Tuesday, March 18
Yesterday turned into one of those seemingly simple days that ends up being complicated.
The first hitch was at morning milking, when Sitar, one of the new heifers, decided to make a pain in the ass of herself. There was a bit of a ruckus which ended up with her tearing down a few lines of fence and ending up with the springers. Remember that. It becomes important later.
Dad decided not to get her out, since we were going to be running the springers up in the afternoon to get their selinium shots anyway. Now, this is a pretty simple task. Cow goes in the shoot, we catch her in the head gate, she gets a shot in the neck, she goes. It can get hairy because the older cows recognize the head shoot and want nothing to do with it, but in general, this is not a difficult thing.
Not today.
About three cows along the dog snapped at Freedom, the cow I was bringing in, and I turned around to yell at him. This just happened to be the point when my mother had turned around to go out and get some more cows in and my father had turned around to fill his syringe, and Freedom just happened to be the first cow who didn't balk at the headgate and instead thought something along the lines of "Fuck it, I'll just hit it as fast as I can instead," and Freedom also just happened to be a relatively young, small cow. Result? She managed to get not just her head, but her entire front end through the headgate before anyone caught on.
Now this is not a good position for a cow to be in. She'd managed to get that far because a cow's ribcage is sort of triangle-shaped, wider at the back than the front, and it does flex some, but the minute the bars of the gate got past her ribcage it'd sprung back to its full size. Therefore there was no way to back her up. And behind a cow's ribcage are her hipbones, the widest parts of her body and something which does *not* flex. Therefore there was no way she could go forward either. She was well and truly stuck and already having trouble breathing and, being a cow, she was panicking.
Dad yelled at us to hold her before she hurt herself and we did, and it's at this point I became very, very glad that we have Jerseys and not Holsteins. For one thing, a Holstein would have weighed twice as much. For another, the two breeds have completely different panic responses. A Holstein's response to a bad situation is to strike out with all four feet *and* her head and smash everything and everyone she can into kindling. A Jersey's response is to roll her eyes back in her head, stick out her tongue, and go limp. Passive resistance cows. Ghandi would have loved them.
So anyway, we're now trying to keep 500 pounds of cow upright, but at least we're not being mutaliated - well, she did stand on my foot, but only for a minute and a half, and she didn't break any toes. My dad managed to loosen some bolts on the gate and let her breathe, but the rest of the bolts were stuck in place. We were trying to hold her upright and force her ribs to fold back under the hinges of the gate at the same time while my dad beat on things and swore, and it looked for a long time like we were going to have to use the cutting torch to get her out, but finally something sprung enough for us to back her up. She promptly, and probably sensibly, ran away.
Nothing went right after that. The cows were antsy and nutty - I got rolled by one girl who suddenly decided she was *not* going in there, adding a bruised ass and a scraped palm and very nearly a lot of hoofprint-shaped bruises to my repoitare of injuries. One heifer charged the gate we were using to direct her into the headgate and actually made it through. And then Sitar (remember Sitar?) who we'd been saving for last so we could put her back in with the milking herd, went absolutely crackercow on us. She *cleared* the gate (almost) and went charging down the alley, breaking a perfectly good bungie cord we'd been using to hold the thing shut, and she tried to jump every single bloody gate she hit while we were bringing her back, and then, when we had her right up to the headgate, she decided to turn and jump the wall of the squeeze chute too.
It was at that point that her luck ran out. She'd overestimated her jumping ability, and rather than clearing the wall she made it about halfway across and flopped. She was now in just about as bad a position as Freedome had been in earlier. The wall was just short enough that she couldn't really fall in either direction, but just tall enough that she could only get one set of feet on the ground at a time. She ended up sort of kicking and bawling and weaving back and forth like a teeter-totter.
"Hold her nose," my dad snarled, and Sitar got her shot right there. Then Dad went in back of her and, with very much effort, managed to lift her back end over the wall, while Sitar bawled some more and squirted milk everywhere and I hovered helplessly. Nobody got hurt - either Sitar *or* my dad - but it was a bloody miracle.
The day went up from there, though. Lucy, who we knew was carrying twins, finally had them, and, miraculously, they were both alive, healthy, and *heifers*. Twin heifers are quite rare, so we were thrilled. Since Lucy's formal name is Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds the twins have been dubbed Lil and Nancy, and Lucy looks like she's doing well too. Cows aren't really built for twins, so this is another minor miracle.
Oh, and Sitar is behaving *very well* in the parlour these days, and she hasn't tried to jump *anything*.
