Bottle to Bucket

We have been having a lovely holiday week here at the farm. For Christmas, Santa brought a huge new wheel barrow filled with tools: a pitchfork and manure shovel, a feed bucket for Marvin and a water bucket for the chickens, and a new 75 foot section of hose. We even had our periodic thaw to help us with water transport!

Then there are the calves. A few days ago, Jordan walks into the house at the end of chore time, obviously frustrated. "I am beginning to question Blaze's intelligence," he quips.

I stop and listen. "Why?"

"Well, he refuses to drink from a bucket! I even tied him up and put the bucket right in front of him, and he just stands there--obviously hungry--and moos." Jordan sighs. "He won't drink from the bucket unless I put my fingers in there so he can suck on them." I now see Jordan's dripping hand. Meanwhile, Bright happily slurps his quotient of Daisy milk from a bucket without a fuss.

So what is with Blaze?

I have some sympathy for the little creature. It is not the easiest transition to make. A calf is born wanting to suck, head up, preferably on some soft and resilient oblong protrusion that hangs from the sky and dispenses sweet warmth. The sucking motion in this tipped-up position is beneficial. It stimulates the salivary glands and aids digestion; exercises head and neck muscles; and connects the calf with a source of heat and protection: mom. I imagine Blaze asking: So what's this puddle in pail?

I think back to what I have written in What a Body Knows (and sketched on April 1 in this blog): nurture and nourish are forever entwined. Perhaps it is no different for cattle. It is not merely milk that Blaze wants. He wants to suck. He wants to nuzzle. He wants his mom.

"I don't think it is a problem to feed him on a bottle for a while," I suggest.

"But it isn't convenient," Jordan replies. "It is hard to hold the bottle for Blaze while giving the bucket to Bright. It would be so much easier if he just drank from a bucket!" I recognize this logic all too well. Parenting by convenience. Oh how I know! Still, I also know that a calf, like a child, is a force of nature. If you oppose it, even if you win, you lose. Jordan knows too.

I remind him. "Well, you know from riding--when you want to stop a horse, what do you do? You don't sit back and yank on the reins. You tug and release, tug and release, tug and release. Try that with Blaze. If he rejects the bucket, give him the bottle for a feeding or two, then give him the bucket again. Give him a little time to get used to the idea." Jordan nods.

*
Meanwhile, I am still wrestling with calf care issues of my own--related to the kids and their ability to work together (see Dec 17). I am still seeing faces that pout and hearing voices that complain of being left out.

The Family Council I described in the last post had been highly successful as far as it went. We had worked out a framework for a different way of thinking: our calf-caring team. We had staged a shift to a more harmonious way of being. Yet feeling that shift and making it happen was proving another matter.

In our councils, the format is simple. Each person has a chance to speak. More than that, each person has a chance to be heard by the very persons who are provoking concern. In that hearing, I guide the listeners to mirror the speakers--restate what the person said, don't respond, just say it again, let them know that you really get what they are saying. It is a basic relationship tool for enhancing communication. And it works. You can see the tension melt from young shoulders who feel finally released, finally heard.

But hearing only goes so far. A shift towards resolution needs to occur, and it does when persons involved recognize that they share a common desire. In this case, it was obvious to the kids. They each wanted the calves; they wanted the calves to be healthy and happy and well tended; they wanted to be the ones to help. In the end, after everyone shared and was heard, the kids could see, even without my prodding, that they all wanted the same thing: to be recognized by the others as an important, necessary, and effective member of the calf-caring team.

It wasn't quite enough. I too had to tug and release. Tug and release. I had to give the kids time to get used to the idea. To feel it. To live it. So we kept talking.

As the week progressed, we realized more: it has to do with trust. Building trust. Blaze has to learn to trust Jordan. The kids have to learn to trust one another--really trust each other to want what they say they want. Let it sink in. So we work on that trust. Tug and release. Letting it be real.
*
A couple of days later, Jordan and Jessica come in together at the end of chores, smiling broadly. "Blaze did it!" Jordan announces.

