knew we had trouble.

For the next hour we encouraged, prodded, and cajoled the cow to let the calf nurse. She refused all attempts and finally decided she wasn't letting that little creature anywhere near her. Hubby pushed his hat back and said he had had enough of this. Being an old dairy farmer he knew there were ways of getting milk. In no time he had her in the chute and a bucket between his knees. One small problem, this wasn't an old dairy cow that had been milked before. This was an Angus cow that didn't have any milk cow genes or memories to call on. She took immediate objection to the whole process. Hubby was an old hand at fractious cows and he soon had her off balance enough she couldn't kick and milk streaming into the bucket. Soon we had a bottle fixed and the baby had enough milk to settle him down. We left them in the barn penning side by side to have a little time to become acquainted. Usually, this will solve the problem and by the next morning she has had a change of heart.

The next morning Hubby goes off to work and the kids go the barn to feed. Our son put the cow and calf together to see what happened. She still wasn't having any of this foolishness. Not being long on patience (what teenager is?) he decided that if daddy could milk her for the baby so could he. So into the chute she goes. Son settles down with his bucket and pulls on her udder. She promptly kicks him in the leg. He decides he can stop that so he gets some baling twine and ties her foot to the fence by the chute. He grabs her again. She swipes her, none to clean, tail across his face. So he gets some more string and ties her tail to the rafter just behind her. Once more he tries. She attempts to get her head around to him, so he puts a halter on her and ties it to the front of the chute.

Some time later I arrive at the barn to find the cow, with every available appendage tied to something and son struggling for all he's worth to get a dribble of milk in the pail. After what seemed to be an eternity to all involved he finally had enough to give the calf a short bottle. In frustration he called his dad to bring him some calf supplement from the feed store and turned the cow and calf back into the stall.

Hubby arrived later with the supplies to find the mama cow peacefully nuzzling her baby as he finished nursing. She evidently decided that after the mornings entertainment nursing a calf looked pretty good to her.