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PatchWork
by Joyce Whitis |
The first dairy cow that I ever knew personally was a little Jersey heifer that I called Daisy. She would come running across the pasture to get a cold biscuit from my grubby four-year old hand. I loved that heifer and cried for a long time after my daddy sold her. She was really a pet and loved me just as I loved her.
I've become attached to many cows since then and all of them have been worthy of any amount of love and extra attention. A cow, not usually considered as a pet, can surely become one and don't let anybody tell you that a cow is dumb! I remember one young heifer who insisted on staying with the milking herd although she wasn't yet in milk. Finally we just gave up and let her go through the barn with her older sisters. She calved in the milking herd and was always happy there.
Another cow was used as a nurse cow because of a hip injury that kept her from being steady on her feet in the milking line. She raised numerous calves and treated them all as if they were her own.
Another first calf heifer took up steady company with a pig that lived on our farm but was allowed to run loose and roam the pastures at will. This heifer, Judy and the pig, Jody grazed together and when it was milking time, why the pig just trotted on in the lot with his friend. He wallowed around in the mud that came from the overflow on the cement water tank until Judy finished in the barn and when she came out and headed for the feed bunk, well he jumped up and went off with her.
One day I happened to be out in the yard when a rain storm came up suddenly and was witness to the scene of all the cows turning their rear ends to the rain as is the custom among cows. Jody looked up at Judy, saw what she was doing, stood beside her and turned his butt to the rain as well!
One of my all time favorite cows, well o.k....the most favorite cow of all time was named Connie and she lived to be 12 years old. She was retired and didn't have to do anything but eat and lounge around in the shade of a big oak tree, be petted and told that she was beautiful. She knew her name and would answer to it and would watch everytime you paid too much attention to another cow. Connie was one of the most outstanding show cows in the state and she knew what it meant to get ready for a show. When she saw you with brush in hand, she expected to be brushed.
After she retired from the show ring, sometimes we'd run her in the barn, give her a really good soapy bath, dry and clip her just like we were getting her ready for a show. She would always stand up tall and we knew that she was thinking about how it was to be lined up first and to be called out and named Grand Champion.
Connie was one of the first cows in the state to receive oveum transfers and we were thrilled when another heifer carried her calf to term. The highest classified cow in the state at the time, her heifer calf was worth a lot of money. On the day the thunderstorm came, she was out in the pasture between our house and the diary barn, with a bunch of heifers. She was so big, this cow, that the lightening bolt found her standing tall and brought her to the ground.
We buried her up by the new dairy barn and put a marker so that everybody would know a great lady once lived here.