On this farm, two parallel hedges were planted on either side of a farm roadway ten feet wide. By the time we came to live here the hedges were thick and strong and about twelve feet tall. Today, over thirty years later, they are thirty to forty feet tall and arch over the road, meeting in the middle to provide the appearance and convenience of a barn. All the cows know where this ‘barn’ is and will choose to use it both in winter for shelter from cold and in summer to escape the heat.
Coping with rain is part of the syllabus but it is not always easy to get it right. A group of mature cattle can stand an enormous amount of rain and, in fact, seem not to notice it. In a mixed group with very young calves, some of the less experienced mothers do not always realise that their offspring need more protection than they do, but the clever, older cows always know and bring their calves into the barns or find a sheltered spot under a tree or close to a hedge.
Some fully grown sheep, with their weatherproof wool, actually like cold wind and sometimes walk to the highest, most exposed, part of the farm to revel in it, but they do not like prolonged rain. When they have lambs at foot, more care is needed. Lambs can be quite vulnerable during the first few weeks of life and although most can cope with cold or wet weather, the process of coping requires much of the energy they are deriving from their mothers’ milk. Providing some sort of shelter is, therefore, financially as well as humanely desirable.
As a general rule we have found that lambs are even cleverer than calves at finding comfortable places to shelter. Very young lambs will commandeer a flake of hay or nip inside a shed or any makeshift shelter. If nothing suitable is to be found they will try to improve their lot by any means they can think of. This might involve climbing on a tree stump or log of wood or into a hollow tree or onto their mother’s back in order to be dryer and more comfortable than they would be on the ground.
The decision-making process animals are constantly involved in includes choosing exactly what to eat. Nibbling and browsing all sorts of different grasses, herbs, flowers, hedges and tree leaves gives them vital trace elements in their daily diet in the amounts they feel are appropriate: such decisions could not be made so effectively by us.
The animals are all individuals. Mass ‘legislation’ for the entire herd in terms of feed might suit the majority but we have always been concerned with minorities. It is not only more accurate and effective to let the animals decide; it is also cheaper. We have watched cows and sheep eat extraordinary plants in prodigious quantities. Cows will eat dark green, vicious-looking stinging nettles by the cubic yard and sheep often choose pointed, spiky thistle tops or tall, tough dock leaves, particularly after parturition when their energy reserves are depleted. And this is when they have access to good natural grass.
I have never known a sheep to take a day off but cows do fairly often give eating a miss for a day or so after giving birth. In my experience new sheep-mothers always eat faster and more single-mindedly than ever before, knowing that they must produce enough milk to satisfy the relentless demands of their offspring. Some cows, if they have produced a smallish calf, will know that they have milk ‘in reserve’ and might spend the first day or two under a tree with the calf, taking it easy. They might graze a little in the evenings but nothing like their usual daily routine.
One particularly satisfying fact we have discovered is that if the animals have sustained an injury they like to eat quite large quantities of willow. We hope that this is connected to the origins of aspirin. If a willow tree is not growing in a handy place we cut and carry boughs to whoever needs it. Without exception they eat keenly, sometimes on several consecutive days. When they feel they no longer need it they will just walk away.
Desdemona II, granddaughter of Dizzy, or Black-and-White Desdemona as she was generally known, preferred grass to every other type of food. All was fine in summer when she was born and the autumn and again in spring but in the winter, no matter how bitter or even icy the weather, when all the other cattle were pleased to stay in the barns, she would stand at the gate and stare until we realised what she wanted and opened it. Given carte blanche she would plod off maybe half a mile and graze quite alone all day, though just occasionally she would pass within speaking distance of the sheep who also prefer to stay out in most weather conditions. She simply would not eat hay or straw or barley or apples; she wanted only grass. She could not and did not get fat on grass in winter but she was very contented and late every afternoon she would come slowly home and ask to be let back in to spend the night with her mother, sister, grandmother and cousins. By her second winter she had learned to eat hay but she still preferred grass and spent most of each day grazing, whatever the weather.
