I always say that there’s no such thing as a bad day on the farm unless an animal is sick or dying….
We can’t have good days all the time…
Polly was pregnant when she arrived at the farm this spring. That was the plan before I got her. Cow’s have a 9 month gestation just like humans, and we waited excitedly over the past six months as her belly grew bigger.
Her due date was (approximately) November 6th. That day came and went and with small signs that she was getting ready for baby, but no major developments. Her udder started to get bigger, the ligaments around her tail head softened…
Finally on Friday the 12th her udder was ginormous and we figured baby would come at any moment. The the sun rose and set… nothing. I left the farm after the evening milking hoping that she’d wait until morning. Of course that was not the way it went.
She went into labor in the early hours of the morning, and by the time we checked on her, she had already had the calf, a bull. Unfortunately, it was born dead… most likely the cause of being in the birth canal too long during the labor process.
We all mourn the loss in different ways. There is little time for mourning when one is a farmer. It takes place while I work… In the depths of thought as I wash equipment, clean eggs, carry out farm chores. My mind always wonders, “What could I have done differently? How can I do better next time?”
For Polly, it is just a matter of time. Cows, much like people, vary in their maternal instinct. It was evident immediately that she had strong mothering abilities.
I left the calf with her for a couple hours, so that she might be able to understand that it was dead, and not just missing. She licked it off attentively, cleaning the mucous-y fluid from its body. She reluctantly left watch over it to go to the barn for morning milking and then off to pasture to graze for the day. When it was time to head back down to the barn for the evening milking on Saturday, she took off at a faster-than-usual trot back to the spot where she gave birth. She bellowed out for the calf and looked around in distress. That happened for the next couple days until she slowly adapted back into her usual routine.
Remarkably, Polly recovered phenomenally well, physically, from labor. Many problems can occur in dairy cows in the days following calving. We are hyper-vigilant of such warning signs. While she shows no physical ailments, I imagine the emotional stress will take a bit longer to heal from, as is true for us all.
We buried her calf a few yards from the place she gave birth, next to a big beautiful Spruce tree. I call it the Tree of Life… a fitting place to for eternal rest if you ask me.
This is the hard stuff. The things we don’t want to go through, much less share with the rest of the world. As farmers we can try to do everything right, and still things will go wrong. These things happen. It’s life. It’s most especially farm life.
We can choose to live in a sugar coated world where there is no suffering or death. Where every animal lives and eating plants saves the planet… Or we can be present for it all and take the hardships and rewards in equal doses.
As unexceptional as death is on a farm, life is cherished. Perhaps we hold life so close because we know death is never far.