When Cows and Cars Clash

Step back with me a few years in time to 1995. It was late fall, and the colors were ablaze in the hills around Alderspring. We were ranching in the next valley at the time, and had a little over 250 mother cows with their 6 month old calves on their side. The Ranch was spread out over some 600 sinuous acres at the foot of the Bitterroot Mountain range. Winter was coming, and her inexorable approach was evidenced by snow on the peaks on the high ranges.

Late fall was time to wean calves. The cacophony of bawling calves, for the first time separated from mom, echoed in the thick night air across the valley from ranches as much as 10 miles away. Most calves would be loaded on to 53 foot semi-trucks for transport to distant Midwestern feedlots. Even some of ours would be sold that way, as our direct market efforts were only beginning to show success.  The newfangled beef we were selling that we called “grass fed” or “grass finished beef” was brand new, and customers were hard won.

So, we had to make deals like the rest of ranchers with buyers who would supply what most Americans deemed as desirable as apple pie: corn-fed feedlot beef. The buyers preferred weaning to get the “bawl” out of calves (calves make a loud call—a “bawl”—for mom when they are missing her) but many ranchers at that time took the simple route to weaning: cut the calves away from their mooing moms in corral, weigh them, and load them on the idling truck. The stunned and stressed calves wouldn’t thrive on this 1000 plus mile trip. Occasionally, some would succumb to stress and /or trampling when trying to find a mom that no longer existed in the depths of a manure-filled semi belly on a dark cold night on Interstate 80. And, when they finally arrived at distant feedlot, they would be immediately be given antibiotics proactively to avert what could become pneumonia.

We never did wean that way, and devised a less stressful approach; next to mom, separated by only a fence. A calf would get used to the fact that mom wasn’t available as a milk bar anymore, and they could touch noses over 5 days or so and thereby get through the change in diet without feeling abandoned by their favorite cow. Soon, we started using portable electric fences so we could take our weaning operation anywhere, thereby enabling cow and calf to be out on a beautiful green grass sward while getting through this stressful time. Both of them would be on the best of graze and in a week, the calf would largely be on their own, with only an occasional check on mom’s whereabouts. In two weeks, the calves seemed to put that maternal relationship in the far recesses of their memory. They now could be hauled with far less stress, and it made loading calves up on a semi to buyer a little easier for us.

My best grass in that fall of 1995 was on a meadow 2 miles away from home. I put up a solar panel and two wires of electric fence wire. The cattle were all trained to this modern fencing technique, and even the calves rarely received the pop that the hotwire could give. The fence would parallel the driveway of the Tendoy schoolteacher. She served at the remote little one-room country school just down the road, where she alone taught 12 K-6 kids in the love of learning. It was one of the last one roomers left in Idaho due to our remote location.

I asked her if she would mind if I weaned along the quarter mile of driveway that went through the pasture. “Heavens no, Glenn! You know that I was born on a cattle ranch. Of course not. I’ve been around these girls all my life. Wean away!”

Wean away I did. Within a day, horseback, I moved all the beeves in, separated the 6 and 7 month old calves from Mom, and the games begun. Between the mooing of the cows and the bawling of the calves, it was flat deafening. I happily left them to their own devices while I went home for lunch, figuring I’d check on them every several hours or so.

I want you to know that at this stage in my life I had a couple of young kids and babies, a full time job as a forester, and was running the ranch and trying to direct market as much of my beef as I could.  I was perennially sleep deprived, and I didn’t always think things through”¦

I came back around 5 PM. Every cow—all 250 of them stood on the driveway, practically screaming for baby with the onset of evening. Calves meanwhile were a little more indifferent, judging by the spread of their fat frames across the lush meadow. They haven’t seen feed like this for the entire year! Everything was going as I expected, and was about to mount up my tired frame to finish chores back at the ranch. As I started to trot off, I detected a slightly different type of moo from normal in the cowherd din.

I stopped and turned around. There it was again. It sounded more like a horn. And then, I thought I heard a human voice in the deafening mix. Female? Then, I saw something glint out a quarter mile away over the backs of the clamoring and quite perturbed mama cows. A car? And then that horn sounding cow again. Something wasn’t right.