Very young calves will ‘stay in bed’ if they are not feeling well. Even if their mothers go out to graze and call them to follow, many a calf will just stay where it is, and the mothers always come back at regular intervals. One of the canniest examples of calf good sense was the case of Chippy Minton.
Chippy’s mother was inexperienced and had taken him out in the fields on a December morning. But Chippy decided that he would be better off in the warm barn. At six days old, he left his mother and the rest of the herd and plodded home, a distance of nearly half a mile. Luckily we were there to see him descending the hill and were able to usher him into suitable accommodation. He had caught a bit of a chill and was scouring, so he needed rehydration therapy and nursing. It was at this time that he developed a penchant for being groomed: he hated to go to sleep at night with muddy legs.
Bovine friendships are seldom casual
It is extremely common – the norm in fact – for calves to establish lifelong friendships when only a few days old. Sometimes three calves all born within a short space of time form a group but more often it is a two-calf friendship, usually between the two who are closest in age. The White Boys – pictured on the front cover – are a case in point.
Nell calved first and produced a pure white bull calf, a dazzling white. Juliet calved the very next day and produced an identical calf. We had never had such white calves: grey, cream, buff, off-white, silvery, golden but not pure white. The first calf walked over to greet the new arrival and stared at him as if looking in a mirror. They became devoted and inseparable friends from that minute. The two mothers, now of secondary importance in the lives of their two offspring, became firm friends too, forced as they were to spend all their time together, waiting around to provide milk on request. Nell and Juliet had both had their own childhood friends but their new circumstances threw them together. A year later, when both mothers calved again, there was absolutely no jealousy, no trauma. The White Boys had each other and barely noticed their mothers leaving the field to come down nearer the house to the nursery field. Nell and Juliet remained friends, this time with relatively run-of-the-mill calves, one red and one whitish.
The White Boys lived in a world of their own; in the midst of a large herd but oblivious to it. They walked round shoulder to shoulder, often bumping against each other, and they slept each night with their heads resting on each other. They were magnificent: tall, gentle, independent, kindly, though not over-friendly, noble. One had a pink nose, one a grey.
A less eye-catching but equally strong friendship had been forged six years before between Black and White Charlotte (daughter of Charolais Charlotte) and Guy (son of Dizzy). She was all black with a white tail and he was a smart dull grey with a white tail. Guy was a member of the Discount family and Charlotte was a Highnoon.
Bovine friendships are seldom casual. Devotion is the order of the day, although it is directed towards practical mutual help and is rarely over-protective or emotional.
Charlotte and Guy got on like a house on fire but they each had other friends. If they were sometimes parted by the grazing preferences of their mothers, there was no pining but there was always a joyous reunion when the split herds grazed their way back together again. (Anne and Helen, I remember, actually kissed each other after an unplanned one-we
ek parting when they were both aged three months.) The friendship tailed off when Charlotte’s mother died and she took on the role of mother to her little sister Lotte. Lotte was a smaller version of her sister, black with a white tail, but she had horns whereas Charlotte was naturally polled. Charlotte was so caring and kindly that Lotte coped with this trauma almost unscathed, and when Charlotte had her first calf Lotte was an invaluable aunt.
Charlotte, however, did not take naturally to real motherhood. Her adorable all-black daughter, born on the Ides of March and named Calpurnia after Caesar’s wife (and almost immediately nicknamed Cocoa), was not permitted to suckle milk from her debutante-type mother who announced straight away that the nanny could bring up the brat. ‘Nanny’ was my brother and he patiently haltered Charlotte and persuaded her to stand still while Cocoa drank, taking her kicks of protest on his own shins to protect the calf.
Cocoa loved her mother (she never actually got kicked, which might have taken the edge off the relationship). She suckled milk three times a day, was loved and stroked and groomed by all of us, was treated very nicely indeed by Lotte, and thought that life was wonderful. Mothers, she must have thought, give you milk if forced to and people give you affection and protection.
Charlotte did not spurn her daughter’s loving overtures; she just seemed not to notice. Cocoa would nuzzle under her mother’s chin, occasionally giving her a playful bunt. Charlotte just gazed into the distance. They always grazed and slept very close together but that had nothing to do with Charlotte.
