In the morning, Audrey would frequently go and ‘call’ for Piggy. This often meant waking her up, which Audrey did by gently tapping her with her foot. If Piggy got up first she would find Audrey and push with her head until Audrey got up too and they would spend the day together playing, grazing and rooting under the cherry trees. Sybil would usually tag along too. The friendship lasted until Audrey gave birth to Brigitte and Lolita, with whom she knew not what to do, and Piggy produced eleven piglets, which puzzled her. Sybil produced Manuel. This was when we realised that Piggy and Audrey were both sure they were human. It took us some degree of patience and cunning to teach them to become mothers but they finally became so preoccupied with their offspring that they forgot about each other.
Audrey was a delight to know throughout the whole of her long life. Always friendly and helpful, she was also calm and beautiful. If ever we had to bring all the sheep into the barn she would walk behind with us, like a sheepdog, and if anything occurred to frighten the flock when we were not there, a stray dog for example, Audrey would bring the whole flock home via their too-narrow-for-a-cow gate. Sometimes when we went out into the field to see her, she would very politely make it clear that she was extremely busy grazing. If we approached to stroke her, she would not run away, but she might start eating with increased speed and walk away from us just slightly faster than we were walking towards her. If we actually had a reason for catching up with her, though, we could always prevail on her to stand still.
I remember once when we had invited a party of fifty eight- and nine-year-old schoolchildren here for the day, Audrey stood stock-still and allowed them all to stroke her simultaneously to their hearts’ content. We had feared that such an invasion might have frightened her but she obviously felt it was worthwhile giving up a bit of grazing time for such a good cause.
Sybil was boring: she was a good, sturdy lamb, but if Audrey was Helen Mirren’s character from Dennis Potter’s Blue Remembered Hills, Sybil was just her friend. Audrey liked Sybil and was very nice to her but Piggy was more inventive, better company. Piggy and the lambs went wherever they wanted to. The lambs jumped over the garden wall, and short-legged Piggy pushed the gate open.
When Piggy farrowed it really struck us again how completely she regarded herself as human. The seeming fear she had shown towards her piglets was simply because she had never seen any before. She had been wrested from her mother and siblings when only a few minutes old and had learned to behave as her guardian behaved towards her. She was the only pig I ever knew with table manners. All other pigs rush towards the bearer of food and drink and risk spilling everything in their eagerness, but Piggy would wait until the food was safely in the trough before starting to eat, apparently realising that if it were spilled on the floor it would be lost. Although Piggy learned quickly how to mother her eleven piglets, she did not manage, or perhaps even try, to teach them her good manners.
I remember how one of Piggy’s granddaughters, Lucy, managed to disabuse us of our belief in one particular old wives’ tale. Rachael and Lucy were busy digging up the small orchard and I was idly wondering what I would do if one of them were to fall in the pond. I felt sure that no pig would jump in voluntarily because they would be bound to know they could not swim, a ‘fact’ I had ‘known’ since early childhood. I was supposed to be gardening, but all the time I was half seriously contemplating running to fetch a tractor and a rope when, before my eyes, Lucy launched herself gracefully into the pond, swam round it twice, smiling, got out, shook herself and resumed her rooting. I was transfixed.
One day while I was in the kitchen I heard a very loud banging noise at the back door: a fierce, repeated, relentless rapping. As I rushed to open the door I realised that the banging was accompanied by equally strident and persistent baaing. It was Audrey knocking with her foot. When she saw me she baaed even louder and ran down the lawn, stopped, looked at me, ran towards me, calling, ran away agitated, trying Lassie-like to make me follow. We ran down the lawn, jumped the stream, scrambled up the bank and I found myself standing on the edge of the swimming pool where Sybil was swimming round and round, totally unable to do anything but swim. I jumped straight in to rescue her, put my arms round her and realised immediately that the dry lamb I could carry now had a sodden fleece and was much too heavy for me to lift up the steep sides of the half-full pool. Sybil was cold and distressed, and I had no way of knowing how long Audrey had taken to decide to come and find me. I held Sybil as far out of the freezing water as I could, resting her body on my uplifted knee. Audrey and I both started shouting for my father who I knew was the only person near. He was in the workshop, a hundred yards away and welding noisily. Every shout I made Audrey echoed and sometimes we called together. At last he heard and came hotfoot to our aid. Sybil recovered quickly, though I felt cold for the rest of the day.
Once and only once, a wild lady mallard took her eight newborn ducklings into the three-quarters-full swimming pool but they were too small to get out again. Wild as she was and wary of human beings, she stood on the edge of the pool and quacked and quacked. At first we attached no significance to the noise but eventually the desperate tone got through to us and we went to investigate. She stood her ground. I had my camera with me and thought how happy they looked, and how it was April and I had not planned to have a swim. Eventually, I slid reluctantly in, fully clothed. Every time I stretched out my hand to rescue a duckling it dived and swam the full length of the pool under water. By the time I reached the other end it would repeat the procedure. They were becoming exhausted and so was I. My mother and their mother were waiting. My mother fetched my father and brother and the tennis net. We formed a line across the pool with the net wedged in our toes and held in our hands and slowly advanced towards our ‘quarry’. As soon as they were cornered it was easy to catch them. One by one we handed them out to my mother who dried and revived them. The mallard waited patiently, tamely, until all her brood had been returned to her and then she walked them to the safety of the pond.
