Dark morning chill stirs the flesh to welcome winter waiting for flaming tongues to lick between dry Manzanita branches igniting Blue oak in the woodstove’s glow. I recall storms, the floods and endless downpours, creek too high to cross for thirty days and pray for anything wet enough to start the grass for cows and calves— for my sanity, something akin to normal in these crazy days of politics and pandemic— something to trust as right as rain— something to believe in.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2020, Ranch Journal
Tagged Calves, cows, pandemic, poetry, politics, rain, winter
After about a dozen years of breeding our heifers to Wagyu bulls for Snake River Farms, we have noticed a distinct difference in their behavior as compared to our English calves, predominantly Angus with some Hereford heterosis. The Wagyu cross is more active. They find their legs earlier, within a week or less running and playing together, and within two weeks or so, chasing one another in gangs.
Essentially in our front yard, we have the luxury of watching them in the pasture racing ahead of their mothers in the morning to the water trough, and then in bunches, circling at full speed as their mothers drink—and again in the evenings before their mothers move up the hill to graze. Never the same antics twice, it’s good entertainment with coffee or a cocktail.
With a smaller calf, we opted for the Wagyu bulls so that we could breed our yearling heifers on time. Holding our replacement heifers until they were two before we bred them was almost impossible—always an English bull around looking for more work at a time that their larger calves, if they could have them, would come at the wrong time of year for our country—those heifers out-of-sync with our breeding program.
The Wagyu X calves also seem more secure in bunches, forming large nurseries while their mothers are away. After 2 weeks of bonding in a canyon away from the main bunch, the mother of the twins brought them in on Monday, a feed day, pictured in Friday’s post with 22 other calves using alfalfa for soft bedding until the cows returned to clean-up all the hay.
Another trait that makes it difficult at times to pair a calf with its mother is that the Wagyu X calves are persistent when it comes to stealing milk. Sometimes they wait until a heifer is nursing its own calf, then sneak in, often from behind, to help out. Other times they will badger a heifer until she finally gives up. This usually takes place when the calves get older with bigger appetites.
Even so, maturing from heifers to cows, we are continually amazed and proud of the maternal instincts we see in our first-calf heifers—making our job so much easier.
It’s an art countin’ cattle, ‘specially calves— it takes concentration to keep a mind closed to everything else and get the same answer twice. Dad maintained that the simpler the mind the more dependable the count— the only excuse I’ve got.
Trying to keep track of the twin calves since my “Good News” post took a little extra time and effort because their mother didn’t come into hay with all the rest of the first-calf heifers. Several times I glassed the area where I found them on the 9th, but with little luck. On Monday the 12that the place where they were born, I found her with two other heifers with newborn calves. I spent some time with them while searching the down oak limbs for the missing twin only to report to Robbin and the crew that she’d probably lost one of the calves.
Two days later at my desk in the middle of the afternoon, I caught some movement on the hillside outside my window and went to the door to see a coyote chased by Buster, our German Shepherd/Great Pyrenees drop-off, disappear over the rise. After a couple of minutes of prolonged barking, I was worried for the dog and reached for my rifle by the door as three coyotes came running down the fence at me. So fat and big, I thought they were mottled wild pigs at first, then entertained a fleeting notion that they might be wolves, running by me so close I couldn’t find them in my scope before disappearing.
But the old, old Border Collie Jack and Boo, a Blue Healer drop-off, had headed them off and brought two back. In retrospect, the twenty-plus first-calf heifers may have helped turn them around. Long-haired and well-fed, these were not native coyotes, but refugees from the pines, either the SQF Complex or Creek Fires. They were lost, and more than likely, the cows north of the house had propelled all three in our direction. With no way of knowing, I wanted to blame them for the missing calf.
With cooler temperatures and older calves, the cows are edging higher up the hill for our remaining old feed between our twice-a-week feed days. Yesterday, after Bob and Allie laid some hay down for the first-calf heifers, Robbin and I took the Kubota up the hill to locate the rest of the heifers. As we came back down, we spotted three cows and four calves in an inaccessible spot as they were deciding which way to come off the ridge where I had photographed the twins on the 9th.
We gathered up some flakes of hay and met them at the bottom, two new pairs, the twins and their mother.
Posted in Photographs, Ranch Journal
Tagged Calves, cows, coyotes, Creek Fire, Ranch Journal, SQF Fire Complex, twins
Nap-time nurseries
beneath the sycamores,
babysitting cows
relieve one another
to eat and drink.
Those without calves
recline with bellies bulging,
thrust painfully skyward
like over-inflated
black beach balls—
all await the green
soft-stemmed alfalfa—
await new life,
await a rain
to settle dust underfoot
as they graze short-cropped
dry feed into the dirt
awaiting new life—
seed awaiting rain.
The long range forecast
confirms our superstitions,
but like a no-hitter
we dare not mention yet—
until the dark hole
in the barn grows larger,
until the canyon fills
with echoing complaints,
the agonizing song
of cows begging,
calf solos in the distance.
Robbin reminds me that my last photo of the decapitated heron was not appropriate in these grizzly times of increasing Covid deaths and chaotic politics. I thought it fit the poem, but…
Four days ago, I came upon two heifers that had just calved in a canyon well-apart from the bunch, one heifer with twins and a big coyote lurking within 50 feet, watching the process. Any cow with new twins is especially vulnerable, ultimately unable to protect them both. Fortunately, she had the other heifer nearby. I scattered a little hay. Robbin and I checked on them that evening and all was well.
More often than not, a cow will abandon the weaker calf to take care of the other. I returned first thing Tuesday morning to see two cows and two calves from a distance, but as I approached them, I saw that the heifer with twins was gone, replaced by another heifer with an older calf for protection, I assume. I scattered more hay and checked all around to find no other cattle.
Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning I checked all the first-calf heifers in the bunch, but the cow with twins was not among them. We fed on Thursday, and still the heifer with twins was missing. I assumed she left the area with her two Wagyu X calves, less than a day old, during the night, because of the coyote.
This morning I went looking and finally found her and both calves secreted in the rocks on a steep slope, fine and healthy. It occurs to me that she also needed time to bond with the twins that might have been lost and confused in the nursery of over 20 calves, had she returned to the security of the other mothers. After fifty years living with cows, I continue to be amazed and admire the intelligence of cattle, especially cows.
On my way to town afterwards, I heard Elizabeth Cook on Sirius suggest that we look away from the news and focus locally instead. How right she is! We’ll see how long it takes the heifer with twins to come off the hill, hopefully with both.
The mysteries, puzzled pieces scattered, most missing and decomposed by the moment linger, shelved in the back room for future reference awaiting adhesive connections that seldom take shape. The ranch and its inhabitants, the wild and tame, the unknowing hands of man and the malicious, the well-meaning touch that turns terribly tragic--all scattered, stacked one upon the other, clues that only true detectives note in the dusty swirl of ambiguity left to settle with experience-- an illusive sense beyond the tangible that this old ground evokes. * * * * Inspired by an article in the latest issue of Will Hearst's Alta Magazine: https://altaonline.com/private-investigators-san-francisco-phil-bronstein/
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2020, Ranch Journal
Tagged Alta Magazine, Great Blue Heron, Phil Bronstein, poetry, Will Hearst
A perfect moon
for chaos,
I become the face
of an observer,
a skirmish
still raining ash,
but a tick in time—
I yearn for yesterday:
butterflies and squeaky gates
that turn cows
with unnerving ricochets
of change, a trap
to escape as I become
the face
of a smoking moon.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2020, Ranch Journal
Tagged California Fires, Full Harvest Moon, poetry, SQF Complex
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