The funniest sights of calves always involve their tongues. Either they forget they have one or they can’t quiiiiiite reach. This little guy was super determined to reach his little hind end, and was occupied for quite awhile doing so. I left and came back and he was working on the other side. Perseverance!
My favorite is seeing a baby calf, a little dozey-looking, probably just finished nursing, sitting there with his tongue sticking out of his mouth. Sometimes he has a milk mustache. It always makes me laugh, though half the time I don’t notice until I’m looking through pictures later.
Funny little critters.
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We really don’t go on dates. We didn’t when we were dating, and we don’t married. Maybe someday we can change that, since I really do think it is a good practice for married couples, but honestly our marriage reflects the simplicity of our “dating” life. We did life together. We worked together. We cooked meals together. Picked apples together. Worked cows. And these two photos? I took these just recently, but an awful lot of our dating and engagement was spent just so, and I would occasionally sneak photos of my favorite view when I was riding with Brad to check cows, or check the calving pasture, or check water, or whatever. I fell in love looking at this view.
And it made me think of something. This particular day, I had been busy with all sorts of things, we had vaccinated cows all morning, we were having a couple from church over the next day, and I had a house to clean, bread to bake, some writing and photo editing to do…So when Brad asked me if I wanted to go with him to check the calving pasture, I could have come up with a dozen excuses not to.
But here’s the thing: Those things can wait. They 100% can wait. But I will NEVER be disappointed for investing in my marriage and in my friendship with my husband, even if it means not getting the bread baked when I wanted to get it baked, or even if it means I have to do a bit of cramming to get my writing done, or to get housework done before guests get here, even if it means I don’t get the walk in that I wanted to take with the dogs, or whatever else.
Even now, while we don’t have children, time invested in marriage is priceless and precious. And, ladies, we can be way too prone to think our husbands aren’t romantic enough, or aren’t obvious enough in how they “pursue us.” We can complain, even if only in our ungrateful little hearts, that our husband isn’t doing this or that, and why can’t he just do X?
We have been fed a cultural diet of personality studies and love languages and other semi-worthless psychoanalytical drivel–“worthless drivel” because it is wielded as a weapon against those closest to us, rather than employed as a means of understanding our own quirks better so that we can moderate those quirks better, or understand our spouses better so that we can love them better. Those semi-worthless personality studies and the love languages garbage are used as a way to find fault with our spouses and families, rather than as a way to seek personal growth and maturing.
Have you ever heard someone say (or maybe you’ve said this yourself), “I know he’s trying, but it just isn’t my love language?” Talk about damaging. That way of thinking is poison.
So, when our husbands invite us to join them in their tasks? When they express enjoyment simply of having our company? That is showing love. That is investment. That is pursuit. And it is priceless. It might not look like a fancy restaurant and a bouquet of roses, but aren’t those things a little predictable and overrated? Be thankful for your husband, and look for the ways he loves you. And be willing to set your preconceived notions and prejudices and preferences aside to allow him to love you the way he knows best. It might come in the shape of a dozen roses, or it might come in the shape of riding double on the fourwheeler checking calves.
I know which one I’d pick.
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Once again, these early spring months fly by too fast for me to keep up! How is it already almost May? The sandhill cranes are already done migrating north, and the meadowlarks are home for the summer. Bluebirds are plentiful, another sure sign of spring. Finally the pasques are popping up on Potato Butte, the best place on the ranch to find them, and after getting frostbitten multiple times, they are finally gracing the greening slopes in the Calving Pasture. My perennials are coming up vigorously, in spite of multiple freezes and frosts, and I saw the first few asparagus spears yesterday!
We have already done the first bit of our cow work for the year, vaccinating our replacement heifers, calving is wrapping up, and branding is just around the corner. The chicks from the beginning of March just got moved into their kindergarten coop today, adjacent to the big girls’ coop, and Posey had her calf last week. We have been shuffling cows around today, so we’ll be ready to work them through tomorrow and get everything vaccinated.
Between Posey being back in milk, the chickens picking up their egg-laying, and my new found love of baking bread, the kitchen is a busy place, and the simplest and best of things are plentiful.
Winter gets long. It just does. Spring can be slow to start, and calving season can either be an exciting and enjoyable time, or a heartbreaking time. This is one of those great years. And a great time of year.
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Can we just take a moment to appreciate the incredible beauty and diversity of these little baby baldy faces? I have been riding along with Brad when he checks the calving pasture, when I have the time, and it is just too fun to see all the variety and the cuteness overload. I think it drives my father-in-law nuts, how much I love these calves, but that’s just fine.
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Our neighbor’s Hereford bull took a liking to some of our cows last year and paid a number of, shall we say, social visits. It became quite a regular occurrence to kick him back out of the cows and back into his herd, and his beautiful progeny have graced our pastures this spring. I love them all.
