Notes on heartache: what I've learned from cows

My fair and fearless lady.

Shush.

If you start farming and you’re in the business of raising large animals you will have to come to grips with the reality that in playing the part of nurturer you may be asked to stand in for the role of an executioner. Sometimes I miss the stakes of vegetable production. Yes it sucks to lose a whole crop of beets or potatoes, but have you ever put a bullet in a black and white calf that looks like a baby panda or animal you’ve had longer than your beloved dog? Oh yes friends, I’m going there today. You’ve been warned.

People talk about farming as if it is a purely healing endeavor. Want to feed the world? Farm. Want to get back to nature? Farm. Struggling with your health? Farm. I don’t agree that farming will heal everyone and honestly it might be more damaging for some from the added strain of running a business where so much of your identity and sense of self worth is tied up in it.

The farm won’t fix you—if will lay bare all your wounds, character flaws, and insecurities. It will bring unresolved conflict to the surface. It will show you your greatest weaknesses and then kick you while you’re down. It will also teach you lessons about grief and loss you never expected to learn.

We had to put a beloved cow down this spring and I am still barely ready to talk about it.  Shush was the herd matriarch. I feel as though we lost a giant and there’s a hole in the herd that may never be filled. I never expected a dairy cow to be a main character in my beef-farming journey, but Shush was the epitome of “main character energy”.  Shush came to New Roots when I offered to keep Chelsea’s cows when she went back to school in exchange for help on the weekends and her teaching me about cows. It turns out both Chelsea and Shush had a lot to teach me about cows.

Shush was sassy, bold, patient, affectionate, maternal, bossy, itchy, destructive, obstinate, and independent all at the same time. She was a fixture at the farm and taught people to love agriculture, not to be afraid of gentle giants, and in Chelsea’s case how to show cows and be a dairy farmer.

She taught me to stay on top of things and keep good fences, because if they weren’t kept hot or maintained Shush would lead all the cows to the barn on a hot day to stand in the shade and steal pig food. She patiently stood while I rooted around with my arm up her rear feeling for calves and learned how to preg check her. Being the most tame and friendly cow in my early cow raising days she taught me what it meant to have relationships with cows. My family and friends loved to visit with and snuggle Shush whenever they visited. She brought people together.

She also taught me to fight sickness and death with everything you’ve got. I didn’t think I had more to learn in that space, but I did. Shush became what is called a “downer cow”. Sometimes cows get down and they can’t back up. This happens for a variety of reasons from calving injuries to mineral deficiencies. I don’t know why Shush went down and I never will, but I will always wish I’d found her sooner or that I’d brought her up into the field by the house to keep a better eye on her when we thought she looked thin or like nursing a calf over winter was proving to be a bigger drain on her than it had before. But she was Shush. She was such an indomitable cow part of me thought she was invincible. If I had a dollar for every time I started a sentence with, “listen up you witch” I would be able to buy a very fancy milking shorthorn or at least replace all things Shush has broken around the farm. I thought she would be fine because she was Shush. I was wrong.

Shush went down on a day when everyone at the farm had been battling a cold bug, was exhausted, feeling generally miserable, and we were behind schedule on checking the animals. Shush reminded me, at great cost, I can’t let my own health or exhaustion get the better of me without consequences. You need to take care of you so you can be there for your farm and your animals.

We worked very hard to get her back up and rehabilitated. Downer cows tend to not get back up because being that large sitting for hours and being unable to walk and stand damages their muscles. A cow may recover from whatever made them go down in the first place, but ultimately succumb to the problems that come with being a down cow. In dairies and commercial operations they have special slings and inflatable pools they can float cows in to get them up. Even then, most don’t recover. Your average small farm has none of this equipment. We built a sling from a cargo net and rubber belts and used the skid steer to hoist Shush up in her sling, get her to stand and manually walk her every 4 to 6 hours for days.

I have a rule at the farm and it is “if an animal is fighting to live then our job is to support them in that fight.” If an animal is eating and drinking then it is trying to survive. Animals that stop eating or drinking water rarely have any time left. Downed cows are extremely time consuming and most of them never recover. Most farmers put them down quickly because they have such long odds and are resource intensive to treat. Shush continued to eat and drink until the end. She eventually lost her appetite and it was clear to us she was losing her will and stopped making progress.

In her death she taught me about fairness and choosing an animal’s needs over my own. As a farmer you have to learn to be pragmatic and not let your feelings get in the way of what’s best for the animals. I wanted to believe she could get better if we just kept working on her. Talking or thinking about putting her down would send me into a sobbing tailspin. She wasn’t my cow, but I loved her as though she was. In the end the most compassionate thing was to put Shush down.

I miss Shush. She was the lead cow and made moving the rest of the herd easier. She always accepted a hug and let you rest against her when she was chewing her cud. On a cold winter day you could warm your hand between her udder and leg. She was belligerent, but charming. We buried Shush where we can plant a tree for her. I wanted her final resting place to still be somewhere I could rest and take comfort. I will never forget Shush, nor will I forget the things she taught me.