Cowpuppy, p.7
Cowpuppy, page 7
The seed-and-feed was ten miles away, in a run-down part of town. Shortly after moving to Tara, I had headed in to buy supplies for starting vegetables and to forge a relationship with the people on whom I would be depending. I strode in, wearing a KN95 face mask. Two ladies, perched on stools behind the counter, lorded over a store crammed with everything a farmer might need. Fifty-pound bags of deer-plot feed were stacked by the door. One aisle was devoted to equine supplies, and another to livestock. A side room was chock-full of gardening supplies. An assortment of rakes, shovels, and hoes hung from the wall.
The elder lady looked to be as old as the store itself, while the younger and friendlier one seemed closer to my age. Neither paid me any attention and continued chatting with the only other customer.
“Excuse me,” I said. “Do you have any soil for starting seeds?”
Without looking at me, the older lady replied tersely, “You mean potting soil?”
“Mmm, no. I’m fixin’ to start seeds indoors.”
The other leaned over to the first and said, as if I wasn’t there, “I think he means Pro-Mix.”
The first jerked her thumb and said, “It’s outside.”
I went back out. But after two circuits of the parking lot, I couldn’t locate what they were talking about. Reluctantly, I returned and professed my inability to find it.
Visibly perturbed, the old lady barked into a microphone, “Will, come to the front desk.”
A few moments later, a rail-thin man materialized next to the woman. A Glock jutted prominently from his right hip.
The lady said, “He needs a bale of Pro-Mix.”
Will frowned. “What’s that?”
The lady lost all pretense of containing her disdain. She slid off her perch, mumbling, “Do I have a do everythin’ ’round here?”
Will and I followed her outside. She jabbed a bony finger at a bale of soil wrapped tightly in white plastic and stomped back inside. It was, indeed, in plain sight. Will dutifully put it in the back of my SUV while I paid as quickly as I could to get out of there.
Maybe the seed-and-feed crew were temperamentally crabby, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had been pegged as a mask-wearing, self-righteous city slicker. Even though I would have preferred to patronize local businesses, the experience had been unpleasant enough that I took pains to avoid going there again. This arrangement worked fine until I needed to procure seeds the big-box stores didn’t stock.
Ken had told me that the seed-and-feed was under new management, so I called to see if they had any ryegrass seed. A man—the manager—answered the phone cheerfully. Promising as this seemed, the seed was on order.
“Should be in any day,” he said.
I called back a few days later, but still no seed.
By the third try, the manager knew who I was. “Tell you what,” he said. “Give me your number and I’ll call you when it comes in.”
After a week and no call, a decision had to be made. Either I kept waiting for the seed to arrive or I found another source. I am, as a general rule, risk averse. I think in terms of worst-case scenarios. The outcome to be avoided at all costs was missing the planting window because of an inability to procure seed. It didn’t take long to find a supplier in Florida. The shipping would double the cost, but as a firm believer in avoiding regret, it was worth it.
On a crisp, cloudless morning in late September, Wallace tractored over with his no-till drill. Nine-feet wide, it could plant a dozen rows in one pass. Each seed had to be planted at a particular rate. Ryegrass would go at fifty pounds per acre; daikon at ten. Clover needed only three pounds per acre. We filled the main seed box with ryegrass and daikon. A secondary seed box, which metered out at a slower rate, was stocked with the clover. After a test run to check the seeding depth, Wallace began circuits of the big pasture. He planted nice straight rows, using the rear hydraulics to lift the drill at each end so as to make the turns. It took three hours to plant a total of eight acres across three of the pastures.
The timing couldn’t have been better. It rained a week later. By the end of October, the ryegrass and daikon were coming up nicely. It wasn’t enough to fully support the cows, but the hay I had stockpiled filled in the nutritional gaps. Each week, I moved the herd to a different pasture to give the grass some recovery time. Some graziers use more intensive management, moving the herd every day. Once a week struck a balance between what was best for the grass and the amount of time I wanted to devote to it.
