It was the day after Christmas. We were working on a chore that I would have liked to have finished a month earlier, but the stars never did quite align as I had hoped. So here we were, on Dec. 26, finally running the cows through the chute for preg checking. I don’t have the biggest herd or the nicest facilities, but we make do. I used to plan it as a one-day project, but in recent years, I’ve changed up the protocol and spread the work out over two days. It’s made life much easier, and I think it’s made me a more tolerable (if not always perfectly pleasant) person for my crew to live with.
There’s another step – besides making preg checking a two-day extravaganza – that I’ve taken in the past few years that has eased the burden immensely. Back in the day, a few dogs and horses ago, my pride and my “resourcefulness” dictated that I palpate every cow myself. And why not? It’s a useful and practical skill, and I didn’t charge myself anywhere near as much as any vet I knew. But, in recent years, technology and better sense have intervened in the form of my reduced, more practical ego and improved pregnancy-detecting ultrasound equipment to accompany my ever-patient consulting veterinarians. Even in my less-than-state-of-the-art facilities, we can whip through a couple hundred cows in half a day. That still usually gives me enough time to sort through cow groups and various messes before two hours post-sunset.
As is always the case after the fall gather, I always wind up with a few of my neighbors’ cows mixed with my herd. Conversely, I’ll have a few of my cows in my neighbors’ herds. Prisoner exchanges occur on a regular basis, and by calving time, most every cow is at least in the vicinity of where she belongs. And so it was, on that midafternoon on Dec. 26, that I found myself sorting through the handful of strays that I’d sorted off as they came through the chute.
It will come as no surprise to anyone who knows me at all, that between my serial procrastination and chronic cheapness, I have yet to adequately replace the big, stout gate at the north end of one of my sorting alleys. I’ve kind of replaced it. But I haven’t adequately replaced it. By that, I mean I’ve cobbled together two dinged-up 12-foot panels at the end of the alley and tied up the big end of a leftover 10-foot section of a broken corral pole to the panels with orange baling twine. Mind you, I did take the time and effort to double the twine when I made my hasty repairs.
With the day’s activities, I had nearly every spare pen stuffed with some combination of critters, but I needed to sort off one rank old waspy cow belonging to my nearest neighbor before another neighbor arrived with his trailer to pick up a couple of his own cows. As I approached the three or four cows milling around in the frozen mud at the far end of the alley in an effort to make the sort, the old girl in question stuck her head in the air and gave a loud snort worthy of a fire-breathing medieval dragon. She took a couple of bold steps toward me, but I held my ground and sent an equally bold PG-13 curse her way. She whirled around and took aim at another target: my less-than-thoughtfully planned and middling-constructed panel/pole/gate thingy at the end of the alley.
She made what I considered a second-rate attempt to leap over the panels, landing squarely on top of them, with her front legs and head on one side and her hindquarters on the other. She floundered there in that position for a few seconds before she managed to sufficiently render my heretofore almost useless panels completely useless and free herself from her self-inflicted trap, whereby she sprinted to the far end of the big pen and tried to hide herself in the middle of my own collection of open and sale-bound cows.
I’m not proud of it, but at that point, I completely lost my … uh, composure (along with my self-respect). I let out a string of vile cuss words in such a dizzying array of combinations that the highest ranking of Beelzebub’s own lieutenants would have stood at attention, had they the inclination to attend the festivities. Momentarily, I caught my breath and apologized to Jacob, my 20-something nephew who had graciously donated his services to the cause that day and was helping me sort the strays. He politely chuckled and excused my tirade as he empathetically lied and told me he could identify with my misplaced rage.
My seething simmered for just a few more minutes as I was able to gather up my dignity out of the ankle-deep stew of manure and frozen mud where I stood. Jacob helped me re-repair my panel/pole/gate contraption, and we left the maniac cow where she was, determining that the battle would still be there to fight in the morning.
The following day, as we finished up the last group of cows, I took a brief moment to count my open cows and my blessings. I still hadn’t satisfactorily contained the avenging angel cow, but I figured we’d get her when we shipped the open cows to town. My cows had bred up at a rate that far exceeded my expectations, especially considering the harsh, dry weather of the previous summer, and for that I was relieved and thankful.
I took that moment to take stock of the past couple of days. Why is it, I wondered, that I so often speak – or rant – before I think? In retrospect, it makes literally no sense at all to rage at a cow like a madman. It did nothing at all to remedy the calamity, and it certainly did nothing to calm my nerves. Frankly, it only made matters worse. It forced me to sift back through the years of clutter in my mind to the times when I would have been so much better served to hold my tongue and sort my thoughts before I spoke. My opportunities for Abe Lincoln- or Winston Churchill-esque wisdom have all too often been shoved off my mind’s stage in favor of a tirade worthy of Mussolini’s little buddy. I’m not sure that anger has ever served me well.
I’ve never been an effective New Year’s resolutioner, mostly because I’m a much better procrastinator, but I believe I have something to work on this year. Check in with me this spring after I’ve finished calving heifers for the next report …