"He drank from the bucket!" Jessica adds.

"Perhaps he is intelligent after all," Jordan grins. I never had any doubts.

"These calves are teaching me patience," Jordan adds with a triumphant sigh.

Me too.



Happy New Year to All!

New Arrivals!

Friday night the storm is raging--wind-rain-snow all at once. When we wake on Saturday, so does the golden sun, streaming through ice covered tree branches, dancing across dazzled white lawns, and illuminating a wafer thin full moon, hovering just above the horizon. It is beyond beautiful. And cold. It is the day we are to pick up our baby bulls.

It takes us half an hour to de-ice the car--scraping and melting and scraping frozen sheets from its surfaces. Thank goodness it isn't a plane. Geoff crawls through the side doors to jimmy open the front ones. Finally the windows are clear and Geoff and Jordan are on their way. The rest of us stay behind to finish the pen preparations—washing grain and water buckets, and fluffing up bedding hay.

An hour later, the car drives up, as if it were an ordinary day. This time, however, the car is carrying cattle. The two rows of back seats are down and covered with blankets. And there are our bulls, of the Milking Shorthorn breed, cruising in casual comfort. Jordan has named them Bright and Blaze—two names, easy and related, and not to be confused with the handful of verbal commands they will have to learn to become a team of oxen.

Will I know which is which?

I peek in the front door. It is obvious. Blaze, the smaller of the two, is standing up, his red head gently bumping the ceiling. His brown eyes are fixed on me. Who are you? he asks. His face is flecked with white (or premature gray?) and marked with a large white cyclone splotch. Jordan reports Blaze rode on all fours the whole trip, lurching back and forth, surfing the winding roads of rural NY.

Curled up behind him towards the back is the slightly larger and redder bull Jordan has named Bright. He does not look so happy. He reminds me of Ferdinand. Each one has on a calf coat—somewhat like the ones you see on small dogs but larger—fastened around his front and back legs.

My first impression: oh they are so cute!

We open the trunk door and Jordan wraps his arms around Blaze, who has stepped over Bright to get to the door first. Jordan makes it a few steps before Blaze wriggles away, landing on his back in the snow, legs sticking in all directions, Jordan’s arms still around his neck. The two of them freeze there for an instant, wondering what comes next, before Blaze flips himself over and peeks curiously into the barn. Geoff carries Bright, and soon the two of them are nosing around their new home. Spacious! Cold! Nice view! And all these small people!

Blaze scampers about, running in crazy circles, kicking up his hind legs. He buzzes and hums with energy. Bright mopes in the corner and coughs slightly. I feel a grip of maternal worry. Already? They haven’t even been here five minutes!

So what are we going to do with these fine furry beasts?
Feed them. Steer them. Train them.

The feeding is introducing an element of competition to our otherwise overly abundant milk flow. The bulls drink cow milk, of course. They are only babies—4 and 5 weeks old. And the cow milk we have to give them is Daisy’s. We have been milking a little more than a gallon at each milking, twice a day. Each calf needs to drink a half-gallon, morning and night.

You can do the math. We are scraping the bucket! Still, we have a plan. We are feeding Daisy more grain and hay over the next few weeks to boost her flow, and then in another month or so, we will wean the calves to grain and hay themselves. At this morning’s milking, Jordan squeezed out nearly two gallons. Thank you, Daisy! Then in March, Precious is due to give birth and we will be milking two cows! So we are consoling ourselves. It is only a temporary hardship.

As for steering, it turns out that the best time to do so is right before puberty, which occurs around six months. Before then, the male hormones the bulls produce are actually helpful, fueling healthy growth. Only with puberty does testosterone turn testy. We will be sure to call the Vet in three months. Before then, the bulls will be bulls.

