Right now, it's just after calving season, so the cows are still paired with their calves. When it comes to the move, this means making sure they stay paired up. Usually, this means no more than making sure no calves slip through the fence as we drive them down the road. This last week, though, that task was rendered all the more difficult by the fact that we were splitting the herd in two; because we rent most of the land we operate on, we often have to haul cattle in trailers from one far-flung pasture to the next. The pairs that were staying nearby had to remain with their calves; the ones that were being driven by truck had to stay with theirs.
These days, we drive our cattle on 4-wheelers. They can be dangerous, my mother often reminds me, but so can the horses which they replaced. In fact, it was a nearly-fatal equine accident involving my mother that brought about the shift to 4-wheelers in the first place. If I get the courage up one of these days, I might tell that story. Four-wheelers, in any case, require less work than horses. You don't have to saddle up a 4-wheeler and you don't have to feed it hay and oats, though both 4-wheelers and horses develop quirks in the way you have to ride them. The ride to the pasture is most certainly faster than it would be on horseback!
I am somewhat tempted to make the form and content of this post coincide, representing the monotony of the drive through the excruciating recollection of plodding bovine minutiae. I will resist this temptation to the best of my ability. We split the herd in two, 45 or 46 in one group and the rest in the other. It was my job to count "the rest" while the others sorted out a mistake we'd made. Counting cattle is not easy, especially when the herd is discombobulated during a move. Cows come to the slow but inevitable conclusion that their calf isn't at their side and make a dash to discover where it might have gone. When they aren't bawling after their young, they shift locations in their imperceptible yet unstoppable grazing expansion. I took up my post in the middle of the herd and spent at least a half-hour turning in slow circles, hand outstretched, trying to get a good count. 80...80...79(damn!)...80...82(what?)...78(what the hell!). No math major, masters program, or ph.d. seminar has taught me a good way count the herd.
While we were moving them, my dad got bored, and started collecting aluminum beer cans strewn alongside the road. This seemed uncharacteristic to me at first, as my father is anything but a "greeny-weeny." When I pointed this out to him, he retorted, "I'm making money." I started picking them up too, and I found one that had been left unopened--a Busch Light from over a year ago. Gross. Later on, there was a POP! and spray of white foam from amid the herd; one of them had stepped on another unopened can. I approached the location, and behold! another unopened can was right beside! They must have been really drunk.
The last two miles were uneventful, comparatively speaking. We stuck around a few minutes to make sure none of them were going to run back looking for a lost calf.
The day after or the next, we took the herd of 45 to load on trailers. There was one without a calf, number 11, and one with twins, number 202, so the number of cows and calves should have equaled out. It didn't; we had an extra calf. While they trucked the first loads, my father sent me and the hired man out to look for the missing cow. He told us to look west because the neighbor had cows there, and it must have gotten in with them--he couldn't bear to think that he'd actually made a mistake yesterday! Turns out we did; there was one cow from the moved herd looking very alone and with a very swollen utter to boot. We drove her back south and when they were reunited, that calf sucked the cow dry, to the cow's relief and the calf's eventual discomfort.
Number 202, though, she was a handful. Most cows are docile, and even most bulls aren't out to pick a fight with a human. 202, though, was what we call "ornery," a special kind of cow-bitch. I like to pride myself of being pretty brave when a cow's charging me; she might act all big and powerful, but if you hold your ground, she'll back off and turn aside. Usually, they're just testing you, seeing if you're confident. But every now and then, if you watch closely, you can see it in their eyes. They carry themselves differently. It's hard to describe, but in the 1 out of 100 cases when you see it, whatever it is, you get out of the way--she is going where she wants. And I had the misfortune of standing where 202 wanted to go that morning. I waved my stick, but she didn't stop; I yelled an apologetic, "she's going though!" as I ducked out of the way, to which it was quickly and semi (but only semi)-jokingly retorted, "well, if you let her!" I feared I had lost my touch, that these 9 months away from home had weakened me, made me forget how to sort cattle. I felt better when the same thing happened to another guy there about 10 minutes later. It wasn't just me! Whew! After the sorting was done, we gathered next to the fence with that cow-bitch and her twins on the other side as she pawed at the ground, lowered her head, and made feign to charge. From the safety of the fence, the other fellow she charged quipped, "I'd be ornery, too, if I had twins."
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