How do you call in you cows?
Sept 15, 2015 21:33:42 GMT -5
elnini, serendipity, and 8 more like this
Post by brigitte on Sept 15, 2015 21:33:42 GMT -5
I was watching my cow Thyme this morning. I don't really need to call her in to be milked because she knows my every step. She knows the color of the bucket and whether it has grain for pigs or cows in it. She knows, unlike any other cow, how to open sliding doors.
Thyme isn't being bred this year because of her complicated and consuming issues with milk fever and a pinched nerve. Not sure what her future is. I am torn. She has a tremendous will to live and intelligence beyond any cow I have ever known. How could I ever part with her.
But that question is set aside for now as she is flush with milk, and I needed a happy thought. And I still call her in. And I call the three others in to fit in the four stanchions, when all I really need to do is stand by the door and wait for them to turn the corner.
Part of it is that I know someone here calls cows in 200 years ago, and I become part of that legacy, my voice somehow mingles with echoes from long ago.It's strangely very comforting.
When I farmed in Vermont, in the remote stretches of the beautiful Northeast Kingdom, I picked up from the farmer I worked for the two words he combined into one word
"Come On" became "Cmon" and then a faster version which sounded more like "Mon, Mon, Mon" I can still hear those words in perfect memory echoing off the mountain in Morgan Center, and down into the valley at Island Pond.
Somewhere along the line I picked up on the sort of ridiculous descriptor "girly girl." It stuck and I address all my cows by girly girl, even the bull calves, and I used that too.
The other day I drove by the big field where one of my cows, Firefly, lives with another herd (because she lost her calf as my alternate milker) where she is milked twice a day for ten months. She isn't often in a field by the road, but she was this time, with about 20 other cows. I dont see her that much any more, but adore her.
I stopped my car, got out and called "Hey Girly Girl" and guess who looked up.
They get it. They know my voice, they know their names and they speak English in their own words. I wonder what it would be like for someone to come in and begin speaking French to them!
So how is it that you call your girls in, even if they know where to go and where they belong. What is it that you call them, and in what voice, and how does it carry over the land.
Thyme isn't being bred this year because of her complicated and consuming issues with milk fever and a pinched nerve. Not sure what her future is. I am torn. She has a tremendous will to live and intelligence beyond any cow I have ever known. How could I ever part with her.
But that question is set aside for now as she is flush with milk, and I needed a happy thought. And I still call her in. And I call the three others in to fit in the four stanchions, when all I really need to do is stand by the door and wait for them to turn the corner.
Part of it is that I know someone here calls cows in 200 years ago, and I become part of that legacy, my voice somehow mingles with echoes from long ago.It's strangely very comforting.
When I farmed in Vermont, in the remote stretches of the beautiful Northeast Kingdom, I picked up from the farmer I worked for the two words he combined into one word
"Come On" became "Cmon" and then a faster version which sounded more like "Mon, Mon, Mon" I can still hear those words in perfect memory echoing off the mountain in Morgan Center, and down into the valley at Island Pond.
Somewhere along the line I picked up on the sort of ridiculous descriptor "girly girl." It stuck and I address all my cows by girly girl, even the bull calves, and I used that too.
The other day I drove by the big field where one of my cows, Firefly, lives with another herd (because she lost her calf as my alternate milker) where she is milked twice a day for ten months. She isn't often in a field by the road, but she was this time, with about 20 other cows. I dont see her that much any more, but adore her.
I stopped my car, got out and called "Hey Girly Girl" and guess who looked up.
They get it. They know my voice, they know their names and they speak English in their own words. I wonder what it would be like for someone to come in and begin speaking French to them!
So how is it that you call your girls in, even if they know where to go and where they belong. What is it that you call them, and in what voice, and how does it carry over the land.