Spring on the ranch is the busiest time of year! Fields are being readied for spring, fences being mended, irrigation systems are upgraded, and new calves are being born daily (we are averaging 5 new babies a day). They take a large amount of time as we carefully monitor their health, as well as their moms, and occasionally have to intervene to ensure survival. For instance, we had to capture a cow the other day who inadvertently missed pulling the birth sac off of her newborn (the cows usually are very aggressive about licking the face of their calf off first to clear away anything that might interfere with breathing). We wanted to give her a new baby.

We had an extra calf for this because we have occasional twins or abandoned calves who need a mother—in cows, optimal is one calf per cow, as most cows have trouble counting up to two and will misplace one of their kids if left to themselves. To ensure complete bonding, we remove the skin off of the dead calf and tie it on the ‘graft’ calf so the mom can smell the scent of her original baby. While this sounds grisly, it is actually rather clinical. The dead calf isn’t objectionable, because it has been dead only a short time, but the skin still smells to the cow like her calf.

We catch the cow in the barn or corral, so she cannot run off, and start the new baby on her milk bar. This all sounds very quiet and sweet, but often our wild range cow will put up one incredible western rodeo fight before it is all over, even sending Glenn over the corral fence…

But in the end, mom has a baby. It might take a few days, but it works (don’t try this on a goat, though; Glenn worked on a goat for nearly 3 weeks to take an orphan kid, and finally was met with success). And there is great satisfaction in creating a new bond out of two sad losses: a motherless calf now has a mom, and a cow missing her calf now has a new one to care for.

Nine year old Mae likes to make muffins on Saturday morning. As those beautiful corn and buckwheat muffins rolled out of the tins, I had just come back from checking cows (had two new babies before sunup) and fixing fence (they had gotten out and were eating my brand new crested wheatgrass seeding). I reached under the warming towel while she wasn’t looking, helped myself to a chilled glass of raw cow milk and put a nice slab of butter on one.

She caught me red-handed. She gets real owly about people eating the grub before its out on the table, but nobody else was out of bed, and I just could not stand seeing those little biscuits get cold.

I wish you could try one—they are entirely of her design—so you could understand why I had to make off with one (actually two now). A little bit of corn meal for crunch and that deep earthy flavor of buckwheat with honey built right in. Just wasn’t fitting to pass them up fresh and hot out of the cast iron.

She stopped what she was doing and said that she wrote a poem for those people in bed while she was pulling muffins from the pan:

Rise and shine!
or the muffins are MINE!
Get out of bed!
or you won’t get FED!

Glad I got out of bed.

We have goats in the living room. Kid goats that were just born a little weak and cold today in this cold, windy, wintery blast we are having in April. Kid goats and 7 kid girls on the living room carpet by the wood stove with the kid girls trying to coax the kid goats into standing and trying to eat.

Our life is intertwined with that of animals. So much that, as we were heading home with daylight left from a day at the park with friends last Sunday, Mae said that our lives were ruled by cows (we had to feed yet that night). I guess she was right to some extent.

We have a rooster chicken called idiot head that the kids hate. They throw rocks at him whenever he comes by, as he runs free with about 7 others (the others are friendly). The Great Pyrennes big white dog named Sadie can be heard at any time of night patrolling the perimeter of the ranch headquarters area with her deep rolling bark on the wind of the night, keeping coyotes honest (is that possible?).

Katie the cat just had kittens in the barn. She hid them all when the kids had friends over who didn’t listen to our kids when they said not to touch them yet.

Arrow, the border collie is about to pup. She bred to our other border collie, Gyp. We watch her carefully.

Last winter, we bought some winter calvers from a neighbor. Sure enough, we got one of those 20 below blizzards with wind in February. I lived with the cows out in the river bottoms, sleeping with them out there in the 20 below (I had two sleeping bags and was still cold).

Early in the morning, I found a calf that I missed, dead in a snowbank.

It was stiff and cold as mom stood over it, hoping for life. Ice covered. Then I saw a faint puff of steam come off of its nostrils in my headlamp. I picked up the stiff carcass, with mom hot on my tail, threw it on the pickup seat and roared off the 2 bumpy miles to the ranch. The white ’74 Ford (its name is Caspar) didn’t like the cold either, and lacks a heater. The calf wouldn’t get anything done for it until I got home.

