Reflections on grief, joy, and the ups and downs of farming.

We lost a good one today, our herd matriarch Dolly. Dolly was the best damn cow. She was everything you want in a good brood cow. She was 6 and pregnant with her 5th calf. She was a great mom, calved easily on her own, had lots of heifers, weaned them herself, and got bred back quickly after calving. She was the most productive cow on the farm and had the personality to match her boss babe status. Once Shush died she quickly became the lead cow and bossed everyone around. She was confident and pushy. She didn’t like to be pet so much, but preferred to aggressively rub her forehead against your hand. Her way or the highway. Take it or leave it. She was one of the first few cows I bought when we decided to start breeding cows. I still remember unloading her from the trailer as a weanling, delighted by her spots, and anxious because I’d spent $750 on her and at the time it felt like a fortune. She was understated and not particularly showy, but ended up having the most spectacular calves.

Dolly’s death was a complete surprise. She was fine last night and her usual bossy self—hollering at me because she rightly thought it was time for the herd to move to the next field. This morning when we came out to prepare the herd to move Dolly didn’t meet us at the gate with everyone else. Chelsea said “Dolly isn’t here” and I knew something was wrong. I could feel it in my gut. It was uncharacteristic of her to not be at the front of the herd by the gate so we immediately went searching for her. We found her in the back of the field and she had died sometime in the night. Her cause of death was not apparent. We were stunned…it looked like she’d just dropped dead without any sign of illness or struggle.

There is a a morbid adage in the industry: “If you have livestock you have dead stock.” I cringe when farmers say it, but there is truth in the expression. Animals do die and it is inevitably at a most inconvenient or unexpected time. Leave it to a sheep to die in the most impossible and incomprehensible scenario you never imagined…it is often so bizarre it’s almost darkly comedic.

When folks just starting out in livestock farming ask me for advice I tell them to have a plan for dealing with sickness and death. Develop a relationship with a vet or think through how you will handle putting down animals that need it. Find out what service will remove a carcass or who you can hire to help you if you don’t have a tractor to bury them on farm. You should also know where your nearest animal health diagnostic lab is so you can bring dead animals in for examination if you don’t know what happened. As a farmer you can also learn to do a rudimentary autopsy on farm to try to determine a cause of death. By the time you get to this point in your farming career you will barely remember the version of you who never thought you could perform your very own redneck autopsy in a field next to the hole you’ve already dug (if you’ve planned ahead appropriately).

I’m a generally anxious person and I don’t like surprises or mysteries. I don’t watch horror films. I don’t enjoy a good jump scare. I am a big fan of comedy and lots of information. Information puts me at ease. I am definitely the kind of person who is going to pay for the necropsy and find out what went wrong so I can sleep more soundly. I would like to bury Dolly at the farm and plant a tree in her final resting place, but it’s more important to me to try to unravel the mystery. I am guessing a heart attack or something similarly sudden. After finding Dolly I went home, had a good cry, put on my favorite Sturgil Simpson record, made lunch, and then went back to work. Even when things are hard and sad at the farm nothing really stops. If the lab hadn’t been closed due to the holiday we would have hooked up the trailer and taken her in as soon as we found her. Time is of the essence when you want to unravel death’s mysteries. Once we’d finished most of the day’s tasks we loaded Dolly up into the stock trailer in the dark to take her to the lab first thing in the morning. I cried again when I shut the trailer door and listened to Garth Brooks’ the Thunder Rolls in the truck on the way back to the house. I was mostly listening to that song because the CD came in the used truck and I’ve never taken it out, but it also felt apropos.

Today was sad due to Dolly’s death, but it was also joyful because Gossip calved. She had a precious little black heifer calf that had to be toted in a wheelbarrow to the next field because she’s too wobbly to keep up with the herd. Gossip followed behind mooing and cooing in the low concerned tone cows reserve for their newborns. It was a precious moment. The coming and going of animals here is common, and often as soon as one animal dies or we take a load to the butcher we get to be delighted by a new birth. Farming is full of ups and downs and I may encounter them all in the same day. Farmers are notorious for internalizing stress. It is a business that can easily take a toll on your body, mind, and finances. It’s one of the reasons why I’ve started writing more. It helps me organize my feelings and process them. It’s ok to grieve Dolly and doing so now hopefully means the loss won’t knock the wind out of my sails at some later point in time when there are other stressors at the farm. There are hundreds of animals on this farm and cows that don’t have names, just numbers and ear tags, but some animals are just special. We named Dolly after the legend herself, and she definitely lived up to her namesake. She was a legendary cow.