The first hitch was at morning milking, when Sitar, one of the new heifers, decided to make a pain in the ass of herself. There was a bit of a ruckus which ended up with her tearing down a few lines of fence and ending up with the springers. Remember that. It becomes important later.
Dad decided not to get her out, since we were going to be running the springers up in the afternoon to get their selinium shots anyway. Now, this is a pretty simple task. Cow goes in the shoot, we catch her in the head gate, she gets a shot in the neck, she goes. It can get hairy because the older cows recognize the head shoot and want nothing to do with it, but in general, this is not a difficult thing.
Not today.
About three cows along the dog snapped at Freedom, the cow I was bringing in, and I turned around to yell at him. This just happened to be the point when my mother had turned around to go out and get some more cows in and my father had turned around to fill his syringe, and Freedom just happened to be the first cow who didn't balk at the headgate and instead thought something along the lines of "Fuck it, I'll just hit it as fast as I can instead," and Freedom also just happened to be a relatively young, small cow. Result? She managed to get not just her head, but her entire front end through the headgate before anyone caught on.
Now this is not a good position for a cow to be in. She'd managed to get that far because a cow's ribcage is sort of triangle-shaped, wider at the back than the front, and it does flex some, but the minute the bars of the gate got past her ribcage it'd sprung back to its full size. Therefore there was no way to back her up. And behind a cow's ribcage are her hipbones, the widest parts of her body and something which does *not* flex. Therefore there was no way she could go forward either. She was well and truly stuck and already having trouble breathing and, being a cow, she was panicking.
Dad yelled at us to hold her before she hurt herself and we did, and it's at this point I became very, very glad that we have Jerseys and not Holsteins. For one thing, a Holstein would have weighed twice as much. For another, the two breeds have completely different panic responses. A Holstein's response to a bad situation is to strike out with all four feet *and* her head and smash everything and everyone she can into kindling. A Jersey's response is to roll her eyes back in her head, stick out her tongue, and go limp. Passive resistance cows. Ghandi would have loved them.
So anyway, we're now trying to keep 500 pounds of cow upright, but at least we're not being mutaliated - well, she did stand on my foot, but only for a minute and a half, and she didn't break any toes. My dad managed to loosen some bolts on the gate and let her breathe, but the rest of the bolts were stuck in place. We were trying to hold her upright and force her ribs to fold back under the hinges of the gate at the same time while my dad beat on things and swore, and it looked for a long time like we were going to have to use the cutting torch to get her out, but finally something sprung enough for us to back her up. She promptly, and probably sensibly, ran away.
Nothing went right after that. The cows were antsy and nutty - I got rolled by one girl who suddenly decided she was *not* going in there, adding a bruised ass and a scraped palm and very nearly a lot of hoofprint-shaped bruises to my repoitare of injuries. One heifer charged the gate we were using to direct her into the headgate and actually made it through. And then Sitar (remember Sitar?) who we'd been saving for last so we could put her back in with the milking herd, went absolutely crackercow on us. She *cleared* the gate (almost) and went charging down the alley, breaking a perfectly good bungie cord we'd been using to hold the thing shut, and she tried to jump every single bloody gate she hit while we were bringing her back, and then, when we had her right up to the headgate, she decided to turn and jump the wall of the squeeze chute too.
It was at that point that her luck ran out. She'd overestimated her jumping ability, and rather than clearing the wall she made it about halfway across and flopped. She was now in just about as bad a position as Freedome had been in earlier. The wall was just short enough that she couldn't really fall in either direction, but just tall enough that she could only get one set of feet on the ground at a time. She ended up sort of kicking and bawling and weaving back and forth like a teeter-totter.
"Hold her nose," my dad snarled, and Sitar got her shot right there. Then Dad went in back of her and, with very much effort, managed to lift her back end over the wall, while Sitar bawled some more and squirted milk everywhere and I hovered helplessly. Nobody got hurt - either Sitar *or* my dad - but it was a bloody miracle.
The day went up from there, though. Lucy, who we knew was carrying twins, finally had them, and, miraculously, they were both alive, healthy, and *heifers*. Twin heifers are quite rare, so we were thrilled. Since Lucy's formal name is Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds the twins have been dubbed Lil and Nancy, and Lucy looks like she's doing well too. Cows aren't really built for twins, so this is another minor miracle.
Oh, and Sitar is behaving *very well* in the parlour these days, and she hasn't tried to jump *anything*.
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