Selling Calves Makes Way for a New Bunch

We sold last spring’s calves last week. Dawn wisely convinced me that feeding them to market weight when we don’t grow our own corn would leave no time for rest and be a little much for an old man. She’s wise and didn’t need to be propping me up in such overambition. Besides, every deviation from vertical integration (such as buying corn) is like a leaky bucket.

Our partly full trailer tossed the pickup around somewhat and my knuckles turned white with oncoming traffic. Then halfway home, we drove into the snowstorm. The suicidal semi drivers whizzed by on I-35 while I was having trouble seeing the road at all, so we exited and drove 25 mph for the last 30 miles on county roads. I was thankful for some tracks to follow in the snow until they nearly  fell off the left side of the road. Then I blazed my own path. Being a follower only works when the leader is correct.

There’s something about animals. Less complex than humans in a way, sorta dull in conversation, and mysterious in how they decide what to do next. The cows are quiet. They stand there on a cold morning, every single one staring in the same direction perpendicular to the sun. Chewing their cud, what’s on their minds?

Are they trying hard to forget their calves aren’t across the fence? Are they thinking about spring when they will casually turn around and furiously lick their new baby dry?

Are they glad I no longer show up and tackle their baby wielding a syringe and ear-tagger? There's a fine line between a protective cow that seems to know I’m here to help, and a broken man. It was scary and foolish.

I would finish my chore and the calf would jump up and run away; hardly a bonding process. Nature says mom plus baby. Mom has colostrum. Man makes vaccines. Who do you trust, centuries of natural selection or scientists with marketing teams? That’s not to say veterinary medicine is superfluous. It just shouldn’t replace nature.

If there’s any animal that symbolizes all that’s good, it is the cow. They are peaceful, they know what a mother does. They love. They convert sunlight into usable and storable energy.

When we started in the cattle business we bought five old cows that couldn’t get a bid at the Aplington sale barn. One of those cows was #2. We paid $500 for a white-faced bag of bones and she raised a good calf five years in a row. We continued to build up the herd and just never got around to selling her. Her fifth year with us, she had twins. Our friend Doug says never keep both twins because cows have a hard time raising two, but we kept the twins. Selling a bottle calf is “a bird in the hand”.

After dodging the cull, she raised two perfectly even calves. Unfortunately one was a bull and the other was a heifer. For some reason freemartins (a heifer twin to a bull) are often infertile. We sure would have liked twin heifers.

When I lived in Western Montana our landlord had cattle who followed the melting snow up into the mountains to calve. There was no intense management like you see around here. No warming boxes. No tubing (nutrition fed through a tube when things aren’t working out). When the snow got deep in the fall the cows brought their calves back home.

We have intensely chosen good mothers, even letting our numbers sink below our pasture’s capacity. We figure the cows have a job. We’ll do ours and let them do theirs.

Ghostie is a descendant of old #2. She carries on. When we fed the cows in such a way that we had to let them through a gate each day, Ghostie was always the last one through. What a beautiful creature. I sang “Whiter Shade of Pale” to her as she ambled through the gate.

I was visiting an old friend in the Dumont nursing home who others warned “didn’t know anything.” We had a good visit that simply took a little time. When I had to leave to get home for chores, I said, “I need to go feed the cows. They need me.” Mike then said, “And you need them.”

Once again, the calves have moved on. Ghostie is with calf and still here for us.

Search videos on YouTube: fritz groszkruger Ghostie and the snapper, and fritz groszkruger Heading to higher ground.