Back Sides of Cows

July 14 is the birth of so many wonderful beings – it’s Bastille day, the day when the French Revolution began. It’s my friend Celia’s birthday. And today, Lukey’s first calf was born. He is so much bigger than Charlie was! And he can already run around fast. This released a whole slew of name suggestions. Geoff, who found the calf, suggested Larry or Lawrence. Katie suggested Louie, so he would come with his own song “Louie, Louie…Ohhh”. Don is a fan of Lebron (because he’s fast, like Lebron James). I suggested Leche, because he super white and because he’ll be drinking his mom’s milk as long as he wants. Gabriella suggested Lucky, Leo, and Lord Lallolar. We kept throwing them out, “Lance”, “Loren”, “Lowell”. We’ll keep throwing them out until we find one that fits…or until we decide which of these everyone likes more.

This afternoon, we hiked back up to the hill pasture to elastrate the new calf. We walked the whole paddock until we found the calf curled up by the water tub and the fence and then the three of us got closer. He ran. I grabbed a back leg with my left hand but didn’t get enough of a grip. We sighed. We followed him as he joined back up with the other three cows, until he was between Lukey, me and Don. Don tackled him, I grabbed his two back legs, and Katie held down his chest. All the cows gathered around, licking him and mooing and breathing at us while Don tried to find the balls (they hadn’t descended yet, so it took some searching). It was pretty terrifying for these huge 1200 pound cows to be sniffing you and trying to get back to their calf. So Don holds the testicles in one hand. In the other hand, he holds a set of special pliers that stretch the rubber band open (they look a lot like a much larger version of bird banding pliers…if that helps explain this to anyone…maybe not). Then he gently lets the rubber band off the pliers and onto the testicles. This restricts blood flow, so they slowly sort of wither up and are gradually reabsorbed into the body. This way, the calf will grow up as a steer, not as a bull.
You can see on Charlie that the testicles are already shrinking. It was amazing to see how much all the beef cows worked together to protect the new calf - it wasn't just his mom Lukey. That's why we can leave them in the top pasture - they're better at protecting their calves from coyotes than our dairy cow Chloe.