Our heifers started calving around the middle of the
month and although it was getting harder to find snowsuits
that would go around my baby bulge, I waddled out
daily after work and on weekends to see the young calves
and to check for imminent births. I often took the midnight
check, leaving the three a.m. walkabout to Glen.
Other years, we had taken turns. But this year my swollen
belly gave me a pass.
Except for the night Genie had her calf; Glen needed
me that night.
The newborn calf gasped for air. Glen stuck a straw
down one of its nostrils, trying to clear the airway, and
then leaned over to blow directly into the animal’s nose.
But it was not enough. The calf shuddered and went still.
“I’m sorry, Genie,” I said to the cow. Genie paid no attention. Head down towards her infant calf, she fiercely
licked off the detritus of birth as if she could bring back
life as she had given it.
An hour earlier Glen had come to the house.
“Wake up,” he said, throwing the bedroom light switch
and jerking me out of sleep. “I need your help.”
The unusual urgency in his voice made me dress
quickly. The wind wrapped itself around me as I followed
Glen down the packed snow trail. As predicted, the
weather had turned after our January blizzard and temperatures
were extremely mild for this time of year, but at
two o’clock in the morning, the wind was raw.
In the shed two-year-old Genie stood, straining with
the effort of giving birth to her first calf.
“One of its feet is bent back,” Glen said. “Hold her tail,
will you?”
I stood beside the cow, speaking softly and holding its tail
so that my husband could work without obstruction. Glen
pushed the calf back into the uterus, found the bent foreleg,
and gently eased it into proper position. Then he attached
chains to the calf’s front legs and used traction to one leg at
a time, walking the shoulders through the cow’s pelvis and
working in concert with the animal’s contractions.
“It will be all right, Genie. Take it easy, girl.”
But it was not all right. Although Glen was able to
pull the calf, we could tell immediately that its future was
precarious.
Perhaps if we had called the vet, a Caesarian could have
been performed. Perhaps if Glen had gone out to check
the cows earlier or had come back to the house to get me
sooner. But what ifs are pointless. Some things just are.
“Let’s see if Genie will take one of the twins,” Glen said.
Three days earlier, another cow in the herd had given
birth to twins. Twins are not uncommon; we often have
several sets each year. But they are extra work because
many times the mother cow won’t have enough milk to
feed two calves.
This particular cow did not. We had to supplement
her milk, feeding the twins manually with a giant nipple
attached by tubing to a plastic bag of formula. If a cow had
extra milk, I froze it for future use. The real thing was better
for calves, but I didn’t always have any in the freezer.
“It’s worth a try,” I said.
Genie’s udder was already filling, a physiological
response to the act of giving birth. The cow continued
licking her calf, alternately nudging it with her nose. Wake
up, baby. The act of licking bonded mother to child. Genie
had already learned the scent of her newborn; taking
another calf in its place would now be more difficult.
I stayed with Genie until Glen came back with the
larger of the twins, a red and white bull calf which seemed
all legs. Its twin was a heifer calf, smaller and almost certainly
sterile. Somehow that’s the way it seemed to work.
Twins of the same gender might or might not be fertile,
but the female in a set of boy-girl twins faced a greater
chance of never being able to reproduce.
By picking the larger and stronger of the two, Glen was
giving the smaller calf a better chance with the natural
mother. And the bull calf would be better able to handle
any reluctance on Genie’s part to cooperate.
The calf was willing and eager to sample Genie’s teats.
But Genie was having none of it. She stiffened as she felt the mouth reach for her, and then kicked out at the calf.
Time and again we tried. Each time we failed.
They say that losing a child is like giving birth to the
same child a second time, but without the release from
pain that a successful delivery provides. I do not know if
they are right. I do not want to know. There is pain in the
thought of it.
“It’s not going to work,” I told Glen.
“Let’s try something else,” he said.
After tying the bull calf to a panel outside the pen, we
dragged the corpse into a far corner.
“Want to hazard a guess at its weight?” I asked.
“A good hundred pounds, maybe more,” he said. Poor
Genie. No wonder there had been trouble. We had bred
her to our heifer bull, a smaller animal that should sire
smaller calves. Something had gone wrong somewhere.