Ryegrass is quick to establish, but it doesn’t hit its growth peak until early spring. Just about the time my hay supplies were running low, the ryegrass took off, seeming to go from a couple of inches of stubble to lush pastures of knee-high grass. The cows couldn’t keep up with it. Pretty soon I was back to mowing, finishing the job that the cows were supposed to be doing.
Because the no-till method had worked so well, I decided to invest in my own implement. It wasn’t as big as Wallace’s, but it got the job done. Every year, toward the end of August, I assessed where the cows had grazed the most and how well the previous year’s plantings had done. With this information in hand, I placed my seed order for fall planting. Ryegrass was always in the mix, but I began to experiment with other grasses and grains, each year getting closer to the holy grail of year-round grazing.
October through December were the most difficult months. The summer grasses would go dormant, and the winter grasses would just be getting a foothold. Maybe it was due to climate change, but September and October seemed to be hotter and drier than I remembered them being in years past.
I learned about stockpiling to fill in the gap in fall forage. The technique was simple. In late August, I mowed a section of the big pasture as low as I could set the Bush Hog. Then, just before rain was forecast, I applied fifty pounds of nitrogen fertilizer per acre. Nitrogen is like steroids for bermudagrass. The rain soaks it into the ground and the grass goes through a growth spurt for the next month. As long as I kept the cows off of it, the grass would regenerate. By October I could return the cows to that part of the pasture. The stockpiled grass would stay green until the first frost, which was usually in November. In a good year, the cows might need hay for only two months. I was beginning to feel like I was finally getting the hang of all this.
CHAPTER 7
Cow Love
If having a soul means being able to feel love and loyalty and gratitude, then animals are better off than a lot of humans.
—James Herriot, All Creatures Great and Small (1972)
As I grew closer to the cows and they began to accept me into the herd, their natural behaviors—both with one another and eventually with me—unfolded. It was in these quiet moments, me observing them and them observing me, that I became convinced of their capacity for love. I do not use the L-word lightly, as in, “I love chocolate.” No, the cows evinced a depth of emotion and loyalty that surpassed even that of my dogs.
It was all in their body language.
Although cows are by no means mute, they tend to vocalize as only a last resort of communication, like when Lucy bellowed for Xena or when Ethel mooed for treats. Instead of vocalizing, cows communicate with their bodies. It was only through patient observation that I began to understand their language and how they expressed their emotions.
My foray into the emotional lives of cows began with Ricky Bobby.
Ever since the day the cows came home to the farm, I had continued the daily ritual begun by the old man of feeding them a bit of grain every evening. He left me the red Folger’s coffee can he used. So Ricky Bobby, Lucy, and Ethel already knew that when I brought out the can, treats would follow. Never mind that cows can’t see red. The shape of the can and the sound of rattling grain were enough to get their attention. At first I spread the grain in a feeding trough, as I had seen the old man do. I soon realized that if I were to socialize them to humans, I needed a way to reward them for letting me touch them. Although I could feed them grain by hand, that was messy and imprecise. So in addition to the evening grain, I began feeding them cattle cubes.
One evening, after I had given each of the cows a few cubes in exchange for letting me scratch their heads, I mixed the remainder with the grain in the trough. This was the routine we had settled into. Ricky Bobby, true to his bull nature, lapped them up as fast as he could. It was a manifestation of how ruminants normally ate. His instinct was to gobble up as much forage as possible and then digest it later. Unfortunately, this was not a great strategy for cattle cubes.
Ricky Bobby gobbled up so many that a traffic jam lodged in his throat. He began backing away from the trough, his eyelids peeled back wide, showing the whites. Snot started running from his nose, and he shit himself in panic. Normal manure has a sweet smell, but this was sour and ran down his leg. The other cows didn’t care. They just continued eating. More for them, I guess.
Choking is not a common occurrence in cattle, but it does sometimes happen when a momma cow attempts to eat the placenta after birthing her calf. It is not digestible for a ruminant, but they eat it anyway, probably to conceal the presence of the calf from predators. If it is big, the placenta can get stuck in the cow’s throat. You’re supposed to push it down with your hand.