I pulled up to the house and scooped up the calf and ran to the front door. “Turn on the bathtub!” I said as I set the calf down in front of the hot woodstove. In a few minutes, the tub was full of hot water, and we dropped the calf in.

Ann and Marie held the calf’s head up so he wouldn’t drown. In a few minutes, he was convulsing and kicking wildly. Then his eyes rolled around in his head. It was all the girls could do to keep him above water so he wouldn’t drown.

I remembered one time my totally numb feet thawed by the wood fire. I felt like convulsing too. I thought I was going to cry. I think that is what this calf felt over his entire body.

After his feet finally got warm, we put him by the woodstove while I went out to do chores. Several hours later I came back to screaming, laughing girls and crazed wife trying to deal with a calf running around the kitchen, knocking over everything!

“Get this calf outta my house!”

Calf dry and warm now, standing, rambunctious on seat next to me in Caspar. We head out, now driving more sanely, back into the wind, the snow, the cold.

The cows are bunched in the willows, trying to hide from the wind. I can only get within 100 yards—it gets too rough beyond. Through my icy windshield, I see one cow peel out of the willows. She runs straight for me in Caspar. It is mom. She remembers. I roll the calf out, and he remembers. They touch noses and head back into the whiteout for the willows together.

Our lives are intertwined with animals. They permeate. Sometimes I catch Caryl and the girls referring to them as people. I remember one time we were out hiking and a couple came down the trail with several dogs. They realized our kids might panic when the dogs came roaring up, so they ran up also and tried to tell us and the kids that the dogs were friendly and it would be OK.

The kids were unfazed from the start. I looked up and said “It’s OK—our kids were raised with dogs.” They looked at me a little funny, and after a few words, they headed their way, and we headed ours.

Suddenly I had the grave realization that it might have come out wrong. I turned back and yelled out to them before they left earshot: “Did I just say that our kids were raised by dogs? I meant they were raised with them!”

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.

Here is a poem that Marie wrote about night feeding:

Feeding
At night,
When the stars are bright
And light is most gone from the hills

We get in the truck Me and Dad

And with hay from the stack,
Dad will fill up the back,
Of our two ton with everlastin’ will
No need to go fast, But, Boy am I glad,
When feeding is over at last.
–Marie, age 11

My 12 year old spotted the cow first. Down near the bottom of the meadow, now underwater with overflow from Lawson Creek, swollen with spring snowmelt. The cow was standing on a little island along the field edge in the rain. I looked vainly for little ears, any sign of life at her feet, but saw none. We slogged over there.

The stillborn calf lay on the other side of the berm she stood on, still above the flood water, and thoroughly cleaned and bathed by her mother’s caring tongue. Any good cow would do that, I knew, just following the protocol the Maker gave them to best take care of their young, even if dead. I knew the cow would stand guard over her baby for several days, leaving only to feed on hay with the others, lest a marauding coyote or wolf try to take a bite out of her calf.

We set up a trap with some hay along a fence a few hundred yards away. She was tough, as many young mothers often are, nearly running over a hired man and destroying a fence and a heavy duty cow panel. Finally, we coaxed her into the trailer with 2 other cows. While she waited in the trailer, I headed back down to the calf and skinned it, taking the hide with me. I left the carcass for the coyotes and other critters. Figure they gotta eat too. It would probably be gone in a day. We have many bald eagles hanging around the place that pretty much scarf up whatever the coyotes leave. We then loaded up and drove the mile or so to the home corrals and unloaded there.

Later that day while we were feeding, I kidnapped one of a set a twins we had the other day. Cows don’t count well, so twins are not real desirable. Often a cow will forget about one on the big pastures or the range, and it will go hungry without mom’s milk and often starve, and before you know it, they too become coyote and wolf food, especially without a protective mom watching out for them. We put the calf in the pickup cab, and drove home, dropping the calf off in a barn pen for the night.

The next morning, I could hear the twin calf bawling for mom from the barn. I set out, grabbed the calf hide and some baling twine and fashioned a little coat out to put on the little guy. He struggled pretty hard at first, not really liking his new fur coat, but settled into it fairly well. He was good and hungry—just perfect for what came next.

