TROUBLE IN THE PLUM THICKET

It was a perfect evening for picking more sand plums and as I liberally applied the mosquito repellant, husband Bob cautioned me to watch out for snakes in the tall grass.  I think we’ve only seen one in the plum thickets in all the years we’ve picked, but he especially hates snakes.  He will deliberately swerve to hit one on the dirt roads, then back up and run over him again just to make sure!

I slipped my cell phone in my pocket and loaded a couple buckets in my good blue pick-up.  First mistake.

I waved bye to Bob who was leaving on a tractor pulling a hay trailer to the other side of the river for an early start in the morning.

A few minutes later thunderheads made a lovely backdrop for the grazing cows and the green hills below as I crossed the cattleguard in the pasture and I snapped a pic with my phone.  Wonderful inventions aren’t they? 

At my favorite plum thicket I soon had ½ a bucket full, there were no bugs biting, and I was priding myself on my evening’s activity choice when I heard something ahead. I was not alone in there! Deer?  Snakes?  No, up ahead of me were 2 cows and one of them was trying to calve in the middle of those thorny bushes.

This was strange because a cow usually goes off alone to calve, but then I noticed their ear tags; consecutive numbers.  We get most of our cows from the same big ranch in Colorado and we’ve observed part of this phenomenon before. 

Two cows consecutively numbered will have been randomly loaded and come off the semi at our place 12 hours later side by side.  They pretty much stay close for years.  They graze together, drink together, get bred and calve at almost the same time, and come through our working chute next to each other nearly every year.  But this was a new wrinkle; camaraderie in calving too?

I thought about calling Bob to come back and look at Mama 318 before he got too far away, but I could see a foot coming and in the right position, so I figured all was well.  Second error.

I decided to move out of her view and wait 20 minutes and come back to check.  Third bad decision.

When I returned, the other cow had gone over the hill to graze but 318 was down and in trouble.  Since I hadn’t driven a work pick-up, I had no gloves, or rope to try and snag a foot and pull. I called Bob but by now he was too far away.  He called our German helpers but they were both at night church 30 miles away and the neighbors nearest me were also gone. He just said “do what you can and call me.”

When I got down close enough to grab the calf foot and try to find the other one, the cow suddenly got up and trotted out of the thicket.  While weighing the possibility of walking her down to the pens, the baby’s head came with tongue hanging out and I knew I couldn’t stress them any further.

About five minutes later she delivered the baby, immediately got up and began licking her baby vigorously but it was too late.

It doesn’t matter how many cows you have or how many births you’ve participated in, it is still sad to lose one.  She was a good, big, and gentle mama and she’d done all she could.

I left her then to her instinctive cleaning.  Probably when we return in the morning she will have stood over him all night keeping the buzzards and coyotes away. It is a heart wrenching sight.

And I wouldn’t be surprised if, as I drove away, number 319 came back to check on her sister and they kept the night vigil together.