There was no way I was going to stick my arm down poor Ricky Bobby’s throat.
I approached him slowly, crouching so I could stroke his throat, thinking I could massage the blockage down. He recoiled a bit at the first touch. But I cooed soothing words to him while working the loose skin that began under his massive jawbone and flowed down to his brisket. I couldn’t feel anything, but Ricky Bobby seemed to like it because he extended his neck a bit. After about five minutes of stroking, a deep belch reverberated through his gut, and I was rewarded with the smell of a sour burp in my face. And then he was fine.
“You’re such a big baby,” I said.
In the days following Ricky Bobby’s big belch, his demeanor toward me changed. Instead of merely tolerating my entreaties to stroke his head, he began to seek them out. If I crouched down, Ricky Bobby would sidle up, waggling his head a bit, and then rest his massive noggin on my shoulder. If I didn’t start stroking the underside of his neck, he would dig his chin into my back. The message was clear: Scratch me. The whole interaction was strikingly similar to what my dogs did when I rubbed their bellies. If I stopped, they would paw my hand, asking for more.
After a bit of rubbing his brisket, Ricky Bobby would respond by licking the nape of my neck. This was not a pleasant sensation. A cow’s tongue is designed for tearing off bunches of grass with massive sharp-edged papillae. It is like a giant cat’s tongue, except the cow uses more force. If I let him at it too long, he would lick me raw. Plus, I had seen Ricky Bobby use his tongue for things other than eating. As a full-blooded male of the species, he used it to sample the females’ urine to see if they were in heat. Still, it was kind of adorable. I knew that his intention was kind, so I let him reciprocate by allowing at least a few licks.
Thanks to Ricky Bobby’s gluttony, I had chanced upon a calming signal in cows. The term was popularized by Turid Rugaas, a Norwegian dog trainer.1 Rugaas had observed that both wolves and dogs use specific behavioral signals primarily to avoid conflicts within their packs but also to calm themselves when they are stressed. For example, when strange dogs approach each other, they will usually signal a nonconfrontational attitude with relaxed postures and wagging, semi-erect tails. Conversely, if you approach a dog in a manner that makes them uncomfortable, it will turn its head to the side and often lick its nose. Yawning is another sign of stress. These are all signals to communicate that a dog doesn’t want a fight. They also appear to have a self-calming effect.
All animals exhibit stereotypical affiliative behaviors when they want to appease another member of their species. Calming signals in dogs are just one example. Another is when cats purr. Chimpanzees groom each other. Elephants touch trunks. The behaviors are hardwired in each species, forming a sort of universal language within a social group.
Licking is the main affiliative behavior in cows. Sometimes a cow will ask another cow for a licking by putting its cheek near the other’s mouth or gently nudging the other’s nose or cheek. If she responds, she will lick the head and neck areas that are inaccessible to self-grooming.2 Sometimes a cow will lick another without solicitation. In these situations, the cow might lick the back and rump in addition to the head and neck. Who licks whom is not random. Mutual grooming occurs more frequently between relatives, cows close in birth date, and subordinates on dominants.3
Why do cows lick each other? It could be that mutual licking serves a hygienic function by removing flies and parasites from areas that a cow can’t reach on its own. If licking was purely hygienic, it would be more prevalent during the summer when parasites are more numerous. However, licking appears to be a regular part of a herd’s daily life, independent of the season.
The limited research on cow licking consistently points to a social function. The outstretched neck of the receiver mimics the posture of a nursing calf, which is an example of neotenous behavior. Neoteny refers to the retention of juvenile traits in the adult of a species. Other examples include cats kneading and dogs licking their owners’ faces. (Juvenile wolves lick their parents’ mouths to induce them to regurgitate food.) These behaviors are hardwired from birth and never disappear. It is reasonable to assume that when an adult adopts a juvenile behavior it is comforting to them—a calming signal.
