This isn’t the cheerful update I had hoped to give you all. No, instead I’m feeling down about everything, and the tone of this post reflects that. But it’s been long enough since my last post so I figured I should go ahead anyway. My mood isn’t about to get any better. Also, TRIGGER WARNING for somewhat graphic descriptions of cows dying.
We started work 32 days ago. The first week was hellish – struggling to find our footing on a new farm, no outside help, just us running the whole place. Our second night on the farm four of us were out in the paddock until nearly 11pm, some of us having been up since dawn. It was muddy, and the cow sunk down so far during calving that she couldn’t sit up again, slowly suffocating. We shoved hay bales under her shoulder to prop her up, gumboots sliding in the swamp, Chantel nearly tripping in the ankle deep hoof-prints from cows walking through earlier. I was shivering despite wearing two jackets. My ears ached from the icy air, having forgotten my beanie in the rush to get out and save the cow. I lost feeling in my nose and fingers. Eventually we were able to bring the tractor in, cautiously navigating the marsh, and haul the cow to her feet again. The calf was already dead, and the cow died unexpectedly about a week or so later.
It was on our ninth day that we realised this wasn’t going to work. Milking that afternoon took a long time, and it felt like everything had gone wrong. We have a metal bar in the cowshed, that we slide across the bale behind the last cow if there’s not enough of them left to fill the bale up to the gate. It's a six foot long bar, about two inches round, strong enough that it can stand having a 900kg cow slam into it without bending. Unfortunately it’s usually the jumpiest cows that are in the last half-row – new mothers, inherently skittish cows, the “damaged” cows with a missing eye or side of a foot. And this one cow got her legs hooked around it and somehow sent it flying up over the rail and smashing down into the pit, sliding several feet before stopping. Luckily nobody was in its path. Daddy was on the phone to Tom that night, telling him we couldn't keep going like this. Tom gave us two other workers after that, who do some of the milkings. But the workload is still heavy.
We lost a cow on day eleven. She’d been sick for several days and finally went down, stuck over on her side and by the time we got to her all the fight was gone. We tried anyway, our breaths fogging in the lights from the tractor, trying to sit her up enough to get hay bales under her shoulder like we did with the other one. She wouldn’t cooperate, her eyes already sinking into her skull, breaths loud and too far apart. Right as we tried to put the hip clamps on her to stand her up she stopped breathing. There was a moment of tense silence, and then the cow thrashed against the hay, head tilted back, eyes blank. There was nothing peaceful about her death. I walked away feeling horrified.
We lost two calves, one on day nine and another on day fourteen. Both breech, and although we pulled them out as fast as we could, provided them with fresh colostrum and attempted to clean out their lungs, they didn’t survive their first nights.
And despite determinedly watching the springers through all weather, we still missed the signs and lost two calves over two nights around day eighteen.
It’s terribly depressing. Sometimes I wonder why we try at all.
Do you know what veal is? Of course you do. So, a better question, do you know who it comes from? It comes from innocent babies like “Golden Calf,” whose only crime was that he was a bull. For five days I fed him fresh milk from a bottle, played chasey with him around his pen, found all the spots he liked to be scratched and he learned to trust me. And you know what I did on the sixth day? I led this poor, innocent creature to the trailer that was waiting to take him to his death. He had no idea. He followed me out of his pen, wet nose bumping my hand eagerly, completely trusting me. There’s no place for bull calves on a dairy farm. And apparently there’s no place for hearts either.
Sparkie’s been amazing through all of this. Some days I think she’s the only thing keeping me sane, through the sleepless nights and exhaustingly long days. Yesterday, when I came home after saying goodbye to Golden Calf, Sparkie wouldn’t leave my side. I was a mess, and she knew it. So she stuck with me until my head cleared and I stopped thinking about what a horrible human being I was.
We no longer get a full day off, ever. The bus hasn’t been off the farm since we arrived here, because Daddy’s been too busy to go out. Even though we get a couple of milkings off a week, there’s still calves to feed, fences to repair, springers to watch. Struggling on with no end in sight is getting old fast.
The combination of physical exertion and mental distress is taking a toll on me. My body feels overworked. I pulled a muscle in my back the first week - or maybe it was the second, I can’t remember - running around in the dark without a torch, trying to round up a loose cow, and my foot dropped down one of those hoof-prints. The mud had dried, but the holes remain. My back healed, and then it was my left knee that started acting up for no reason at all. My right wrist protests being jolted by the ruts while I’m driving the motorbike. I keep struggling on, of course. There’s nobody to cover for me if I wanted to take time off anyway.