She did not make the same mistake again, nor have any other ducks since.
Later I shall tell the story of the old grey hen and her bodyguards. This touching relationship arises relatively often. Sheep play bodyguard roles too. When Ellen produced twins at only thirteen months old, her two old great aunts stood guard respectfully and kept the rest of the flock at a slight distance.
Difficult calvings – cows are never wrong
Although some cows hide themselves in remote corners of the farm just before calving, many more find ingenious ways of communicating with us to ask for help. Fortunately there are many more who neither hide nor require help. It is usually the difficult calvings that stay in the memory.
Nonee came down from the high pastures where all her friends were grazing the lush summer grass and lay down in a dark corner of the barn. Such unusual behaviour was sufficient to catch our attention and set us thinking. It was in fact two days before she calved and at that stage the outward signs were not yet obvious, but she felt she needed keeping under observation and of course she was right.
Cows are never wrong about such things.
Black Bumble, one of identical twin daughters of old Mrs Bumble, adopted altogether different tactics to alert us. She too broke away from the herd and came as close to the house as fences would permit, then marched up and down past the kitchen window, about twenty yards out into the field. Her fears were justified as the calf was very badly presented: backwards, upside-down and slightly askew.
Hippolyta deserved sympathy for two reasons. She needed help to calve and, more importantly, as it was the first and only time in her long life that she had had to rely on human beings for anything, she had to work out a way of communicating with them. She simply had not been brought up to it. As far back as she or we could remember, all her family had been fiercely independent. They were a tall family with mottled red-and-white faces, quite gentle and caring to each other but ‘a different species from people’, to co
in a phrase. She really did not want to ask for help but in the end she found a way. She hung around, loitered, got in the way, and was unusually friendly and cooperative. This naturally aroused our suspicions. We tried to make it easy for her; we knew her pride was important. After helping her with a tricky but not painful calving we tried to ignore her as before. We kept half a sly eye on her even so, without her knowing, but she never needed us again.
It is not just when cows are preparing to calve that they seek human assistance.
Over the forty-three years that we have operated a single-suckle system, a number of cows have come to ‘ask’ to be milked. This can be for a variety of reasons. Sometimes ‘teenage’ calves can become so keen on eating grass that they have no appetite for milk. In spring, when the grass is superabundant, most cows will produce extra milk. These two factors occurring together can lead to the cow needing to be milked. Some of the cows are even clever enough to ask for help if they develop mastitis while others suffer in silence.
Dizzy and her family
In the late summer of 1966 my parents travelled to the Forest of Dean to collect a two-day-old heifer calf that was being given to them by a man from whom they had previously bought five cows. My father named her Discount. Curled up on the back seat of our blue Ford Cortina, Discount travelled home as good as gold, while my parents listened to the test match with difficulty on a transistor radio held up to the side window, reporting a very exciting last-wicket stand between, I think, Snow and Higgs. Discount was to found quite a dynasty. For one thing she had only daughters and they had daughters too and so the members of the Discount clan multiplied. We still have at least twenty of her direct descendants in the herd today.
One such descendant is Dizzy. Dizzy’s first calf was Olé, and he became our herd bull, learning the ropes from Jake from the time he was a few weeks old and Jake was getting on a bit. Olé was magnificent to look at and as nice-natured as his mother, but he was too busy being happy to be as sensitive as Jake. Olé and Mr Mini were exactly the same age and they both wanted to grow up to be just like Jake, who was loved by humans and bovines alike. They had no hope of looking like him, for he was jet Welsh Black, while Mr Mini was mid-Lincoln Red and Olé was creamy Charolais, but they copied what they could. They decided, misguidedly, that he ought to teach them how to fight, and so were perpetually pestering him; attacking simultaneously, banging into his legs or dewlap, reminding him of tickling flies. Jake would just amble around, grazing while the pests jostled and skipped and played for hour after hour until finally, in exasperation, Jake would see them off with a half-push or a stare and they would trot away together.
The story of Dizzy’s last calf, Dizzy II, is worth a mention. Dizzy II gained the nickname of The Bodyguard when she was about six months old. Her twenty-year-old mother had begun to suffer from arthritis and had also developed cracks in her feet. As a consequence she was less keen on walking the sometimes great distances covered by the herd in a day and she required embrocation. We visited her several times a day to administer ointment to her legs and linseed oil to her feet and to provide interesting food to save her walking more than necessary. Prior to this, Dizzy II had seen us on average only once a day, and even then we had not been paying particular attention to her mother. These new, more frequent visits aroused suspicion and no matter how far away she might be grazing or playing with her friends, each time we drove up and parked next to her mother, young Dizzy left what she was doing and galloped over to check on us. The older Dizzy was delighted with the attention but the younger always hung around, watching us intently until we had driven away, at which point she would resume her former activities.
Something happens here every day …
… but many of the happenings, inevitably, go unnoticed.
