Cows Get Periods Too
Thank you for all of your sweet notes in acknowledging the passing of our calf, Ruth. Your support and empathy has been deeply felt by our farm. Many of you have been asking how Rose is doing since losing her calf. If I can speak on behalf of Rose (which I am not sure that I can), I will say that she is doing better than we expected. I am not sure what we expected Cow Grief to look like but perhaps something like dragging her hooves through the dirt with a sad look in her eyes. But, we have not seen that from Rose. Her milk production continues to flow, her appetite does not waver and she still licks us when we walk into the barn. When we walk our dog (Alice) by the cow barn, Rose calls out to Alice as if she is Ruth - with a low and soft moo. The Infamous Calf Call. We bring Alice close so that Rose can see it is not her calf but the low and soft mooing continues. Rose doesn’t seem to mind that Alice is a dog and not a cow. Rose simply seems to want to send her moo out across the field in hopes that it is received. There is nothing worse than a moo with nowhere to land. I hear your moo Rose. I’m not sure Alice appreciates it.
It’s clear, however, that Rose is ready for a companion — she wants a friend. She has now been by herself for a month. Our two pigs are some company for Rose. Every now and then Rose will stick her nose through the dividing fence and lick the pig’s snouts if they let her but they don’t linger long. When Heather and I come down to the barn in the morning, stainless steel milk pail in hand along with our electric milking machine, Rose runs toward us to head butt us with her 200-pound head. She treats us as if we are one of her herd, following us along the fence line as we walk back up to the house. There is no other option right now. There are no other cows to head butt or follow around. The other day, our neighbors drove up on their ATV to say hello and we happened to be down in the barn with Rose. As we walked over to talk to them, Rose followed us like a puppy — extending her long tongue to our neighbors and wrapping it around their wrists. She is a very social cow and does not like to be left out of the conversation. She needs cow friends.
Rose started bellowing a week after Ruth passed — we thought we were seeing a delayed response to her grief. Was this bellowing her mourning Ruth? Was she finally realizing that Ruth was gone and she was not coming back? One version of Rose’s moo is soft and gentle — it is quite soothing and sounds like a low fog horn. The base of her low moo reverberates throughout my bones and calms my nervous system down. Listening to this kind of moo from Rose is like laying under a weighted blanket. But her bellowing, her bellowing is like standing in front of a car alarm that you have no idea how to turn off. It is also a cross between being screamed at and jolting yourself awake in bed as you have the feeling of falling. It is completely unsettling.
The bellowing started at 5am on a Tuesday, forcing Heather to rise early and walk down to the barn to check on our bellowing cow. (Don’t be fooled, I do not wake or rise at 5am. I have an amazing wife who takes the early morning farm shift. I am not that kind of farmer.) The bellowing continued after Rose had food, water and pets. The bellowing continued all day. The bellowing continued while we ate dinner. The bellowing continued after the sun went down. Heathar and I looked at each other and said, “This cannot go on. We have to do something.” We thought Rose was just lonely but on the second day of her insistent bellowing, we were milking Rose and noticed a stringy, long clear fluid coming out of her vagina. The Long Awaited Holy Fluid. This was her ovulation fluid. We had read that cows can become very moody when they are ovulating and bellow insistently. We had also read that cows can become more energetic and frisky when they ovulate. The night before, Rose had been running and jumping around the barnyard. She had been skipping and kicking her feet, playfully running directly at us, urging us to run back at her. She ran at me so quickly I had to jump over the fence to get out of the way. Rose was ready to party. More directly, Rose was in heat.
When we discovered our cow was simply ready to get pregnant, we were deeply relieved. This bellowing would pass. Rose was not going to bellow for the rest of time. This wasn’t grief, it was hormones.
A few days after we discovered the ovulation fluid, we walked down to the barn to milk Rose and we saw her back legs covered in blood. What now? This had only happened once before and that had been when Ruth was born but now, there was no calf, there was no placenta — why the blood?
