We had a busy morning on the farm today. The vet arrived when I was milking; Al had been babysitting Carson our new grandson in the house, and came out to help with the baby in his infant seat. We kept scooting the baby around the barn to clean spots, then the vet and Al left for the heifer barn, leaving me with the baby and one cow (“Tia”) left to milk.
I placed the infant seat in the barn doorway, so I could see him, but he would be safely out of the way. Just as I got done with Tia, Carson decided he’d had enough of waiting for
his bottle and started to cry. There was a remarkable reaction from the cows! All of them became quite concerned: stepped back in their stalls to see, ears came up, and all their heads went down to see under each other’s bellies
to see where this distressed cry came from!
Cows, as herd animals, are sensitive to distressed
calls from other cows or calves (fortunately that doesn’t happen often), but I
never expected them to react so quickly to a crying baby! It was as if they
wanted to protect him.
Of course, it could be they haven’t heard little kids
lately, since our girls have grown up! Some years ago, during milking,
there would be bicycle races in the mangers, and tic tac toe played on our old
cow, “Piper”, who loved to have the kids “color” on her
with livestock marking crayons. (We would have passersby stop and tell us we
had a bleeding cow in the pasture, but it would be Piper, with crayon pictures
on her side).
That’s it for today, time to start evening milking….Terry Everett at Hemenway
Hill Farm