I ran the mom into the grafting pen—a 14 x 14 pen with solid 2 and 3” board paneling all around it 6 feet high. Built tough for wild range cattle. I’ve never had a cow escape, though many have tried. We make certain there are plenty of places for us to vault over the top in case things get dicey as my 220 lbs flesh and bone (can’t seem to keep fat on) is straw in the wind when put up against a 1200 lb pile of black angus protective angst. Last year one sent both Tim the hired guy and I over the side of the pen. Just yesterday one knocked me down in the barn (she had me cornered against board fence and I didn’t climb fast enough)—but the same day I was scratching another one between the ears. Cows are pretty transparent about how they are feeling—you can pretty much tell when they want to get you. When they want to get out of the calving pen, they usually head butt the gate or try to jump, but it is just too high, especially for the amount of runway they have to clear the high bar.

In the pen is a wooden head catch that we slip cows into so that we can put a new calf to sucking on their milk bar. Often we will tie their legs together so they can’t kick the novitiate into brain-dead oblivion.

The cow is in the pen and the gate is closed. She looks over it quickly, but carefully, looking for a way out. A range cow is rarely comfortable in such surroundings—she has been living in an essential wide open wilderness some 8 months a year and must be cautious and guarded. We have encountered more than our share of predators when we are horseback gathering or moving cattle—I’m sure she has stories to tell that would make our tales look pretty paltry.

She sees the hole and rams into it. I pull the rip cord and in a second she is caught, even while fighting as if for her life. The entire barn seems to rattle and shake with her effort to be free, but I swing the squeeze panel into place and she is immobilized.

I hurry the calf over and push his little head against her udder. He knows what to do. The milk bar is full, much to his delight, and his tail begins to wag merrily from side to side. He forgets all about his little coat.

All is well, I think, and jump out after letting them both free in the pen. She sniffs the fur coat, and in an instant, she believes it is hers. I have even taken white or red calves, put a black calf hide coat on them, and they were well accepted. Smell is number one. I’m told a range cow can scent her baby from 12 miles away. I check once more as I leave the barn and sure enough, baby is delightedly eating from his new mom.

About an hour later, I’m driving the hay truck flatbed with a load of hay and about 5 singing, giggling girls on the back. As we go by the barn, I try to quiet the girls down in time, but was not quite fast enough. The barn began to shake from within as a 1200 lb cow began to try to break out of the heavy duty pen by jumping through or over. I guess she didn’t like the singing. We hear a 3” by 14” piece of Douglas-fir panel board crack as she rams into it. I peek through the crack in the barn door to see her complete the destruction as she is balanced by her belly on the broken 6 foot high panel fence. In a moment she was through, and soon after over another corral fence to freedom and some other cows, leaving her new baby behind.

I had nearly given up on the old girl (after all, she had broken 2 fences and wrecked one steel panel) when Caryl and the girls suggested we get her back in on horseback with a bunch of other cows. I sent the girls off to do it, and it worked! We kept some gentle babysitter cows in with her, and she again took on her new baby to complete the bond that was started.

Another calf had a mother, and another mother had a calf. That’s really our goal through calving season; to send everyone up on the high ranges with a baby to raise.

Many folks ask us why some of our cows can be so wild (they aren’t all this way). There are not many that are actually mean—they are simply wildly protective—usually of their calf. I guess I wouldn’t want it any other way. We have had cows run off predators like coyotes, bears, cougars and wolves and even rouge dogs in search of easy meat. A gentle, quiet cow probably would not stand up.

But it does mean that you always watch your own backside. Maybe a degree in cow psychology would help.

Either way, I was thinking that my 12 year old figured it out, ‘cause as we were bumping down the road in the noisy rattle banging two ton, I thought I heard her say to me “Did Evil-The-One finally take her calf?”

I looked at her quizzically. “Did who take her calf?”

“E101.”

“I thought you said ‘Evil the One’.

We both laughed as we both knew that no longer would she be named by her tag number. Evil-the-One it would be forever. Not all the cows have names, but those who earned them, do. At least with a name like that, we will always be on guard…

After several weeks learning Wordpress, we’ve launched our blog, Organic Beef Matters. The name is a double-or perhaps triple-entendre: organic beef really does matter for the health of the land and our bodies, the blog will be about matters related to organic beef production, and finally, I guess, even organic beef produce organic matter.

If you think we might have something interesting to say, subscribe to our RSS feed.