Blue

When I bought my last horse, 'Star', the owner told me that she might be carrying a foal. She had not been intentionally bred, but had spent the summer in a pasture with a herd that contained two stallions. The foal would be due the following April.

All young animals are adorable, but horses, to my mind, have the edge on all of them. Not only are they cute as all animals are, but from the start, they have those long legs and a finely chiseled head, giving them an elegance combined with cuteness, an almost impossible feat. Thinking that one of those lovely creatures could be born for the first time on the Rescue Ranch had me watching Star's belly closely as the months went by. Once in awhile she would appear, to my mind at any rate, to have an enormous belly and I was more than convinced that hay and grain had to be in there. At other times she would appear to be just as slim as the other horses. Finally April came.... and went. And nothing happened. So apparently she had not been pregnant after all.

Then, as I turned the corner into the pasture on May 4, I was greeted by an unusual site. There, in the distance, the entire herd, all cows and all horses, were tightly bunched around some center of interest. I could not tell what it was, they were that tightly packed. But the appearance of the truck at that time of the morning means breakfast, so some of them began wandering towards me, giving me a chance to see something small and dark lying on the ground. Did Star have a foal after all? Instant joy, and then instant disappointment. Star was one of the animals moving towards me. If that was her foal and she was willing to leave it, then it had to be dead. I raced across the rough terrain, in the air more often than on the ground and came to a halt beside a calf! A calf? Right then and there, I named it Blue, short for Out Of The Blue. I had no idea it was coming.

blue in the middle

No wire fence can hold a bull. He can break the posts, he can break the wire, he can stretch the wire so he can squeeze through, or he can just give the whole thing a disdainful look and jump over it. No wire fence can hold a bull. So it was not surprising that year after year I would find the neighbor's bull in my pasture, and have to return him home. That is every year except the one preceding Blue. Only the existence of Blue testified that one had been there. This character must've jumped the fence, done his dirty deed with Ace, Blue's mother, and jumped right back again!

The other way of telling that a calf is coming is the condition of the cow. When On-The-Road, a small brown fine-limbed cow had her calf, she had a huge belly for months on end, obviously pregnant. But Ace weighs 1800 pounds if she weighs an ounce. With that bulk, the added 75 or 80 pounds that little Blue weighed wouldn't show at all. Still another way of telling that a cow is about to have a calf is the condition of her bag.

It's called 'bagging up'. that means her udder will swell up. Here again, nature foiled me. Herefords grow a very thick winter coat, and that includes long white fur on the bag, so that it doesn't get cold. So once again I missed the sign, I didn't see her bag up, and didn't know Blue was coming. But there he was, a dark auburn little bull calf, with a white face.

getting ready to cruise

Cows, with very few exceptions, are wonderful mothers. It starts right with the delivery. A cow will find a secluded place when she feels her time has come, quietly deliver her calf by herself, lick it clean, help it to it's feet, and generally look after it gently, caringly until she feels her little one is ready to be introduced to the herd. That is just what happened when I found Blue on May the fourth. The little one will be at its mother's side wherever she goes, rarely more than a few feet away. And she will guard him jealously against all others.

All other animals, in turn, respected mother and child. All except one, Sweet Nothing. She had arrived only a few months old, playful, capricious, and mischievous. A real brat, and she remains so to this day! She thought that little calf was just the cutest little plaything. She would circle around, and pretend to move away, but wasn't fooling Ace for a minute. Ace would keep an eye on her all through this playful maneuver. Eventually, Sweet Nothing would muster up enough courage to nudge him with her nose or tap him with a dainty hoof, and in the next moment would have to run for her life. Sweet Nothing, a Thoroughbred, is lightening on the hoof, and can outrun any other animal on the ranch. Still, it was surprising to see how fast she had to be in order to outrun 1800 pounds of outraged motherhood thundering up behind her.

