The Answer to Your Prayer is Cowboy Tim
I have been waiting until I’m ready to write this next installment for you all and I seem to be ready as I’m sitting here at a coffee shop in Santa Fe and once again, I have forgotten to wear real shoes into town. I am wearing my mud boots that still have fresh cow dung on them from this morning. It’s not an easy story for me to write but I like the ending so here we go…
The other morning I left the gate open to gather water for Rose (our 3-year-old Jersey cow) from our working spigot (as I do every morning) but on this morning, Ruth (our 3-week-old calf) got curious and followed me out of the gate. If the cows get out of the barnyard, their gate opens up onto another pasture on our property. But after that, the pasture becomes our driveway, then the road and then our neighbor’s yard. Once Ruth was out of the gate, she quickly bucked and kicked her way to the road and Rose began to trail behind her.
Rose follows her baby calf anywhere she goes. If Ruth is out of her sight for more than a moment, Rose will begin her calf call which is a low and dull moo and then begin to anxiously scan the barnyard for her. Rose’s first calf was taken away from her in order to be sold so Ruth is the first calf Rose has been able to mother. We also took Ruth away from Rose for the first nine days of her life in order to bottle feed her as she was not strong enough to nurse. Understandably, Rose has some separation anxiety and possibly, an attachment disorder. All of this to say, Rose follows Ruth wherever she goes and she followed Ruth out of the barnyard gate, across our pasture and to the road. Our cows did not stop at the road, they did not look both ways but simply pranced and ran across the road and down into the neighbor’s driveway and into their front yard.
Ruth is only 75 pounds right now (very small for a 3-week-old calf) and so she is much more agile than her mother. Rose tried to keep up with Ruth as she pranced across the fields but Rose is, after all, a bit clumsy. Her udders do get in the way when she tries to run, swaying from side to side. Wouldn’t a couple of gallons of milk between your legs slow you down as well? We were not afraid about the cows doing damage to our neighbor’s property or even leaving traces of their cow feces all over the property — that would all be fixable. But, (and this is why I’m telling you all of this) we were afraid of Rose falling and tripping — on barbed-wire fences, in arroyos, in precarious ditches, on rocks. Because, when a cow trips and falls, they really cannot get up. And this is precisely how Rose almost died the day after she gave birth to Ruth. I’m getting there…
To get our cows back into the barnyard, we had to pick Baby Ruth up and carry her in our arms. This is the only way Rose would follow us. She would not come for grains or alfalfa or any of her favorite treats — only her baby.
Trying to catch Ruth is tricky. She is clever and enjoys a good game of Catch Me If You Can until she runs out of breath and then pants like a dog. When Ruth sees you approaching her, she turns her back to you so she can kick both of her feet at you and then run at full speed away from you. So once we captured Ruth, we held onto her tight and walked both of our cows back into the barnyard, securely latching the gate behind them. No cows fell or were injured in this process. Rose meandered back to her trough, reluctantly. The cows tasted freedom and we are aware that they will soon need more space to roam. Look out pasture, here we come.
The day after Ruth was born, we called our local vet to come and look at both Rose and Ruth. And by “local vet”, I mean the vet who lives 45 minutes away from us and can only make it up our driveway when it is not snow or mud season which leaves us accessible for a couple of months out of the year. But the surprise birth of our very first calf, seemed a good reason for the vet to pay us a visit as well as, Rose having some trouble letting her milk down since we did not properly dry her off before she gave birth. Instead of getting into all of the details, I will tell you that Rose’s hormones were not working right and she needed some help letting all of her milk come down: enter Oxytocin.
We all produce oxytocin. Humans produce oxytocin all the time — when we feel joyful, happy, satisfied, sentimental, in love, when we’re having sex, when we’re giving birth and bonding with our babies. Oxytocin is The Love Hormone and it also controls the let down of milk in mammals. The vet came to give Rose a shot of Oxytocin but, in order to give Rose a shot, we had to somehow corner this massive animal so that we could stick a needle into her flank. Rose does not enjoy being cornered, especially by someone she is not familiar with (cows are incredibly sensitive animals). With the vet’s urging, we tied a lead rope onto Rose’a halter and did our best to hold her in place with the lead rope while our vet gave her the shot. After several attempts, our vet got the shot successfully into Rose’s back end. Rose was anxious and flustered, but the job was over. The vet suggested that we give Rose 3 more shots of the oxytocin throughout the next couple of days which was absolutely a suggestion we did not take. There was no way Heathar and I were going to try that on our own when one kick from Rose’s back hoof could break half the bones in our body. Aside from that, Heathar is a homeopathic genius and we knew that any other support Rose would need, we would be able to handle it.