As for training, it has already begun, though it is not clear who is training whom. Ostensibly, humans train cattle, the first step being to shower them with affection--a resource we have in ample supply. In fact, figuring out how to allocate all that attention has been our first challenge. Each of the children wants to be with the calves, caring for the calves, feeding the calves, leading the calves, and not one of them wants to be left out. Each one of them is also convinced that the others want to leave him or her out. So one child slips out to the barn to give the calves a secretive pat, and the others howl with the injustice of it all.

It is a high quality problem, really, and one whose value I appreciate. How are the kids supposed to know already how to work together to take care of baby bulls?

When similar issues arose last spring with our horse, Marvin, I quickly figured out that I could respond with acute and exasperated frustration—my heart wretched and my face blue—or I could embrace the moment as an opportunity to learn. Let’s work together on working together!

We gather in a Family Council. Forty-five minutes of concentrated chat time later, we are on our way—each child knowing that he or she is an essential member of a calf-caring team, with Jordan as our captain. Each one appreciating the others as enabling him or her to have bulls at all.

Last night Jessica comes in from the barn after giving Marvin some hay. "Did you pat the calves?" I ask. "No," she replies, "I didn’t want Jordan to feel left out." I smile. OK, so we still have some small adjustments to make. I reply, "Jessica, if you are out there, it is fine to pat the calves. They need all the love we can give them."

So who is training whom?

Once again, the farm is making its family.
(See "Forward to the Farm," Oct 15)

Water, Snow, and Ice

Drip. Drip. Drip. I wake to the sound of rain on the roof. Rain? Yesterday morning it was 5 degrees and snowing. I must be dreaming of spring.

No, it is no dream. As I look about outside, I see a yard filled with puddles pooling atop the partially frozen ground. Soon Kyra and Kai are out there too. Yesterday it was snow pants and sleds. Today is it tricycles in the mud. Welcome to winter.

In one sense, I am relieved. It will be easy today to water the animals.

Watering is our latest challenge—not the water itself, but its transport from house to barn. We have a lovely well, sunk halfway up the hill behind our house, with the sweetest of water in a county where many wells are flavored with sulpher. The quality of that water was the one condition we stipulated when we bought the farm, its quantity too. We heard it could support a hundred head of cattle. Should be enough to supply showers, dishes, and laundry for our family of six, we thought. At the time it didn’t even register that there was no plumbing to the barn. What would we need it for? Besides, the pipes would freeze if there were.

Then we got animals. In warm weather, of course, water transport is no problem. A string of hoses connected to our outdoor spigot does the job perfectly. Our furry and feathered friends have all they need.

When the temperature drops, however, the spigot freezes, the hoses harden and split, and the challenge increases. Last year we resorted to buckets, filled up one by one in the kitchen sink, and hauled by hand to the barn.

But last winter we only had two large thirsty beasts. This year we have two more great guzzlers—Marvin our horse and Dandelion our nine-month-old heifer calf—with another two arriving this Saturday. (The bull calves are coming!) Our ninety-five-gallon cow trough needs filling every few days. Marvin’s fifteen-gallon dish empties in a matter of hours. We will need a lot of buckets! And Pop-eye arms. And patience with all those booted feet stamping in and out of the house. Isn’t there another way?

So far this year, we have opted for an alternative called “emptying the hose.” After a watering, we—often Jordan—drains the hose completely, lying its separable sections along the downward slope of our backyard. Then, in the sun of the day, even if cold, we can usually get the spigot pumping water through those tubes.

Except when we can’t. One recent frigid morning, Jordan spent about a half hour trying to get the water flowing. He was so darn patient, until facing those last remaining recalcitrant coils. I suggested he bring his frozen fingers into the house. We stuck the stubborn length of hose into the sink for faster warming. We got it working. Better than a bucket.

