Eat More Beef

I couldn't be more livid right now. I'm the guns of the Navarone. I'm laying mushroom clouds. My pin is pulled.

My father called me last week because he wanted me to help him herd cows and send a few to the sale barn. I agreed since it makes me happy whenever my father wants to sell the damned things and every time he does he's one step closer to being rid of all of them forever.

I went to his farm yesterday afternoon and arrived at about 2:30. I started getting the pens ready and making sure that the fences and gates were well wired, secure, and as solid as possible. Cows, generally, don't mess with a fence if it looks strong. I opened up the gate and the cows came up from the bottom half of the property. They spend the summer down there eating grass and wandering; they do whatever it is that cows do when they have 100 acres to themselves.

The weeds in the barnyard are five feet tall, but that didn't stop them from busting into them. I had to get them into the sorting pen, but they weren't interested. I was hoping that I would be able to do this job by myself, but I became fearful that the cows had other ideas. At this point my father came home and I figured that we'd manage it.

My father is most certainly not the man he used to be. He hobbled around the barnyard and couldn't navigate the weeds. He was all but useless and managed to hurt more than he helped. We, aka I, chased them around the barnyard for an hour. I told my Dad that there was no way that we were going to be able to get them into the pen without more people helping. He agreed, but instead of asking for help, the stubborn fool, he got on the tractor and started chasing them around with it. The cows continued to evade us, and I fell down many times amongst the weeds. Eventually, my Dad gave up. The cows were tired after all of their exercise and needed a drink of water. I herded them up to the gate and when they found the water bowl, they gave up the charade and went into the pen. We shut them in and went into the house so that they could calm down and relax a little.

At 6:00, we headed back out to the pen to sort them. The sorting is very straightforward, really. The cows are moved from one pen into a smaller pen. The cows in the smaller pen are judged on whether they should be kept of sold. If they are to be kept, they are sent out into the barnyard and freedom; if they are to be sold they are put into a third pen. All cows with calves are kept, one bull is kept as are any "good-looking" cows. Bulls, cows that have lost their baby the previous winter, or trouble-makers are sold. The sorting worked fairly well and without too much difficulty. We had 14 animals to sell and we sent 24 animals back down the property. We headed inside at 7:45 and watched the baseball game.

At 6:00 as the sun was rising, I heard a lot of mooing outside. It was loud and frequent and actually woke me up-- no simple feat. I went outside and found two calves down the property mooing. It sounded like they were hungry and they certainly looked desperate so I tried to figure out which penned cows could have babies. You can usually tell by looking at their udders. It is much easier when the babies haven't nursed as the udder is usually large. The teets usually have cuts and they are usually cleaner than the cows without babies. Anyway, I found a couple of suspects.

I woke my Dad up and we had to resort the animals so that we could separate the two cows. We got one out and I walked her down the property. She went into the field with the other cows, but because it was foggy, she couldn't see the rest of the herd. She let out a loud bellow which was echoed by a calf in the white haze. She bellowed again and two calves emerged at a sprint from the fog. One stopped dead while the other started nursing furiously. I knew that there was, in fact, two mothers and that we would have to continue sorting. I turned to go back up to the pen and saw a cow coming towards me. She ran into the field and her calf ran over and nursed. Things quieted right down and I met my Dad at the pen. "How did you know it was her?" I asked. "She was anxious and ticked-off."

My Dad left to go to work and I waited for the trucker to arrive. He pulled in at 8:15. We backed in his truck and got ready to move the cows. I borrowed his pocket knife so that I could cut the strings off of a bale of hay so that we could cover the ramp with hay. We were ready to go.

We moved the cows into the smaller pen and the idea is to herd them around the fence, down a chute, and up into the truck. We started out and when they were halfway down the chute, they stopped, turned around and headed back towards us. So much for this being easy. The cows raced around the pen and we did our best to get them down the chute again.

Cows get this look in their eyes when they are about to jump a fence. You just know when it's about to happen. We focused on getting the animals in in small groups, so we sent three down the chute and, to our surprise, one actually went in. This is a good thing because cows hate being alone or being the first to do anything. I hoped that the rest would see this one on the truck and head on up. At that moment, the 1800 pound bull reared up onto his back legs and started his ascent over the gate. He pushed off with his mighty back legs and tucked his front legs under his chest. His head and torso, graciously really, cleared the gate and his back end flopped down on top of it crushing it like a pop can. The post broke off at the ground and after he kicked his back leg free from the gate, he ran into the holding pen.

