I dabble in social media. Admittedly, I think it’s kind of a curse because it’s much too easy to waste way too much time that could be better wasted elsewhere. Nevertheless, even with a clear understanding of its pitfalls, I continue to dabble. I’m far from a social media “influencer,” and I really have little desire to ever become such, but I must admit that I do enjoy some aspects of the whole, mostly inane spectacle. With a little discipline and restraint, I usually avoid going down too many so-called rabbit holes where, for instance, a video of a newborn calf can somehow lead to dark discussions about modern-day applications of medieval Slovakian sorcery in the election processes in Zimbabwe.
Most of my interactions are with people in the ag community, and I’ve been fortunate to have met people from B.C. to Britain and from Alberta to Arizona. For the most part, as one might expect from farm and ranch folk, my posts and comments, which for the most part are horse-and-cow-centric, are met with a spirit of friendliness and cordial goodwill.
Naturally, during the spring-calving season, nearly every day offers up plenty of shareworthy material. Videos and pictures of a cute, adorable, wobbly newborn calf struggling to his feet to greet the world and latch on to his first colostrum-flavoured breakfast are bound to garner a boatload of likes, shares and positive comments. Add a snippet from a melancholy Ian Tyson ballad, and you’ve got the makings of an Insta-hit.
Outside of the many fuzzy, feel-good ’Gram and Tok-worthy moments, calving season lends itself to plenty of worry and stress, even in the best of years. Although the recently concluded calving season was certainly not the worst I’ve gone through, it still provided its fair share of grief and anxiety-inducing episodes. And since such experiences seemed to fill up large chunks of my days, I often took the opportunity to chronicle my woes. To wit:
- I had to assist a cow whose calf had a front leg back in the birth canal. I was able to extract the calf without too much trouble, but the baby didn’t survive. Bam! TikTok video.
- A first-calf heifer calved during the night. I found her casually lying in the snow with a calf that had only minutes before been born, back feet first. Since the heifer hadn’t jumped right up to clean her new offspring, the calf had suffocated and expired before I arrived. Later the next day, the first-time mother returned to the same spot and delivered a twin of the first calf. It, too, was dead when I found it. How could I not post a video of my strange and terrible luck?
- One early morning as I was feeding, I noticed a cow in a far corner of the field. When I checked on her, I found that she had delivered a too-big calf that had died before my arrival. During what was obviously a difficult parturition, the cow experienced some nerve damage and was unable to stand. I had to get the tractor and the hip lifters to stand the cow up in an effort to rehabilitate her. Boom! Another Tok-worthy story.
I was on a roll. I had some sort of depressing, real-life content to post nearly every day. I’m a pretty small player in the social media world, but the stories of my troubles garnered a relatively large amount of attention in comparison to what most of my material received. One afternoon, I made the 10-kilometre trip down into town to the lone gas station to grab a Dr Pepper so I could recaffeinate and recharge my weary self. After I’d purchased the precious nectar, I stepped out the door and headed to my still-running pickup. Leaning on my tailgate was Mike, a friend, neighbour and fellow rancher; someone with whom I could commiserate and who could understand and empathize with me and my current state.
Though he doesn’t care to post much content, Mike is also a fellow TikToker. “Geez, Paul,” he sympathetically declared, “I was figuring I needed to head up there to the foothills to give you a hand. You’ve been reporting nothing but tragedy with your videos.”
I acknowledged his assessment with a resigned sigh of agreement, but I assured him that all hope was not lost. There were, indeed, joyful goings-on happening at my place. As a matter of fact, as I thought about it, I realized that if I had the time, know-how and inclination, I could probably post 25 or 30 uplifting and positive stories to my social media platforms for every gut-punch story I’d been sharing with the world.
“All the same,” Mike asserted, “You know I’ll run up there and help you if you ever need anything at all.”
Mike’s offer of help and his genuine goodwill lifted my spirits and woke me up more than I could ever hope from a double shot of Mountain Dew or the blackest cup of cowboy coffee. I knew he was sincere, and I knew he wasn’t the only one of my cowboy neighbours who would more than make good on the very same offer.
As I made my way back home to face whatever new disaster awaited me in the calving pasture, I couldn’t help but send up a little prayer of gratitude for the blessing of the good and decent people around me. I knew I’d make it through this calving season and whatever dark times that lay ahead. And the very next day, I posted a 30-second video of 40 healthy, frolicking baby calves spreading joy as they gleefully ran around the field while I fed the cows.
