We are gradually getting everybody turned out. Lots of excitement today turning my sweet little Etrain's daughter, Email, out with the big girls. Email is nothing like her gentle-natured, pleasant, mother. She kicks with the back end and hooks and swings the front end at you if she thinks she can get you. Nobody is very fond of working around her....
She had the idea that she is pretty hot stuff in the bovine world too and fought with just about every cow in the herd. Most of them are bigger than she is and almost all of them are tougher. I suspect that by the time they come down tonight she will be pretty tired.
Sorry about my geographical error. I know you are in NY, but the scenery always reminds me so much of my Mom's PA home area that my brain flipflopped em.
ReplyDeleteSome girls......
ReplyDeleteThe joys of dairy cows! I love your picture!
ReplyDeleteI can just picture Email taking on every other member of the herd.
ReplyDeleteI thing there is a good chance that she will probably come in towards the back of the line :)
Sounds like she'll need to learn things the hard way. Some girls are like that LOL
ReplyDeleteFC, no problem, I was laughing...I know you know
ReplyDeleteDani, she is still at it too...racing around like a loon when we were putting the girls down the hill to pasture
Lisa, thanks, I was hoping for more clarity, but...
Deb, they have put her in her place now. Even some of the lowest on the totem pole girls are showing her who's boss...and it isn't her. lol
bayberry = top cow.....
ReplyDeleteI'm still ruminating over cows having distinct personalities. That's just something.
ReplyDeleteHope this little gal doesn't get into serious trouble.
Alan, she is indeed. Hope she calves out all right, as she is an old sweetie too.
ReplyDeleteCathy, sometimes I think the whole personality thing is that we live so very close to them and we don't have thousands. We get to know them so well...Our vet is often astonished when we walk behind a cow in her stanchion, and I say, "oh, she is in heat." She will perform an internal exam and find that I am right....we know how each one acts normally and when things are just a little different. We spend hours with them every day of their lives, from birth. Even just milking and summer chore time is four to six hours a day. If you pay attention you can't help but notice their differences
It's just so wonderful to imagine those large, breathing, warm, sentient beings as an intrinsic part of your lives.
ReplyDeleteKeith and I had dogs for many years. We sorely miss that bond that, I guess, humankind has developed with four-legged companions over the millennia.
I would think you'd have to struggle to maintain a little detachment. I don't know the longevity of cows. The loss of that twin calf can't have been easy.
I guess the years and lots of experience would help temper the pain.
Cathy, that bond with animals is one of the things that make my life worth going on with. It has its ups and downs and sometimes the downs are devastating, but I can't imagine life without animals. I was born that way...a city kid with a country heart. I was not quite eight years old when my family moved to the country and it was like moving into Heaven for me. Sadly, with animals, as with people...sometimes they die no matter what you do. We were sad to lose the calf, but it is something that just has to be accepted and dealt with.
ReplyDeleteThe worst is when you let yourself get really attached to one animal or another..which for me at least is inevitable. Then when something happens to them it really, really hurts. Like that red cow in today's post. That is my big old Broadway cow and I just love her. Just seeing her big old red self makes me happy
Liz, the boss and I have this weird thing where we can feel sometimes when something is wrong in the barn...wake right up in the middle of the night and KNOW and go out. Crazy but true. Liz had it yesterday and was out at three AM with Connie and the calves.
Oh, I have no problem at all with the notion that you and your family can 'feel' things - can sense that something is happening.
ReplyDeleteSome people are just more attuned. I don't know what the means of this 'knowing' involves, but when it happens it's like being rung like a bell. You just know.
I'm working for the stoicism about life's brevity. I find it to be a very desirable quality. It's so futile to war against the inevitable. But human, too, I guess:-)
Cathy, it takes great discipline to find the good among the bad, day after day. I am not so very good at it, but it is a goal I actively pursue.
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