Licking serves the crucial function of maintaining the bonds between cattle. However, these bonds are neither random nor equally distributed in a herd. In the most extensive study of cattle relationships, researchers monitored a semiwild herd of full-sized African zebus over four years.4 The scientists recorded which cows grazed near each other and who groomed whom. The relationships that emerged bore a striking similarity to those of wild chimpanzees and even humans. It was no surprise that mothers preferentially licked their offspring. What was surprising, though, was that this preference persisted into adulthood. Even after four years, a momma cow preferred to groom her offspring, and that preference was tilted to the firstborn, irrespective of sex. Licking also occurred between unrelated cows, but here, too, clear preferences emerged. Pairs of cows tended to graze near each other and lick each other, suggesting they formed stable friendships. And just like humans, some cows were more popular than others, getting lots of attention, while others nobody wanted to lick.
When I stroked Ricky Bobby’s neck, I mimicked the effect of another cow licking him there, and he responded by relaxing and stretching his neck a bit. After that, he began actively soliciting me, just like he did with the other cows. Once the others saw what he was doing, they all wanted neck rubs. Except Lucy. It took six months before she let me scratch her behind the ears and then another six months before she let me work my way down her dewlap. But Ethel loved neck scratches and would always reciprocate with a sloppy kiss to my face. Xena was hit or miss, depending on her mood, but BB, the cowpuppy, would often start the process by licking me first.
It is tempting to ascribe these affiliative behaviors to the hormone oxytocin. All mammals, including humans, secrete oxytocin. And although it has been popularized as the “love hormone,” oxytocin is responsible for a lot more than maternal-infant bonding. As a hormone, it flows throughout the body in the bloodstream, acting on almost every organ you can think of. Oxytocin also acts directly in the brain as a neurotransmitter, where it affects everything from memory to social cognition. Even men release oxytocin in small amounts.5 Because of its wide-ranging functions, it is probably best to think of oxytocin as an amplifier, rather than determinant, of everything related to social cognition.
However, when researchers measured the concentration of oxytocin in the saliva of farm animals, they could not find a relationship to human interaction.6 Even when the necks of cattle were stroked and the animals responded by stretching their necks farther, no consistent change in oxytocin was observed. This doesn’t mean that oxytocin wasn’t modulating the animals’ reactions; it just means that the concentration in saliva wasn’t the causative factor. The field of oxytocin research is rife with such negative findings. When it comes to behavior, it is the oxytocin in the brain—not the saliva, blood, or urine—that matters.
Oxytocin notwithstanding, I was not the first cattleman to interact with his herd in this way.7 Although human relationships are less common with beef cattle because they are usually left on their own for days, dairy cows are a different story. The twice-a-day milking forges an intimate bond between cow and human, even if it is just to attach a milking device. It is an instinctive human behavior to stroke the cow while doing this. That cows also find it enjoyable was demonstrated in a 2008 study of how dairy cows respond to stroking of different parts of the body.8 Scratching of the underside of the neck and withers—the area in front of the shoulder—elicited neck stretching and relaxation of the ears, while stroking the side of the chest did not. Rubbing the underside of the neck also lowered the cows’ heart rates. The authors concluded that the cows perceived the human stroking similarly to social licking, if it was done in regions normally licked.
Emboldened by my breakthrough in bovine relationships, I perhaps overdid the neck scratching. In hindsight, this was a bit of a tactical error because as the previous research demonstrated, it was usually subordinate cows that initiated lick fests. So although I had succeeded in embedding myself into the cow herd, it is likely that Ricky Bobby came to view me as his subordinate. This was a potentially dangerous inversion of our relationship. Bulls are the most dangerous domesticated animal.9 Anyone who works around cattle will tell you to never turn your back on a bull.
Pastor Ken thought my relationship with Ricky Bobby the most remarkable thing, but he also reminded me of what happened to his cousin. “He had a big ol’ two-thousand-pound Angus,” he told me one day. “I don’t know what he did to that bull. Maybe he was abused. Or maybe he was jus’ born that way. But I could see the meanness in his eyes. I told my cousin to be careful ’round that bull. But he didn’t listen. Took a horn through the pericardium.”