I looked again at my watch, and nagging thought tugged at my fatigued-dulled brain. School was out. My worst fears were confirmed when I spotted another mad female, now human, whose voice was finding dominance in the chaos before me: The screaming of very un-teacher-like words were reaching a fevered pitch, especially since her nice teaching outfit was now speckled with manure from angry cows. The bovine Bessies absolutely refused to budge to allow her poop spattered sedan through the throng. I watched her screaming and attempting to create space for her humble Hyundai to move forward, but as soon as she got back into the driver’s seat, the hole she formed in the cow sea flowed back full. It was hopeless. Hungry and tired after teaching 12 ranch kids all day, this pushed her to brink of batso.

I sprung into action, and pushed my way through the 1300 lb angry mob of mad cows to get to her car. She saw me coming, and through an incredible display of female strength and restraint, said nothing to me, except via the carbon steel flash from her angry eyes. I set myself in front of her bumper, and slowly created a path through the black Angus cow-sea that promptly folded in behind Hyundai. When I finally got her through, she glared once more as she sped up to her home and likely a tall glass of red”¦or something stronger. At least I wasn’t fool enough to expect a word of thanks (I was still pretty stupid in the ways of woman, but after a few years of marriage I at least knew that much).

I had my work cut out for me and it was going to get dark soon. I reconstructed my fence design, hoping to at least earn a “D” from my teacher friend, because I knew that an “F” would color my relationship with my neighbor for many years to come. I figured a “B” was unlikely at this point.

Today, I can safely say that I am an expert calf weaner, having learned many a lesson about keeping mom, calf and human bystander happy since then. Now, we wean in the spring, after keeping mom and baby together over an Alderspring winter. There are no waiting semis for us, or Midwestern feedlots.

We weaned because the Establishment will tell you if you don’t wean, you’re going to compromise 2nd and 3rd trimester calf health in the next generation. Then, when the calf hits the ground, it’ll have colostrum stolen by its older sibling, and immune system of the baby will fail to reach potential. Then, mom would likely be unable to produce milk to the fullest because of her compromised body condition from having a calf at her side for the entire winter as well as one on the inside. In addition, she’ll likely be unable to breed back because of her deteriorating condition through the 3rd trimester. These all seemed like good reasons, and these, and many others generated by The Establishment convinced me for 20 some years to continue our weaning program months before the next generation hit the ground.

But there was something—a nagging, stubborn vague though in my mind that I couldn’t quite finger.

Springtime brings the migration of bird diversity back to Alderspring, as well as the birth of new residents, like those of elk and deer. Alderspring’s first bovine calf of spring arrived on Monday. Joshua found baby and mom squirreled away on the North 400, a mix of meadow, sagebrush and willow on the other side of the Pahsimeroi River from our ranch headquarters. Old 17, a wise and experienced cow, headed off from the rest of the herd on Sunday night to this quiet, sheltered place to find safety for her and baby in this, her most vulnerable time.

This was her 15th calf, and she was about 2 weeks ahead of her due date. We hadn’t even weaned yet. I’ve been putting it off; I figured we would do it when the weather got warm on some green grass. The old girl had been still occasionally nursing last year’s calf, now a robust looking 600 pound steer, but today, it was nowhere to be seen.

 

I’ve already written about the ending of winter calving on Alderspring in previous posts. We calve now through June or July, as the wild animals do (these few calves we’re having right now are the result of a neighbor’s amorous bull). We’ve either never participated in or entirely dropped all antibiotic and hormone programs. We use no pour-ons for flies or internal parasites. We use no fertilizers, pesticides, fungicides or herbicides. If I was to enter and describe all the things that we no longer practice that the bovine agriculture establishment does, it would likely take several of these blogposts. It’s a lot more than just certified organic and grass fed, and way beyond (which is why the term “beyond organic” kind of irritates me”¦because it usually is not true). We’ve found we can drop all these things and the animals not only survive (which some of my neighbors find surprising), they actually thrive.