Calf Pulling

~ This article first appeared in The Leader-Vindicator newspaper. ~

I am not one who considers difficulty a necessary or inherent part of cattle rearing.  If nobody realizes the herd exists that’s an accomplishment because the animals are taking care of their business just fine.

Tough situations do occur and I found one in a stuck calf this season.  The heifer was too small and the calf was too large, a problem rooted in the bull if you’re the guy selling the heifer and a problem obvious in the heifer if you instead sold the bull.

In any case, I found the animal struggling with two very large front feet (thank heavens the calf was facing the right way) and one red, swollen, angry tongue protruding from her back end.  The calf was clearly dead and a prickly shard of anguish cut through my innards.  No time for sorrow, for now we must save the cow.

When the story is recounted later we always gripe about what tools we didn’t have but the truth is a rural mind presented with such a challenge calculates with remarkable clarity precisely what is available and how it can be used.  As I mentally sorted the contents of the pickup a flag popped up when I came to Henry.  Of course the boy was with me.  Step One: Call and have the kid removed to the house.

Step two: Evaluate.  It is always the case when messy work presents itself that some detail of unpleasantry pesters the mind; not forty minutes previously I had smashed my thumb between cement blocks and there was a voice hollering that I really, really didn’t want the wound covered in birthing slime.  The voice was overridden by necessity and examination proved the situation inside the cow was extremely tight.  I couldn’t get a finger between legs or head – a huge head made bigger with fluid from the pressure it was experiencing.  Not good.

In this circumstance the legs are so slippery that it’s impossible to get a good grip but I pulled one and then the other to test for movement.  Nothing.  I secured a rope to the trailing leg, used dust to dry the cord and improve hold, and pulled again.  Fractional movement.

Movement of a stuck calf turns the most pessimistic person into a roaring optimist.  I’d pull when the cow pushed and we gained enough that I could see a nose before she decided that enough was enough and she’d simply stand up and leave the situation to me.

There is a mantra drilled into the psyche of livestock families from the youngest member to the oldest: Don’t ever let go of the rope.  This advice passed down from our parents is the root cause of no shortage of injury and I got my portion for the year being dragged through brush while the cow tried to remove herself from the confusion and discomfort.  As my torso encountered a particularly dense stand of growth it occurred to me that the bushes were perhaps more stationary than me and in a desperate flailing motion I hurled myself around several trunks, thus wrapping the rope and stopping the cow.  Tie it off quickly, now.

More pulling.  The uninitiated likely cannot fathom the force needed to remove a stuck calf.  New strength is discovered, breath is raspy, and sweat pours from your chin. 

Did I see its lips move?  No.  Imagination.  It is dead.

The rope breaks.  Catch the cow or she will die along with her offspring.

Tie the rope together with your best square knot because that’s the only knot you know how to tie.  Tie the cow to another stand of brush.  Do all of this while running through a field.  Keep your hat on.

Another rope for the other leg.  Pull one and then pull the other.  Dad arrives again after removing Henry.  Both pulling. 

Did that tongue move?

Tremendous effort and then a miracle – the head is out.  It’s coming!  We got it!  Rear hips are stuck; Dad pulls the front, I reach in and grip its rump to provide force from behind.  A heave, and a massive calf becomes present.  The cow will be fine, though she is utterly exhausted.

And then the blurted words of an excited farmer: “The darned thing is alive!”

I have a towel in the pickup for rubbing.  I have colostrum in the freezer.  We rub and rub and encourage the stunned thing to keep breathing, which it does nicely.  I milk the cow into a bottle and we combine her new milk with the thawed-out reserve and feed the calf with a tube because his tongue is too swollen for sucking. 

His lungs are clear.  His head is terribly swollen.  But he is alive, and the unexplainable essence of unexpected new life saturates the soul.

The heifer wants nothing to do with her calf so we have him at Clarion Farms central with the Holsteins as a bottle calf.  She will be sold, no exceptions.  The whole thing was a wreck.  I don’t relish this kind of disruption in the cow herd.  But boy does it make a good story.