June came to live with us ten years ago. David, the dairy farmer who gave her to us, believed she had an umbilical hernia that would keep her from being able to calve easily and nurse her calf. After a few months on our so-called farm at that time, a little patch of three acres, half of which was planted in three mobile homes, June's 'umbilical hernia' turned out to be nothing more than her own umbilical cord which had not yet fully healed. We named her 'June' in honor of her birth month, and kept her for her potential as a brood and nurse cow.
June had roots on our small landholding. She was the heifer of a Hostein dairy cow and "Shorty," a gorgeous red, milking Shorthorn bull that had been born on our farm, and who had been sold to David about two years before we acquired June. She was part of the last group of calves Shorty sired before he was turned into steak and hamburger. June had red and white patterning that reflected her mixed parentage.
From the time she first calved, June proved to be an outstanding cow. My husband taught our sons how to milk her, and I discovered the joys of honest-to-goodness cream. In fact, I became so spoiled, I refused to drink half-and-half, and I now drink my coffee black because I do not have real cream to put in it. My husband used June as a nurse cow to provide milk to bull calves he would buy from David. In the ten years we had her, she nurse a total of 55 calves - six of her own, and 49 others.
June's last calf, Little Bit, was born this past June. He exhibits his mother's markings, and the darker red of his red limousin bull sire.
There are times when I seem to have a sixth sense about things on this farm (although not always, as I will describe shortly). I noticed that June seemed to be resting at the edge of a wooded section of our pasture, but all of the other cattle were grazing. Cattle have specific times of the day when they rest and when they graze, and while one or two in a herd may occasionally graze or rest when all of the other animals are doing the opposite, there is a legitimate reason for the term 'herd mentality': the animals do things as a group. I kept an eye on June, figuring that perhaps her resting was just one of those occasional times when not everyone is doing the same thing at the same time, but when it was clear that she had not moved for nearly an hour, I pointed out to my husband that we needed to go and check on her.
What we found concerned us. It was clear from the manure piles that June had been in the same spot for even longer than the hour that I had been observing her. My husband tried to get her to stand, even putting some feed in a trough to encourage her to move (up to that point, June had always been the first one at the trough, earning her the nickname, "feed hog"). My husband and I frantically discussed all of the options: virus? hard metal disease? bovine flatulence?
We weren't prepared for the final answer: old age. June was, by bovine standards, an old cow, and it was time for her to go to the Great Pasture. This was not an easy thing to do because she was, maybe as much as our 14-year old dog (we're all getting old around here!), a family pet. I conveniently managed not to be home when my husband took care of things, but I still get upset, even as I write this post, about the fact that she is gone.
And when the sixth sense isn't working...
A week ago, I went outside and found a strange dog hanging around our yard. The dog, a female beagle, is marked almost exactly like our male beagle, so much so that I thought he had escaped his dog pen. But this dog was obviously female, and either nursing or about to give birth to pups. For some reason (that sixth sense again), I went over to our hen pen, and what I saw sickened me: feathers of one hen who was nowhere to be found, an eviscerated second hen, and one last hen, alive, but looking traumatized. This beagle showed no interest in the birds, so I suspect she was not the culprit, and I looked around for signs of entry into the pen, but saw none.
I left to go to the appointment I needed to keep, and when I returned an hour later, all of our hens were gone. We could hear yipping in the woods behind our house, sounds of a pack of wild dogs or coyotes. We heard those sounds for several days, until they finally quit, about two days ago. After living here for over two years, raising chicks for home chicken consumption and keeping hens for eggs, this is the first time we have had something or some things come and eat our birds. It's not unusual, and most keepers of backyard poultry have one story or another to share about similar events, but when it's your turn, you are painfully reminded of how farm living is often just one small step away from the more treacherous and primitive lifestyles of the hunter-gatherers of just a few generations back.
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