When we finally had the water flowing, I turned to find Jessica filling buckets at the sink. My spent effort nearly erupted. Why wasn’t she using the hard-earned hose? It took a moment for her to confess: “Marvin likes his water better if it’s warm.” OK, so here I was about to yell at her for being thoughtful. Still, maybe we can treat Marvin to a hot toddy, but what about the rest?

There is another solution. We could spend oodles of dollars to have a standpipe installed—a hand pump that sticks straight up into the air and plunges down into the earth about four feet, to just below the frost line. Water that doesn’t make it out the pump drops back into the warming earth, and refuses to freeze.

Problem is, we have thought that we might rebuild the barns, or move them up the hill. If we do, there is no sense in investing in such a system here and now. So we are stuck. The issue hangs, unresolved. Back to the buckets.

Today, however, the weather is warm. The hose will be soft and pliable. The spigot will flow; the containers fill. Our arms will rest.

Perhaps we could just arrange to have a thaw on every third day?
Tomorrow it is supposed to snow.

Daisy's Match

Something was afoot. Jordan noticed immediately. As he approached the cow barn for the morning milking, he saw Dandelion, our nine month old heifer calf, jumping up on the back of her mother, Daisy. Dandi was straddling her spine, front legs dangling to either side. Daisy just stood there.

One super tolerant mom?
Or perhaps, could Daisy be in heat?

We have been waiting eagerly for this moment. Daisy gave birth to Dandi in March, and launched our milk making enterprise. To keep up Daisy’s milk production, we need to breed her again, otherwise mother nature will take her course, and after a year or so, her milk will slow to a trickle. Gestation takes nine months. So the sooner breeding happens after a birth the better.

Yet Daisy was not showing any of the tell tale signs—no bellowing or moaning, no tolerance of spine-straddling compatriots. Except for maybe once. Until today.

Jordan decided to conduct his own test. He hauls himself up onto Daisy’s back, sitting astride, as if on a horse. He knows. If Daisy is not in heat, he will find himself off her back in a flash. If she is in heat, he will prove himself a veritable cow-rider, for she will stand and wait, hopefully. Little does she know.

Jordan is on and Daisy is not moving. He leaps off and runs inside to get the telephone. “Call the breeder!”

We call our local breeding specialist, Ray Foote. We trust him. He is two for two, having bred Daisy once before and then the expecting Precious. Can he do it again? We leave a message. Several hours pass. The kids are getting anxious. We have about a twelve-hour window, before Daisy’s fertile day is done. We have no idea when it began.

Minutes before noon the phone rings. It’s Ray. He’ll be here in fifteen minutes. Everyone cheers.

Soon enough, Ray is pulling into the driveway. In the back of his truck, he has everything he will need: a vat of frozen sperm vials, a test tube warmer, a selection of long syringes, and lots of armpit-grazing plastic gloves.

We discuss Daisy’s mate. Ray recommends Rebel. “He makes good bags,” he says. A good bag (translate “udder”) means good milk. Sounds fine to us. Dandi’s dad was a bull named Mecca. But monogamy is no issue here. We approve. The match is made, if not in heaven, well then, in Hebron Hollow.

Ray selects a vial of Rebel’s relics and slips it into his test tube warmer. He then fills an arm length syringe and pops it inside his shirt. The sperm like it warm. He dons his gloves.

We walk into the barn where Daisy is waiting. Ray lifts her tail and reaches in. “Yes, she’s in a good little heat.” He knows these things.

He guides the syringe right into the O rings, and gently empties it through Daisy’s cervix. He is an expert at finding the deposit spot. It is why we called him. Thirty seconds. Daisy is done. She doesn’t seem to mind.

On the way out, Ray gives each of the kids a terrific knit hat, warm and sung. Blazoned across the front of each hat is the name “Big Foot A.I. Breeding Services.” The kids wear them proudly, especially Kai.

I can’t imagine that fertility clinics will be handing out such knit favors any time in the near future, but perhaps it is somewhat reassuring to know that it began with cows, and that it can work!

Now, we wait again.