In a sea of black Angus calves, the Charolais babies and all their vast colorings are delightful to my eyes…These precious baldy babies, though…My goodness. They are all just a little different, and I love it. As many calves as there are, it is fun to be able to actually recognize some time after time. The following three are Patches, Half-and-Half (look at her eyelashes!), and Freckles.
According to Brad, there are at least 15 more, so now that I can buzz around on the ATV without freezing, I’ll have to lug my camera back out. So precious!
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Originally printed in the Custer County Chronicle on April 3, 2024
The miracle of life is front and center during calving season. It is amazing to watch a heifer birth her first baby, looking in vague confusion at the squirming, slimy creature that made its sudden, un-asked-for appearance, and then, prompted by God-given instinct, begin to clean the baby off. The baby is up off the ground in a matter of minutes, his little legs wobbly and knock-kneed, and then he finds the life-giving udder and his little tail goes to wagging, just like a dog. What a sight to see.
The excitement of the first calf of the season is followed by weeks and weeks of chaos, confused young mother cows learning the ropes, babies everywhere, unmixing mixups, and the satisfaction of watching maternal older cows do everything on their own.
It isn’t just instinct that drives a cow, but a fascinating melding of instinct and education, and the first-time mamas are kept under pretty close watch for the first few days, and kept in the nearest pasture for the first month or so. These first-time mamas are prone to wandering off and leaving their calves, forgetting they have calves, forgetting which calf is theirs, forgetting where they left their calves, and can often be seen chasing helplessly after a sprightly baby, entirely unsure how to control the unruly child.
The second-time mamas are a little less helpless, instinct and education both more fully developed, but there still is a tendency towards some of those pitfalls of early motherhood. They are given a little more freedom than the first-timers, but are still able to be supervised. Eventually, cows figure out the concept of nursery groups, where one or three mothers are left in charge of a dozen or so babies, giving the other mothers a chance to go in to water or eat. I don’t know how they figure out shifts, but somehow they do, but early on they forget about the need for a babysitter and just wander off, until something jogs their bovine memories.
And nothing jogs the bovine memory like the sound of a calf bawling. Nothing reminds a mama cow of her maternal responsibility like the sound of the baby she forgot about or misplaced. Some calves are obliging, squealing like stuck pigs if you just look at them wrong, let alone if they are being sat on by a wiry rancher, but other calves are stoics, and won’t make a peep, which is inconvenient if you’re trying to identify them.
Thus, the necessity of the fine art of cow-calling. Although ranching is a lot of science, there are a number of things that definitely fall into the “art” category, and cow-calling is one of those things.
I remember being seated behind my now husband, bundled up against the cold, enjoying the view as we bounced around the hayfield on the ATV, looking for unmarked calves to ear tag and vaccinate. The ear tag given matches the one in the mother’s ear, so they can be easily paired up later on and a good inventory kept. The frozen hayfield wasn’t much fun to drive over, but I was having a dandy time, my arms wrapped snugly around my handsome not-quite-husband, and having been granted the official role of keeper of the vaccine gun and ear tagger. Without warning, an absolutely uncanny sound issued from my not-quite-husband’s lips. Seated as I was right behind him, arms wrapped around him as stated, I experienced the full force of this incredible and unearthly sound. It was truly awe-inspiring, unlike anything I had ever heard before.
And I burst out laughing.
I honestly thought the demonstration was for comic effect. Until I saw fifteen mother cows practically stand to attention, heads flying up from complacent grazing like they’d been stung by wasps, then leave their breakfast and take off in all different directions, whichever direction they thought they remembered having left their calves. For the record, they don’t always remember, the telltale sign being a mother cow walking around bawling until she stumbles across her baby, which is (almost) always right where she had left it.
Anyway, the cow-calling had the intended effect and the mother of the baby in question presented herself, the calf was identified, tagged and vaccinated, and we went on our merry way.
Such was my introduction to the fine art of cow-calling.
I have since had my education on this topic broadened and have learned that this useful skill can be employed not only to quickly identify an unmarked calf, but to mostly accurately separate the cows that have calved from those that have not, to bluff a cow into looking around for the purpose of reading her ear tag, or to keep a flighty cow from running off without her young baby. I’m sure there are other uses for it, but those are the main ones I have identified.
Calving season. By turns hilarious or heartbreaking. Life and death are often juxtaposed. It is the sweetness of new life and baby animals that know no fear, the enjoyment of watching them learn to play and take their first running steps in the wide open, crow-hopping on their spindly legs. It is incredible to see a cow looking for somewhere to calve, and twenty minutes later to find not only that she has had the calf but that it is up and nursing already. It is miracle after miracle after miracle.
But cow-calling still makes me laugh.
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