He pulled a knife out of his overalls pocket and, while
he began his work on the calf, I returned to the birthing
pen, but did not enter it. Genie was increasingly agitated.
As quiet a cow as she normally was, to approach her now
might be dangerous. I positioned myself between mother
and child. “Don’t look,” I said to the cow. “You don’t want
to know.”
Once Glen had finished skinning the calf, he carried the
hide over to the pen. He untied the twin and, as quickly
as possible, flipped the calf over and rolled it in the slimy
afterbirth still coating the floor. With any luck, the scent
would fool Genie into accepting a replacement.
Then, as I held the twin steady, he carefully draped the
hide over its back.
“Cross your fingers,” he said. He led the calf once more to Genie. At first Genie
stiffened, but then nosed forward to sniff the hide. Glen
held the calf still and we waited in silence for Genie to
recognize and accept the scent. When Glen edged the
calf towards the waiting teats, the calf grabbed hold and
began to suck.
I should be relieved, I thought. It was a happy ending;
the young heifer had a calf to feed, the older cow’s burden
was halved, the twins each had enough to eat. But instead
I was angry. I wanted to yell at Genie. I wanted to hit her.
We tricked you, you stupid cow. This is not your baby.
They call it imprinting, don’t they, the bonding between
parent and child at first sight and touch? If I touched my
baby and transferred that knowledge into some inner part
of me, how could I possibly be fooled this way?
Once the calf had had its fill, it lay down on the straw
beside its adopted mother. I brought over an armful of hay
and Glen carried a pail of water into the pen. We stood
and watched for several more minutes.
“I know it often works but I don’t like doing it,” Glen
said. “It feels like cheating somehow.”
“I know what you mean,” I said.
We turned to leave the shed and headed back through
the corrals to the house. I led the way and saw the cow
first.
“We’re not finished yet,” I called. An eight-year-old cow,
a veteran of the delivery room, was in the final stages of
labour. There was no time to bring the cow into the shelter
of the barn; birth was imminent.
We stood and watched Agnes heave and push, ready
to lend a hand if problems became apparent. But this cow had no need of our services. Indeed she ignored our presence
as if it were irrelevant.
With one last push, the slippery body exited the birth
canal and slid onto the ground. Now Glen and I began
our ritual. We wiped the calf as dry as we could and lifted
it onto a sled built for this purpose. As we pulled the
new calf, a spry, alert baby with legs already kicking, the
mother cow followed us into the barn.
Once inside the pen, Agnes began to assiduously clean
the calf with the rough edge of her tongue, scraping the
new hide till it warmed from the abrasive treatment.
She looked at us as if to say, What’re you two still doing
here?
“Come on,” Glen said. “Let’s go get some sleep.”
I gave one last look at the far corner where Genie and
her adopted son rested, the hide still covering the threeday-
old body.
“Everything is fine,” Glen said, coming up behind me.
“No worries.”
“What am I, an open book?” I asked.
“Sus, I can read you from across the barn,” my husband
said.
For a long time, I wanted to be a veterinarian and look
after animals—big ones, small ones, it didn’t matter. But
then I realized that there would be animals I couldn’t make
well. Even worse, there would be animals that I would be
expected to put to sleep. I didn’t think I could handle that
and my vet dream came to an end. Instead I took business
courses and got a job in the local vet’s office, setting
up appointments and doing the bookwork. I work three
days a week and every second Saturday. I get to see lots of animals and occasionally I get to care for them. I just don’t
have to make any of the tough decisions. Not at work.
Ironically, though, I married a farmer so I didn’t escape.
Those tough decisions followed me home. I might as well
have opted for vet school. At least I’d be getting paid better.
When Mom came home the following weekend, I told
her the story of the calf skin coat and the calf that never
lived to feel its warmth.
“Remember what your grandfather used to say?” she
asked.
“If you’ve got livestock, you’ve got deadstock,” I
answered.
“Well, I hope I don’t have any deadstock when it’s my
turn to check the cows tonight,” Mom said.