Walking the Talk part III

Miss Jane Butterfield

Sorry to leave you hanging, we finally had a spell of dry days, and computer work just went by the wayside.  When you get July weather in April you burn the candle at both ends.  It seemed just like that we didn’t have to build a fire and dinner didn’t happen until dark.  For a fleeting moment it felt just like summer.

I’m sure long time readers remember me writing that I hadn’t ever eaten one of my milk cows, and that is entirely true.  Partly because I am a big wuss, and partly because most times when milk cows die they are sick.  Often you, or a vet has administered drugs that have long withholding times (possibly off label), or something is not right and you feel a little creeped out about eating the meat.  And sometimes, you find them dead.  It’s a whole different ballgame with beef cows, or at least on our farm.  They live a long time, and then one year they just don’t rebreed, or if they do breed they don’t raise a good-sized calf, and you have a cull cow.  She’s a cull only because she can’t have a calf, or raise a decent sized one, which doesn’t affect the meat at all, but the economics have to come into play, you still have to feed that animal.  Earning your keep is real.

Jane’s situation was more similar to the old beef cow ending. With her reproductive injury she couldn’t have another calf, or rather, shouldn’t.  At eight years of age, she was washed up as a family cow.  In the beef world they say a cow pays for her upbringing after five calves, Jane had six, with one of her twins dying.  So five live calves, we were even on the books as far as I was concerned.  This is where it gets tricky, I have never felt any of my milk cows owed me anything at the end.  Sorry beef girls, but the dairy girls raise a calf, and provide dairy products like milk, cream, butter, ghee and cheese, plus surplus skim milk and whey for pigs, and chickens.  That doesn’t count milk for the barn cats, dogs, and all the manure for the gardens. A family cow is a wondrous thing and the most economical animal on the farm.

I dreaded the decision I had to make.  I’ll be honest, at first I wouldn’t even entertain the thought of putting Jane in the freezer.  My inner wailing voice vowed to be gone the day of the event, and make my husband do the deed.  Quickly dispatch her in the woods and leave her there for the wild animals to cleanup.  One problem with that scenario. My husband DID NOT want to shoot another milk cow for me.  It’s one thing when one is suffering, but Jane wasn’t really suffering.  On to plan B, which was undecided in my mind.

About this time the Eagle Creek Fire took off (eventually burning 48,000 acres nearby), we had to evacuate and make hard decisions.  We could only take so much, and the thought of even trying to evacuate our cattle was mind-boggling.  We turned off the electric fence, turned the cattle loose and took Jory and our dogs and all the usual minutiae.  When faced with something as threatening as a forest fire you quickly realize how silly you are in the scheme of things.  My decision-making process about Jane had become much clearer.

I wasn’t sure about what to do, but I was definitely sure what I didn’t want to do.  I didn’t want to take her to the auction, and I didn’t want to haul her in and leave her at the plant we use for our beef.  I know you’re wondering why not, what’s the diff?  Well, it’s hard to explain to the casual ruminant observer.  For me anyway, my milk cows end up being like a pet, more like a dog if you will.  My beef cows retain their wildness, sure, I could probably hogtie one, or put one in the chute and milk them.  But that is not a relationship, and a relationship is what you have with a family cow.  Good, gentle family cows are solid gold.  Somewhere in all that mulling I decided we would milk her until Jory was of weaning age, eight or nine months, and then have mobile slaughter come and we would put her in the freezer. I slowly came around to the folly of wasting a perfectly healthy animal because of a silly notion that I couldn’t eat her.

I have to say in hindsight, because I didn’t see this coming at all, when I dried Jane up and only fed her twice a day and tended to her basic needs, I was able to create some distance between us. Distance is what I needed.  It started to feel like she was one of my other cows, feed, water, minerals, lather, rinse, repeat.

I had several acquaintances suggest that I keep her, just to avoid the inevitable.  I know they meant well, and coming from a horse culture I see why they would think I would keep a pet cow around since they kept horses until death’s door, all the while complaining about the expense.  But that type of mindset doesn’t sit well with me.  What no one sees from the outside is what a pain in the a$$ keeping an open cow is, they are dangerous. Spaying her was not an option I wanted to pursue either.  Every three weeks Jane would come in heat, and man, you better lookout or she would be riding you.  She varied a day or two on her cycle but if I went out in the morning and her full 100 gallon water trough (800 plus pounds!) was tipped over and shoved through the electric fence, I knew I had 24-36 hours of ridiculousness ahead.  We had left the hay loader in the field and just hadn’t gotten around to moving it, and that became the object of Jane’s desire enough so that she pushed it over humping it, and injured her udder.  Ugh.  I would love whoever writes the vegan propaganda about dairy cows being impregnated (AI) against their will in rape racks (squeeze chute) come a work here for a day when Jane was in heat.  But I digress, we promptly removed the hay loader and prayed for the udder injury to just be a bruise and not something that would possibly make her ill.  She healed but had a swollen quarter that would have been bad had we been able to continue milking her.

I had planned to not overwinter Jane, but as it turned out, the mobile slaughter guy was so booked he couldn’t get here until recently.  At the end Jane was fat and sassy, open and dry, a true retirement for a cow.  She spent the last four months with Jory on pasture, and she died instantly eating a special treat.  I felt her spirit leave her, in the end I felt silly.  How could I have not wanted to be there?  My regrets?  I cut her switch for a keepsake before she died and she looked silly I thought, maybe a little less dignified.  And I should have not bred her for that one last time, seeing her rib cage misshaped when she was but a carcass, I felt selfish putting my needs for a replacement calf from her before her well-being.  Things play out, how they play out.  I could have done all this a year earlier but I just wasn’t up to the task I guess.

 

“Cuds True”

I heart Jane

I learned a long time ago, with one of my dogs and one of my milk cows to not project my memories of the former on the replacement.  Everyone is different, including dogs and cows.  Jane was not Della, and Jory will not be Jane.  But I am a lucky milkmaid to have had Jane for those 8 short years.  No expectations Jory! Well, maybe just a few.