But even devoted mothers have to have some time off every once in awhile, and one way to achieve this is to hire the babysitter. In a large herd, with many calves, one can sometimes see one singular adult surrounded by up to a dozen calves. Most of the time, that will not be the mother of one of the calves, but a maiden aunt who has taken over the job of babysitter. She may be looking longingly at what the herd is doing, but will not leave her charges until the mothers return and relieve her. That also works when there is only one calf. On many occasions I would see little Blue with one of the other cows, or, at one time to my surprise, even with an eight year old huge, massive Simmental steer! The other tactic to give mother some time off is the 'deposit'. How the mom communicates this to the calf I have no idea, and neither does anybody else. But she will tell the calf, so used to following her around everywhere, to lie down in a little depression in the ground and remain there, while she goes off and feeds or drinks or just takes a little time off. And that little calf will not budge from that spot until mother returns and picks him up. Knowing that this was a tried and proven method, I was not concerned when I saw Ace with the herd and little Blue nowhere in sight. I kept working in the farmyard until a truck drove by, slowed, then backed up and came up the driveway.

meal time

"Do you know that you have a calf in the ditch?", asked the driver.

"Oh, the ditch that's running into my property, right?"

"Oh, no, it's right outside your fence in the ditch next to the road."

That was not good, so I asked the man if he would give me a hand getting Blue back into the property. I handle many bales of hay weighing 75 to 80 pounds every day, but that's altogether different from handling 75 to 80 pounds of calf that does not want to be handled. Fortunately, the man was very helpful, and after a moment's consideration, we decided to put Blue in the back seat of the cab. We couldn't risk putting him in the back of the truck; he might panic and jump overboard.

I thanked my newfound friend, got into the driver's seat, and hugged that sweet little face that was right next to mine.

'Baaa-ah!', said Blue, and took a long piddle right all over the back seat.

Then he felt a lot better. Now, where to put him? I did not want to place him right in the middle of the herd. I didn't know how they, or he, would react. So I chose a large section of the corral that I could close off. Mama was there on the other side of the fence only moments later. Unfortunately, right where they were, there was no opening in the fence. It was at the other end, about 200 feet away. I opened it wide and gently tried to nudge Blue in the direction of that wide open gate, thinking that Ace would follow on the other side of the fence. I had managed only a few feet before Blue dodged past my legs right back to the corner from which I had tried to get him away. We went through this time and time again. Sometimes I came within just a few feet of the open gate, only to have him duck past me once again. The last time I tried it I looked up just in time to see Ace's impressive behind disappearing around the corner into the open pasture. While I was working myself into a lather trying to get the two together, Ace had some time to do some serious thinking. She didn't like this at all; the calf on one side, she on the other, and she thought up the solution.

backseat driver

"I'll go where I last left him and pick him up there", decided Ace, and off she went.

By the time I got back to my truck, closed the gate, opened another one and drove all the way around, there was Ace, exactly in the spot I thought she'd be, at the exact spot where she had deposited Blue beside the road. Now ready to pick him up, she sniffed the section next to it on one side, then sniffed the section next to it on the other. No Blue. Disgusted, she stomped off once again to tackle the problem at the corral. And I finally did what I should have done long ago. That is, leave the problem to the expert, Ace. I once again opened the corral gate and left. And sure enough, without my interference, Ace sorted it out just fine. When I next saw them sometime later, mother and son were happily reunited. Had I done the right thing, picking him out of the ditch? I still think I did. The road is scarcely traveled at all, but it takes only one uncaring driver to kill a little calf who doesn't know what he is doing. But the rest, the getting together in the corral, I should have stayed well out of, and let Ace do it by herself.

all grown up

I eventually bought another calf so that Blue could have a friend to play with. The two spent a pleasant year together. He is now almost exactly a year old, and when I took his picture it occurred to me that anywhere else, as a yearling, he would be very close to the end of his life. Here, of course, he has 15 years to look forward to.

I shall make sure of that!