The Badgers may be slow coming out tonight as the Farmer in the field adjacent to the Badger field is mowing the grass.
After telling you about the Colt Foal that was a kicker, it reminded me of a Cow that we once had. The Cow was a Charolais breed, you would know them if you saw them in a field as they are all white and originated from France. I must admit I have made very few business mistakes in my life, but top of my list was getting Cows. When I first moved into Denbury all that I had as far as livestock was concerned was two Friesian Horses. The window of the farm house kitchen looks over to what now is the main horse field. It is about an 8 acre field and looked pretty empty with only two Horses in it. I will get some Cows I decided. I knew of a man in Yorkshire, who like me was playing at farming and had cattle including Charolais. He was also a collector of Horse Drawn Carriages, again like myself. I had about ten carriages, all of a hundred year or more in age. I must admit I really did like the Carriages, all had been restored to a very high standard. One was a Horse Drawn Hearse that we did funerals for undertakers with, all around the UK. That is where the Friesian Horses came into it. They come from Friesland in Holland and are jet black, being the traditional funeral Horses. Both the Horses and Hearse are regularly on the telly, when there have been Horse Drawn Funerals shown. The Horses Jack and Sargent would be over twenty now.
Like a fool I decided to exchange the Horses and carriages for cattle. I was a very poor cattle farmer, as I am a sheep farmer, I should have stayed with what I knew best and really enjoyed being around, as I am now with the Horses. To make matters worse, just after I got the cattle the BSE scare started. The cattle that I had exchanged for my Horses and carriages, worth many tens of thousands of pounds were virtually worthless. To make matters worse I hated being a cattle farmer, or trying to be one I should say. Easy to look after in the summer, but a horrible, nasty, smelly hard job in the winter. It is hard getting up at all hours of the night with the Horses when they are foaling. When you have twenty five cattle that are due to calve, it is believe me a lot, lot worse. It didn’t matter how many times that I checked on the cows that were due to calve, all through the night, I missed the births more than I witnessed. Quite a few that I had last seen only an hour before I returned an hour later, had calved, with me finding the calves in the birth sack and had died not being able to breath.
The Cow that I originally going to tell you about, was if I remember about twelve years old. She was a moody, mean old so and so and kicked like a Horse, instead of the normal cow kick from the side. At any opportunity she would kick at any thing that moved. When she calved, she was a nightmare. The person that I got the cattle from never told me about her, until I had experienced her antics the first time that she calved at Denbury. I would pen those due to calve in a separate area from those cattle with calves or who were due to calve, This made it easy to find them in the night. On checking her one night, I had found her laying flat out on her side, with the calves head showing at the beginning of the birth. With the help of a calving aid I managed to pull the calf off. Feeling quite pleased with my achievement of a live calf, I proceeded to move the calf in front of the cow, so that the mother and calf could bond. Well no sooner than I started to move the calf, this moody ungrateful maniac got to her feet, quicker than a 100m olympic champion could get out of the starting blocks, with head down she charged at me like a Bull. The pen that the Cow was in was only a little bigger than one of our stables. Being made up of gates, I would normally have climbed over, as I would a ladder. I didn’t have time for that, I dived over the gate head first, still getting hit in my side by the Cows head, finishing up spreadeagled, face down in the cows messy straw bedding. She never got the opportunity again to attack me when I helped her calf on other occasions, I didn’t hang around moving the calf, I was out of the pen quicker than she thought about getting up.