First job: dairy-maid
“She’s not going to go into labour while you’re away, right?” I asked dad about the cow in the dry-pen. I was proud to finally know cows were given a break after being pregnant eight months still while producing an unnatural amount of milk twice a day for humans to consume; they were given a month off from milking.
You see, despite living my whole 18 years on a 200 acre dairy farm in Huron County, I steered a wide berth from farming. I knew I was going to escape - there was no need for me to learn how to do this. In the summer between high school and university, though, I was looking for a job and dad was looking for a hired man. We finally realized we might have a match. My farming aversion was partly fuelled by my asthma but that was just a convenient excuse. I was allergic to the hard work too.
“She’s old,” he replied. “I’ll be back before she’s ready.”
“Good.” I was not up to the task of birthing a calf and vet time was expensive.
Thirty minutes after mom and dad drove out the laneway, I was in the barn and heard the cow labouring.
***
My job interview with dad started like this: “I’m not climbing the silo or going into the mow [the upper level of the barn].” I wasn’t done. “I’m not helping with the harvest or driving heavy equipment.”
“Fine,” dad responded. “I’m not paying you what I would pay anyone else.” We settled on $5/hour.
I woke daily at 5:30 a.m. with hands so swollen I struggled with my bra clasp. I stumbled half asleep to the barn where I fed the cows by shovelling ensilage into the wheelbarrow and pushing it 17 times across a four-inch plank a foot off the ground. (I dumped only one in two months.) Then I moved to the parlour where the cows came in three at a time. I attached the milking machines while they quietly munched on better quality food (their incentive to leave the comfort of the other part of the barn). While they got the relief of unloading the milk, I danced in my rubber boots to Tears for Fears, Everyone Wants to Rule the World, and listened with horror to news about the Air India disaster. Clear images still nearly 40 years later.
After milking, I ate breakfast of porridge, eggs, and toast, and then returned to power-wash down the parlour and scrape the manure from the concrete floor into the liquid manure tank with the blade of a hydrostatic tractor. All inside. These girls didn’t waste precious milk-making energy frolicking in the meadow.
Four hours later, I started the whole process all over again for the evening milking.
My ventolin inhaler was in my jeans pocket as insurance against the asthma. I was physically more tired than ever before or since. One cow - number 12 - developed such affection for me she regularly blocked my passage, often in a menacing way. I nearly electrocuted myself using the power washer. Nothing about this was fun (except, I’ll admit, the hydrostatic tractor).
***
Mom and dad had hired help mostly so they could have vacation and that summer was no different. They had a week booked at a square dance convention in Ottawa. It was during our last-minute tour of the barn before they left when I asked about that dry cow. And a half hour later when I saw her in labour.
"I don't know nothin' 'bout birthin' babies, Miss Scarlett,” my first thought.
Second thought - phone a neighbour.
“Jessie, are George or Jim around? Mom and dad just left and I’ve got a cow unexpectedly in labour.”
Jim, in his late 20s and a full-time dairy farmer, was over in 10 minutes. I watched, secretly awestruck, while he delivered the calf which is labour-intensive for the cow but also for the midwife. The calf emerges from its standing mother front feet first like it’s diving into a pool of straw. Once those hooves were visible, Jim tied a rope to them, tied the other end to a stanchion and used his body weight to leverage the calf out. (And we worry about the brutality of forceps births.)
“Good. Female,” Jim announced. A male calf is useless to a dairy farmer.
She stood up from her landing pad in the dry-pen and wobbled towards her mother’s teat. Birth was something I’d seen only a few times before and never before when I’d felt even a tiny bit responsible. I felt the weight.
“Where’s the ear-tag?” Jim asked. It’s not good practice to have unidentified animals in the barn so he punched a hole in my new baby’s ear and tagged her with the next available number, 69.
Dairy calves are removed from their mothers at 12 hours. That milk is for us, not the calf. Jim came back the next morning to help with the separation, not a great experience for cow, calf, or me. The cow went back into the herd to be milked for everything she was worth; I had to teach the calf to drink from a pail.
“How am I supposed to do that, Jim?”
“Submerge your hand in the milk, shape it like a teat, shove the calf’s head into the pail with your other hand, get the calf to suck on your hand-teat, and then pull it out of its mouth.”
“Really?” I was sceptical.
It can still feel that gentle sucking on my hand and hear the slurping continue after my hand left the pail. The closest I’ll ever get to the satisfaction of breastfeeding a baby.
Now to the cow. A “fresh” cow - the first four weeks after birth - should be eager to get in line to be milked, especially if, like this one, it’s not her first rodeo. But my girl wouldn’t stand up. I was again over my head. Not to seem too greedy with the time of one neighbour, I called another dairy farmer, Ronnie, to get advice. He’d probably already heard I was alone with a fresh cow.
“Milk fever,” he diagnosed, without hesitation.
“What?” I asked, clued out despite my years in the house just 150 feet away.
“They sometimes get it. She needs so much calcium for milk she pulls it from wherever she can get it, including her blood. She loses strength and sometimes can’t get up.”
“That can’t be normal,” I responded. Even as a farm kid, used to these beasts being the means of production, this didn’t sound right.
Ronnie might have responded ‘nothing about this is normal’ but like all dairy farmers, he couldn’t think about it. We humans have a lot to answer for.
“She needs a vet,” he said instead. I made the necessary call from the milk-house. An hour later, Dr. Strong drained a bottle of calcium into the jugular vein. The cow rose as if by magic.
The story doesn’t end there. Every day, my cow struggled. Something - maybe ongoing effects of milk fever - was hampering her ability to stand up and walk but she could do it with help. Twice a day from then until the time my dad came back, Ronnie came to help me get her into the milking parlour.
***
A week after they left, my parents arrived home knowing nothing about my challenges.* I probably could have reached them at the convention hotel but I didn’t want to ruin their holiday. I know they wouldn’t have cut the trip short and I wouldn’t have expected them to. I was 18 years old and although I was not able to do the work myself, I was independent, exercising the judgment necessary to engage people who know more than I did.
This skill has stood me in good stead my whole life, including, and perhaps most especially, during Jack’s illness. I am fiercely independent and asking for help is really hard. When something is beyond me though, I can delegate and oversee. I have those cows to thank.
* Dad shipped her a few days after returning. You couldn’t have a cow needing that much support and they have no value at all if they die in the barn. Shipped is the euphemism for sending to slaughter. Options for her - grade C hamburger meat for McDonalds. Too old for much else.