I thought that this was a stork of good luck since he hadn't bolted down the property. I closed him into the third pen and returned to try and fix what was left of the gate. I managed to get it back up and looking somewhat respectable again. We manged to get six more cows on the truck. There were just three cows left to load and the bull in the third pen. I decided that it would be best to try to get him back in with the others so I walked over to his pen and as I unhooked the gate he pulled another hunter/jumper act and pulled the same stunt. This time he left the wooden fence as kindling.

That sorted things out a bit since we didn't have to worry about him anymore and we directed out attention to the other three animals. They weren't interested in doing cooperating and one cow smashed through another fence. She used a different technique than the bull and put down her head and charged through as hard as she could. Both, incidentally, have the same result. She ran down the property and I started patching the fence.

The remaining two cows were profoundly spooked and we managed to get one of them onto the truck. We struggled to get the last one in, but she decided that it wasn't for her. The one on the truck came back off and we tried getting them back together, but the stubborn one just wouldn't go. Eventually, they grew bored of the game and knocked my patchwork fence over. We called it quits at that.

Mister cattle trucker was a real piece of work. He made sure to tell me all the things that I was going to have to do in order to create a proper area for loading cows. I was covered in liquid cow shit (In the summer cows eat fresh grass which makes their manure very loose, pungent, and a dark green colour as opposed to the winter when they eat hay and produce more solid less odorous feces.) and was unwilling to accept the fact that our pens had been destroyed and that my goal had gone unmet. I surveyed the four smashed gates, the seven snapped fence posts, and the dozen or so broken fence rails. I mentally set myself a ruined weekend of repairs sometime down the road.

The truck drove on down the road and I headed down the hill to reunite the "keepers" with the "malcontents." I opened a few gates and herded them together. They will spend the rest of the fall down the property eating grass and then head up to the barnyard for the winter. Until then, I hope I don't see them. I got onto the tractor to give them some hay and when I sat down my jeans tightened and I felt something in my pocket. The knife! I had forgotten to return the trucker's pocketknife.

I fed the hay and went into the house to get the garbage and recycling. I tried calling the trucker, but no one was home (rather obviously). I went to the dump. As I was there I asked the attendant if he knew if there was a cattle trucker in the area and where he lived. It turned out that he knew him and I got directions to his house. I drove by and put the knife in his mailbox.

When I got home, I stripped down in front of the washing machine. I headed up for a shower. I grabbed my toiletries bag and went to the bathroom. I couldn't bear to have a shower at my Dad's house (the water pressure is very poor) and I figured that I wouldn't see anyone so I would just get the hell out of there. I left the bag on the counter because I was going to come back and brush my teeth. I went to my room got changed, and packed up. I headed downstairs grabbed some water and an apple and headed off. It wasn't until Cobourg that I realized that I had left all my toilet stuff on the counter of the bathroom. I had a mini freak-out.

I managed to get home safely. I really did a number on myself. I put $85 of gas in the truck, had $16 worth of fast food, and spent $12 replacing my toothbrush and razor (I can do without the rest, I think). My Dad gave me $65 in change, so I'm not only down the mental anguish and the knowledge of a job failed, but I'm also down $48 I don't have.

A funny thing struck me on the highway. It actually made me very sad. I thought about how much I hate cows. I thought about how much they have taken from my life and how miserable they have made me over the last 30 years. I thought about their eyes as we were shooing them into the truck. I thought about what's behind those eyes. I'm sure nothing, but there is a life force. Those cows that wouldn't play the game are going to eat grass for another few weeks. They're going to eat hay all winter. They're going to procreate and sleep and eat. They will live and the others will die. There's no getting around it. Those animals that got into that truck were on their way to the sale barn and then to slaughter. It made me wonder about it all and I felt sorry for them. I felt sorry that that's what their life is. Despite all the suffering that they have brought me I still wished that I could keep them all and let them wander around the farm until they can't wander any more. But that's not the way the world works though and I know it.