After the shot, we took the vet up to the house so he could examine Ruth. Walking from the barn to the house is about a 1/4 of a mile (something Heathar and I do between 6-7 times a day) and not many people are stoked to make the trek. It’s also all uphill and most often, in the mud. Even fewer people are excited about this walk. So our vet did not want to take the time to go and get a knife to cut the lead rope off of Rose which would mean two more trips up to the house and back down to the barn. He encouraged us to leave the lead rope on and so we did. EVEN THOUGH, every voice in Heathar’s head told her this was going to be a problem. Heathar is more apt to think of things we should be anxious or nervous about before they happen. I tend to want to ignore things until the chaos hits and then I am all in to solve a problem.
By the time our vet had checked Ruth out and by the time the vet had walked back to his car and driven away, Heathar went back down to the barn to cut the lead rope off of Rose, only to find that she had tripped over the lead rope, fallen in a position that she could not get up from and was having a lot of trouble breathing. Heathar ran up to the house to get me and started calling our neighbors for help. I ran, as fast as I could, down our 1/4 mile driveway to Rose. I saw her neck bent at a more than 90-degree angle and her stomach beginning to bloat at a rapid rate. This is a sign that the cow’s air passageway is cut off. Rose’s eyes were bulging out of her head and she had begun to defecate — a sign I can only equate with an animal nearing the end of its life as it starts to release all of its bodily functions. I immediately began hysterically crying. I knew that it made no logical sense but I began to push on Rose’s side, trying to move her up from her position. I was no match for her weight. She barely moved but I felt like one of those mother’s trying to lift a car off of her child. I waited for my superhuman strength to emerge but it wasn’t enough.
There is something about a cow’s eyes — they are huge and calming. They almost seem too big for their bodies. As I tried to move Rose’s massive body, similar to trying to move a whale back into the water when it is beached on the sand, I looked into her eyes. I tried to comfort this large, new animal that I was only just coming to know. In a couple of moments, Heathar appeared and our neighbors (the same ones who had helped with Ruth’s birth) came rushing down to the barn. They agreed that this did not look like a positive situation. Our neighbor, also named Jen, was able to move Rose’s head so that she could start getting air into her lungs. Heathar was prepared with the milking machine in case Rose died and we had to milk her out to give the colostrum to Ruth. We were all prepared for death. In moments, we went from feeling proud of the mother Rose was becoming to thinking about what to do with a large animal’s body. It didn’t seem fair to have to process death that quickly. We started administering charcoal to Rose to help bring her bloating down but none of us had any idea how to get Rose on her feet again. I started praying over Rose —asking for help. I have a very complicated relationship with prayer since I grew up in an Evangelical Christian Community that I left when I was 22. I would say that I do not pray anymore even though it is STILL a habitual impulse when I lay down to sleep every night. But, this seemed like a situation where prayer was necessary — called for.
And just like that, my prayer — our prayers — were answered.
This is when Cowboy Tim showed up. Cowboy Tim drove by our property in his white pick-up truck at the exact moment we were in crisis and heard our shouts for help. Within seconds, he was in our barnyard and assessing the situation. In his smooth, Southern twang Cowboy Tim said, “Yea, this a’int good.” He efficiently gave instructions to each of us, pulling on decades of ranching experience. With two of us behind Rose’s back and two underneath her neck, Cowboy Tim took hold of Rose’s tail and prepared to crank it hard to the left. He said, “Now this is gonna hurt her. She a’int gonna like it but it will get her up.” And on that count of three, our beloved cow Rose jumped to her feet as Cowboy Tim cranked her tail and the four of us heaved her massive body to a standing position.
We quickly led Rose into the warm barn and brought in a fresh tub of hay for her. We covered her in blankets, the same ones we had used to warm up her calf hours earlier. Rose had been lying on the ground for at least an hour and the ground was still frozen, not yet thawed in the warmer February days ahead. Heathar gave Rose homeopathic remedies for shock and trauma and we started to soothe our cow who now seemed strangely calm and at ease. Cowboy Tim stood at Rose’s back end, petting her flank saying, "This is a good cow right here. Y’all got yourselves a good cow. She a full Jersey? And now you have yourselves a baby calf. You should be celebrating this. Congratulations, these are good cows.” People kept congratulating us about our calf, a reason to celebrate in the ranching community. New cattle, new life, new milk, forward momentum.
With Cowboy Tim’s help and approval, we were back in business. Rose was safe and alive and this meant, Ruth would make it as well. As quickly as the chaos started, it was over. The farm was calm again, quiet. As Cowboy Tim was leaving he said, “You know, I built this barn back with Roger Tucker in 1992. Put the roof on myself. I used to sleep in a trailer right over there.” He pointed to the small, open pasture next to our barn. This was not Cowboy Tim’s first time at Ojo Conejo nor, I felt, would it be his last. “This is the best barn in Ojo Sarco if you ask me,” Cowboy Tim said. With that, he tipped his hat and sauntered back to his truck. Since then, I have seen him walking down our dirt road. No car, no bike, just his cowboy boots and a halter in his hand. It seems he is always walking toward a cow or leaving a cow behind. I am not sure if he is a mirage or if he is real but now I always say hello to him.
