Going Green in Agriculture
Articles and radio broadcasts from Morning Edition and All Things Considered, including a piece on pasture-raised cows and subsidizing enviromentally conscious agriculture practices as opposed to large-scale corporate operations.

International Dairy Foods Association to Hold Cheese Safety Conference

450 Turkish Sheep Leap to Their Deaths

Today started out like many others: we went to fetch the cows. They came in with a little more bother than usual — but nothing unmanageable. As we were walking them in we noticed that Rachel, one of the expectant, was walking slowly and a little funny — with her tail cocked in an odd manner — and that she was starting to dilate…obviously going into labor. Once milking was under way, she began to show more signs. She was laying on the ground and shifting her legs around in what looked like an awkward manner.

The barn isn’t really a great place to have a calf. For one thing, it’s kind of dirty - there is shit everywhere. There are many cows in very close quarters. Most importantly, perhaps, we’re actually pretty busy in there trying to get a job done. For all these reasons, once her water broke, we decided to give Rachel the option of leaving the barn. We let her out of the stanchion and shooed her out into the middle.

Instead of leaving, though, she just kind of staggered around a little and then walked across the aisle, stuck her head right into an empty stanchion and, in what may well be the most well documented calfing in history, proceeded to give birth right onto the barn floor. By the time she was done — just about 20 minutes later — the entire work crew and a few visitors were crowded around watching and shooting photos. I managed to get a lot of good photos, of which some are posted here. I’ll try to get a decent slide show up sometime over the next few days.

This was the first birth of any kind that I’ve seen. It was actually a little less “gross” than I was expecting. There was some but not an inordinate amount of blood. It was pretty cool to see the calf literally sliding out of the birth canal and, in a way, even more impressive to see her struggle to stand almost immediately. Within fifteen minutes or so, she was standing on her own. Granted, we helped it along, dragging her out of the barn so she would have a less slippery surface to work with — and so we could turn out the rest of the herd — but I think she would have been just fine without us.

I’m really glad that I got to see this — and even luckier that I had my camera in my pocket. Typically, the cows give birth out in the field and we find out about it in the morning. While doing it in the barn isn’t so great for workflow, it makes it much more convenient for us gawkers.

That said, Jonathan told us he’s pushing the next cow that goes into labor out of the barn. The birth really tied things up during the end of milking. We couldn’t let the rest of the cows out when the milking was done for fear of the baby (as yet to be named) getting stepped on. Once we could finally let them out, they immediately made for a field they weren’t supposed to be in and easily managed to bypass the barbed-wire barrier. We turned most of the herd around and got them where they were supposed to be, but one of the steers, Chumley, and two of the heifers managed to get out.

We left them alone, planning on joining them with the herd in the morning, but they freaked out a little and tried to find the herd on their own. Chumley got himself all the way over to the field they were in, but got his head stuck in a barbed-wire gate. Luckily, a passing motorist saw him and let us know. He wasn’t too badly stuck — or too badly cut up — but this was a pain for him and us nonetheless. We also inadvertently separated one of the recent mothers from her calf. By the end of the day, though, we got all of the cows back where they should be and are ready to face tomorrow.

As promised, here’s a photo of one of our recent additions. This is Tweedle with her bull calf Dee.

As of yesterday, after a two week baking hiatus, I’m back on cow and cheese duty. While I enjoyed my time in the bakehouse — and learned quite a bit — I’m happy to be back in the barn and creamery. It’s funny, really. The barn is a hot, smelly place. The cows exude heat (among other things) but I’m starting to feel quite at home in there.

We’ve had a few births over the last week or so. In a few cases — namely Sara’s and Betty Davis’ — we caught only a quick glimpse of the calf before it went into hiding for a few days. Boop, Betty’s bull calf, was missing for three days or so. Likewise, no one has seen Sara’s calf since Saturday. Apparently, this is a characteristic of the Kerry breed. Their young tends to go into hiding for the first few days of their lives, during which time they do quite a bit of sleeping.

Interestingly, even the partial Kerries seem to do this. Boop, for example, is half Kerry. His father, like all the new calves, is John; Betty Davis, his mother, is part Ayrshire. It seems that most of the Kerry traits are dominant. All the cows are black or brown, for example, and start grazing very early. It’s interesting that less tangible traits should also take hold.

This hiding behavior makes a lot of sense, really, as they’re on the defenseless side at this point of their lives. It makes things a little stressful for us, though, as we’re never sure whether the calf’s actually ok and hiding or just kind of dead. Boop eventually came out of hiding, though, and we’re assuming the little Kerry will too.

In addition to the above mentioned calves, Brunhilde finally had a baby. We’ve been waiting for weeks for this birth and were starting to get a little worried (well, I was anyway). I haven’t seen the calf yet (mother and son are out in one of the fields by themselves) but hope to find the time to get out there tomorrow.

We’re planning on taking photographs of all the bull calves. I’ll try to post some of them here soon.