Cowgirl Sass & Savvy

A little cow psychology

by Julie Carter

It's still winter and so far, not much sign of that letting up. While we turn up the thermostat to knock the chill off the house, or burn up another cord of wood doing the same, it is also a time of new life making its way into the world.

Calving and foaling are annual payday events, as is lambing, kidding and other birthings for those in the livestock industry.

For every new baby that hits the ground, the stories are the same - smooth going with a happy ending or a bad deal with some sort of heartbreak involved (financial or emotional).

Count on it. The best brood mare on the place, proven to consistently throw moneymaking colts, will be the one that absolutely will not, under any circumstances, drop her colt on the ground if she's in a barn, foaling stall or anywhere except outside in the elements.

She's the one that will keep a cowboy up at night checking on her, tripping through the ice and snow, flashlight in hand, making sure nothing has gone wrong. The science of knowing "when" the blessed event is going to happen narrows the watch down to weeks, but even with a lifetime of experience and noting the sign of the moon, it is a prediction at best.

It is the same way with those aggravating heifers having their first calves. Not only will they surprise you when they have that baby, but they are just as likely to get up and walk away from it if circumstances don't let their instincts give full focus to what just happened to them.

That wet, mewling thing on the ground next to them isn't necessarily something they understand.

It is those nuances to the calving/foaling business that keep it interesting and continue the requirement of the all- night watch.

It was a late winter afternoon when the cowboy made his last check of the first-calf heifer herd in the pasture. The black cattle were bedding down and blending into the darkness falling over the landscape.

His count came up one short. He drove, walked, looked and as darkness got ahead of him, he still hadn't been able to spot her. Not overly concerned since black cattle and darkness make for a difficult visual, he went back to the barns and finished up his chores.

About 8 o'clock, he returned to the pasture, thinking that now the cattle would all be bedded down in a bunch and he could get a better count.

When he pulled into the pasture, the cattle were nowhere to be seen in their usual bedding grounds. He drove to all the spots he would normally find them and found nothing.

Finally, he located them. They were bunched up on the back side of the pasture, up against the fence and all looking the same direction with some snorting and wary breathing rustling the night air.

When the cowboy followed the cattle's gaze, he saw a little glow-in-the-dark all-white baby calf lying off in the grass. His first chuckle was in recognition that obviously somebody's Charolais bull had come visiting at one time or another and the second was at the reaction of the heifers to this "thing" in their pasture.

He was quickly over the humor of it and into the aggravation when not one of them acted like they might be the mama to the new baby. Too dark to investigate, he loaded the baby up, took him to the house and rustled up a bottle and some milk to get him through the night.

The next day he rode out horseback and quickly located the heifer with the tight bag and haughty attitude.

Some nylon rope therapy made her think she wanted to load into the trailer where the white baby calf awaited.

She proceeded to try to kick the tarnation out of the calf every time he tried to partake of a little milk, which earned her some more nylon adornment, this time in the form of hobbling her legs to either side of the trailer.

Once immobilized, the calf filled his belly and she regained her motherly composure, deciding maybe that little white critter wasn't so bad after all.

A happy ending to an all too common tale of calving-time cow psychology.

Julie can be reached for comment at jcarter@tularosa.net.