Cocoa was a real beauty and everybody’s favourite. She loved everyone and welcomed attention. Even the men who worked on the farm, not celebrated in those days for their overtly affectionate natures, never failed to pause for a quick stroke, however busy they were.
When Cocoa was just over two months old, everything changed. She risked sneaking a drink when we were not there; Charlotte noticed her for the first time and obviously thought how splendid she was and she told us in no uncertain terms that she intended to take full credit for her lovely daughter, and from that day on she licked, polished and fed Cocoa single-handedly.
This friendship was of particular interest to us because Cocoa was so used to people and so friendly that we could be part of the process without imposing.
When Charlotte had a bull calf, Cassio, fifteen months later, Cocoa was on hand to help. She stood over him and protected him from other curious cows and she babysat happily whenever the need arose. Even when Cassio was grown up and calf number three, Carline, was the centre of attention, Cocoa and Cassio would often be seen standing sharing the same flake of hay. Charlotte, needless to say, never forgot again how to be a good mother; in fact she was one of the best.
But bulls are a completely different kettle of fish
Although living with cows is a rewarding and always interesting experience, bulls are a different kettle of fish altogether.
At one time we had three bulls of roughly the same age: the Bishop of Gloucester, a Welsh Black; the Bishop of Worcester, a Lincoln Red; and Augustus, a Charolais. At one stage it became necessary to remove Gloucester and put him with a particular group of cows near the house. Meanwhile, Worcester and Augustus rubbed along well enough. I think they liked each other and they certainly never fought, but Augustus thought himself superior and Worcester was happy to let him get away with some prima-donna displays. After the bulls had been parted for several months an incident occurred.
We had a young student helping on the farm. He had been given a lot of jobs to do and had had it impressed on him in unequivocal language not to open the gate to the enclosure where Gloucester was: he must not be allowed to wander. Sometime later, the student came hotfoot to the house revealing between gasps that Gloucester had taken the opportunity to escape during the few minutes he had judged it safe to leave the gate open. Such a thing had happened before, when an actor friend had offered to help and had gone in pursuit of the escapees only to land on his face in deep mud (hence our stringent orders). I raced up the path, in my slippers, shouting orders behind me for him to find my brother and follow.
I knew that this time it was more serious, and I knew where Gloucester had gone: Augustus had been growling in a deep, menacing, half-bored, half-grumpy voice all morning and Gloucester had been listening. Gloucester had gone down the steep track and into the paddock. I jumped into the Land Rover and sped down the farm road, plummeting down through the trees faster than ever before. The bumping, shaking and jolting threw me about all over the place, and I dared not even contemplate the possibility that I might get stuck on the waterlogged bridge. Hurtling through the gateway into the wood I managed to park in front of the gate to the bulls’ field literally a second before Gloucester galloped up.
Augustus pawed the ground on his side of the gate, Gloucester champed at the bit on his. Worcester was shadowing Augustus’s every move but without the least conviction.
If they are evenly matched, bulls will fight all day and all night until they are utterly exhausted. There is never any trouble if they grow up together as peers or if a young bull is introduced to an older one when very small and they then stay together. But if bulls are parted and then reintroduced, the earth trembles and, short of using tranquillising darts, humans are useless.
I knew I had to keep the two of them apart until reinforcements arrived. I paced up and down, growled when they growled, threatened when they advanced, consoled when they retreated. I had never felt more determined. The consequences of failure would be too hard to bear.
The two men arrived an eternity, or five minutes, later and we set about walking Gloucester home. We threw some hay from the back of the Land Rover to divert Augustus’s attention and we all three guided Gloucester with wills of steel, sticks of ash and howls of unimaginable inventiveness – driving cattle is an art in itself worthy of deep discussion and at the best of times it is more reliant on psychology than strength.