One prerequisite for greatness, perhaps, is suffering. It brings out the best in people who have experienced war, accidents, loss, injury, poverty, hunger, oppression. If something does not kill you it will root out your depths of goodness, strength and endurance. In the bovine world too, suffering can bring out the best in an individual.
One could say that Black Araminta was a heifer just like any other. It would not be true, but it is the case that we did not realise what she was made of until she had to face adversity.
She broke a bone in her leg – fortunately, and it seems strange to use that word, only thirty yards from the house. This made the task of nursing her much easier than it might have been.
After all the other cows had grazed their way into an adjoining field, we noticed her standing on her own. She did not look at all distressed; she just did not move, and as it turned out she did not move for the next six weeks. She ate and drank enthusiastically and she could lie down and stand up but she made no attempt to go forwards or backwards.
Like almost every other animal, Black Araminta responded beautifully to kindness, and the one exception to this that I remember was her own very last calf, Gemima, whom we had to restrain at two months old so that we could treat a cut foot. Gemima never – and I mean never – forgave what she regarded as demeaning impertinence.
Some animals take to being waited on as if it were their due; others are grateful; some are visibly moved and surprised, but once a routine of grooming and spoiling begins, the healing process is assured. We did not know Black Araminta very well before. She had seemed magnificently independent and capable, as she was to be again, but she put her trust in us absolutely for the duration of her convalescence.
Six weeks to the day after the accident she walked ten yards forward, uphill. We did not witness this. We carried her water buckets uphill too. The next day she walked, in the same direction, fifty yards. The buckets followed suit. On the third day, by the time we looked, she had disappeared from view. We found her in a comfortable hollow, in the shade of a pair of sister oaks, several hundred yards away, and she was not alone.
She had calved unaided and had produced a creamcoloured daughter, Gem; she had licked and suckled her. We approached, to congratulate and investigate, and this was when she made it clear that the period of trust and dependence was at an end. ‘Thank you for all you did but from now on, help me only if I ask you to,’ she said.
We did as we were told. She produced a calf each year and once in a blue moon needed, asked for and received our help: there was a muddy teat that needed washing, a time when there was too much milk for a very small calf and once a stone in the foot. Apart from that, our docile, compliant, uncomplaining patient became a confident prime minister among cattle: never admitting a mistake or performing a U-turn, never allowing any affection, but vaguely gracious when assisted.
We visit all our cattle at least once every day of the year and if any are close to calving we may go many times. Araminta had a minimum of one opportunity each day to attract our attention and also, like most if not all cows in the herd, she knew where we lived and could always come home if necessary. If she wanted anything, she would march over to greet us as soon as we entered the field. We knew from the rulebook that this was not because she wanted to be stroked. It generally took only a few seconds to discern what was awry.
I wonder if perhaps the very friendliest cows, those who always request affectionate attention, might find it harder to communicate a real need. I shall be on the lookout from now on.
Physical communication
Cows use physical movement of their heads to convey a variety of messages. These movements play a vital role in greeting a person or another animal, when they might stretch their heads forwards, muzzle up, I suppose using their sense of smell. I have never been sure just how big a part smell plays in the everyday life of a cow. Certainly they object strongly if a person wears perfume. But the ‘fact’ I was told as a child, that cows are colour-blind and recognise each other solely by smell is, I can confidently assert, totally untrue. We have noticed that when a calf falls asleep and its mother grazes her way to the other side of the field, sooner or later one or other of them will demand that
they be reunited. If the cow makes this decision first, she will scan the surrounding area, note the various groups of animals and always start walking towards calves of the same colour as her own even if the final choice may be made by smell or some other means. Equally aware, a calf will walk towards cows of the right colour.
A lick of affection together with an eye-to-eye enquiring look might accompany a greeting. A cow such as Gemima will greet all humans with an angry shake of the head and if anyone gets too close they will be physically knocked. This is a warning: it is never followed by an attack, though such warnings, if ignored, can become more insistent.
Heads are used by all members of the herd to greet, recognise and accept into the fold each new calf. Just a simple, quick stare at very close quarters indicates that the new arrival has been logged in the attendance register.
Heads repel unwanted attention but they are also the vehicle for conveying love and concern. Reciprocal grooming is an important activity and the ways in which different cows ask other herd members for such attentions are fascinating.
Notes on grooming
Grooming is a big subject and a very important one. There is only one cow on the farm at the moment who does not like to be groomed by us (and it is not Gemima); all the others, even the grumpy ones, are very appreciative. Our animals keep themselves very clean and if for any reason they are unable to maintain that state they become dejected.
When July Bonnet calved recently– her ninth or tenth calf (I cannot quite remember without the record book beside me) – she contracted a womb infection and felt quite ill for several days. During this time she had no energy for grooming herself and to her absolute satisfaction I took on the task. July is a very big cow and I did not realise the scale of the job until I began, but I could hardly get away with grooming only half of her. Over a week or so our routine developed. Once, she stopped eating hay and I heard a strange noise. It was the noise of contented snoring: July had abandoned herself to the pleasure of being groomed so completely that she had fallen fast asleep.
The Secret Life of Cows Page 7