Got home real late from Salmon, ID, which happens to be our shipping location for UPS. I drove an hour one way down the twisty Salmon River canyon to get those boxes on the truck only to find out that the grocery store, our dry ice supplier, does not have enough to fill our orders. The ice truck will arrive in about two hours, they say. The girls (2 of them) and I wait. When the ice is finally in boxes (12 year old daughter labeling, me icing, 8 year old taping) and we get home it is 8 PM. We grab a bite, and 11 year old Marie heads out into the dark with me. We have 550 hungry mouths to feed, and calving cows to check. I load, and then Marie drives the battered 1959 Chevy Viking two ton truck, loaded with 4 ton bales of our organic alfalfa hay in the starlit night while I fork hay off the back. At least it will be quiet tonight. Last night the tail pipe fell off when we drove across a wash and I welded it back together today.
The pregnant and calved cows are waiting for us where we fed yesterday. I have Marie shining a million candlepower (what is that supposed to mean anyway, and who measured that?) spotlight into the blackness searching for distant eyes reflecting while driving and watching for baby calves that may wander in front of the truck. Any eyes are worth checking out. By the way they move, you can tell if it is a cow, calf, dog, or coyote, but the really big concern is wolves. Several weeks ago we had a loner travel through the ranch—probably a young male. A friend of ours from the next valley lost four calves in one night several weeks ago to a maurading pack of the 150 pound predators that descended on their calving cows. A cow will defend her baby, but in the end, when a pack isolates her, she loses.
Marie spots eyes about a quarter mile away. I had just finished emptying the truck with my fork. We both unload and head out across the cold dark fields on foot to see what was up.
When a cow won’t come to hay, there is something going on. Either she is calving, calved, or in trouble. Maybe a calf is backwards, sideways, and she can’t have it, and needs help. When we finally reach her, we see her licking off the steamy hot wet mass of a wiggling newborn calf. She glanced up at us as I reassured her with my voice to let her know it was us, and left her be to continue doing what she did best—caring for her young one.
I think that is probably the biggest lesson I have learned in this business of ranching. I have come to see the mother cows as employees on this spread, who have been trained by their Maker to care for their young better than I could ever try. Even in several months, when we turn these young calves and their moms on 70 square miles of rugged mountain wilderness, the bottom line is that you’ve got to trust the mother to bring that calf back home again, or worry yourself sleepless. And God knows I need all the shuteye I can grab.
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