Gloucester trotted forward, overwhelmed and taken off guard by our forcefulness but after fifty yards or so he made a skilful attempt to double back. He was very excited, very strong, very fit and very fast. Somehow, our do-or-die attitude deflected his bid and we progressed a bit further. We kept talking to him, admonishing him, threatening him, telling him he should obey us if he wanted to stay alive. Gloucester did not believe a word, but gradually, with him stopping and starting, galloping and braking, snorting then trying to look pitiful, we inched him towards home. We only just made it. Our every sinew, both mental and physical, was strained to the utmost. He could easily have outrun and outwitted us, but perhaps his inbuilt inclination to trust us, coupled with the strangeness of our frantic gestures, enabled us to get him into the barn. We relaxed, laughed, collapsed, ecstatic, worried still but triumphant. Short-legged as he was, little Gloucester suddenly and effortlessly cleared a five-barred gate and was off to the wood again. Another gate was closed in front of him and this caused him to hesitate just long enough to allow the recapture.
The bulls never met again. Gloucester had his herd and the other two had theirs. Vigilance reigned and harmony returned.
As I write it is still only March and although spring has popped up in places, with primroses everywhere, wood anemones somewhere, violets few-where and oxlips only one-where, it still gets chilly at night and I must put down my pen and walk to the top corner of the Cherry Tree Field, surrounded by invisible but hooting tawny owls, to see if the youngest calf on the farm has found a comfortable and sheltered spot for the night.
Fat Hat II
All animals are individuals. Some will impress their characters on you, while some will glide through life keeping a low profile. The better you know an animal, the more use you can be to it. If you know how it is likely to react in various circumstances you can be prepared. If you observe how it communicates everyday needs you can interpret unusual situations far more effectively. You can also learn which herd members can be left to their own devices.
The observations we have mad
e quite often have no relevance to the everyday lives of the animals. It is likely that even more interesting and significant things occur when we are not there at all. However, such observations as we have made have given us a heightened awareness of our animals’ intelligence and an ability, sometimes, to anticipate events and therefore save suffering and, on occasions, lives.
Fat Hat II’s usual philosophical, kindly, gentle, intelligent and trusting nature was sorely tested and in fact temporarily changed by the events surrounding and succeeding the birth of her second calf.
Her first calf, the Duke of York, was an uncomplicated chunky boy with few distinguishing features apart from the short legs he had inherited from his mother and the fact that, unlike most bovines, he lapped water like a cat. This odd characteristic had been observed by us only once before when Print, a pedigree Ayrshire, always took ten times longer than any other cow to drink her daily requirement of water, lapping in leisurely fashion.
Print, normal in all other respects, and mother of two bull calves called Victor and Feather, took a strong dislike to the little woollen hat worn persistently by one of the men. She would approach him affectionately, allow herself to be stroked, then, when she saw her opportunity, she would neatly remove the hat with her mouth, dropping it carefully on the straw. However many times it was replaced she would match them with her patient removals. She never tired of the game. He resolutely refused to change his hat; she never removed anyone else’s.
When Fat Hat II was due to calve for the second time, for some unaccountable reason she went off unnoticed into the wood, and by the time we next visited the field where she had been, several hours had passed and she was back grazing as usual. We nearly failed to realise she had calved – she looked fine, not even thin, but we still vaguely suspected something was different. We tried to persuade her to tell us if she had calved and if so where the calf was, but she pretended not to understand. We tried various tactics that had worked with other cows, but she seemed strangely resigned, distant, uncommunicative. We brought her home to examine her and when we found that she had indeed calved, we knew it was time for her to tell us more. We took her back to the field and tried to make her retrace her movements. Backwards and forwards we went, round the field, through the wood, becoming more and more concerned. We began to suspect the calf must be dead and that she had come to terms with the fact but we could not rest until we were sure. Fat Hat II simply would not help us to find the calf. We drafted in more help and began to comb the wood (60 hilly acres) systematically. When the calf was finally found the poor little mite had gone into a deep sleep. She was cold, wet and hungry. Fat Hat II, having obviously tried and tried to reach her, had finally abandoned hope. She had been born on a slope in an inaccessible, steep part of the wood and had slipped down out of reach.
The Secret Life of Cows Page 5