Rose had gotten her period.
I felt like a proud but respectful Mother. I tired not to make a big fuss — I didn’t want to embarrass Rose in front of the pigs but I felt a big smile spread across my face. I felt the proud tears welling in my eyes as I quietly acknowledged that she was now a woman. I pet Rose extra soft that day — affirming her body for doing such a good job at reproduction.
Since Rose came to our farm, in November of last year, we had not seen her have a period. She was pregnant when we got her and was not cycling. Once Ruth was born, Rose did not ovulate or bleed because she was nursing her calf.
If you all are not familiar with the female reproductive cycle, here is a mini lesson:
When women give birth and breast feed their children, they will not ovulate or cycle for a while as they nurse. This is nature’s way of ensuring that we get to space our children out and give our body a break. Of course, it’s not a perfect system but you get the idea. While Ruth was alive and nursing, Rose did not ovulate or bleed. As soon as Ruth was gone, Rose’s body started to adapt and adjust to the change. All of a sudden, Rose is ready to get pregnant again. No nursing calf = fertility returns.
Yes, we have already order A2A2 cow semen and yes, we will be inseminating Rose in the next couple of weeks. Yes, inseminating Rose involves cleaning out her entire rectum so that we can insert a tube into her vaginal canal and shoot the semen in. Yes, our vet is coming to help us with the process and yes, we are nervous. No, we will not be using a real, live bull to get Rose pregnant because I am not ready for cow testosterone. That seems like a dangerous invitation on our small and mighty female farm. But, we are trying again. We are giving Rose another chance to be a Mother. We are giving ourselves another chance to love a calf. We are hoping for a different experience — this time, bringing Rose into her pregnancy well-nourished and ready to grow a healthy calf.
Throughout my life, many people have told me that in death and grief, there are many gifts. I didn’t understand what they meant. Why are their gifts in death? Why is grief an opening?An opening to where? But through Ruth’s passing, I am finally beginning to understand what they means, or more accurately, what it feels like to find an opening in grief.
In the first two weeks after Ruth’s death, there was nothing but tears. There was nothing but walking down to the barn and seeing the imprint in the hay where Ruth died. There was nothing but smelling her breath in the warm, frothy milk and opening the bathroom cupboards to see the dog coat that she wore when she was first born. There was nothing but excruciating reminders. But then, something happened. Something began to open. The farm began to feel like it needed to take deep breath. The farm began to feel like it needed to expand and stretch its legs. The farm began to wake up from the survival mode that it had been in since Ruth’s birth in February. All of a sudden, we could feel that the farm was trying to move into its next stage of development.
The expansion is coming. Rose needs more pasture, more space. We need to have more cows for Rose and for our growing raw dairy business. We need to have more milking infrastructure so that we can bring our product to Farmer’s Markets in New Mexico and we need to have natural water on our land to strengthen the ecosystem of our farm. We need to bring more birds, bugs and animals to the farm. We need the soil to grow deeper roots so it can hold water. All of a sudden, we are looking at the ecosystem of our farm — the system as a whole and not just as individual parts. All of a sudden, the grief has opened the door to the bigger perspective of what we’re doing. We like to say that Ruth is asking for more — she is helping us see the next direction of the farm. As one door closes, another pasture reveals itself.
Please know, I am not advocating that we have to find an opening in grief. We do not. We may never find the relief or opening in grief that our culture tells us to look for. We do not have to find the silver lining and we do not have to learn anything or grow from our grief. That pressure and expectation serves no one.
I did not expect any gifts out of this grief which is why it is surprising me — perhaps even why it is happening. Ruth is spoiling us with the way she is opening our hearts and asking Heather and I to expand, get bigger and hold more. It’s nice to feel like we are expanding for someone. The grief is motivating — an urging of Ruth’s legacy. There will be much more to share about the expansion of our farm and how that actually looks but for now, know that it is coming and we are doing our best to embrace the process of change and more accurately, the process of trusting a path that we cannot yet see.
