Jerseys
FIFTEEN years ago Bossy, a high-grade, high-producing, good-looking, typical Jersey cow, came to my homestead in the stock country of Central Oregon — a birthday present. Bossy’s calf, born soon after her arrival, was a little bull. The calf was exchanged for a young heifer, less typically Jersey than Bossy, probably inheriting a strain of Durham. Nannie was her name. From these two cows I have personally raised and dealt with, during the fifteen years, roughly a hundred head, many of which have been born and reared on my juniper-shaded, sagebrush-dotted, bunch-grass-covered slopes.
In the spring and early summer, these slopes are ideal as Jersey pasture. Probably no succulent feed surpasses young bunch grass in milk production. When the inevitable drought comes on, early or late, milk begins to fail, and I must look for watered fields, and haystacks that are the product of irrigated lands.
Naturally, the enterprise has not been commercially successful. To keep my Jerseys, I have taught during parts of most years, earning the disrespect of my business-minded friends, the disgust of banks and loan companies that have, from time to time, seen me through the dubious experiment, and, for myself, gray hairs, calloused hands, and — some intangibles.
A year ago, drought was upon us by the first of June. For six months, dry or drying pasture was inevitable, even on many theoretically irrigated fields. Hay prices soared 100 per cent and more. Cream prices, by some strange economic law, dropped 50 per cent. I saw my little herd safely through the perils of the winter, and then, in the early spring, most of them had to be sold to square accounts. It was not certain that I could keep even a chosen few of the old and well-beloved. It was in seeking relief for the pain of my heart that I set down what I have learned of Jerseys in the decade and a half just past, believing these things to be characteristic of all Jerseys, as, probably, in a greater or less degree, of all domestic cattle.
I
In the increasingly mechanized, more and more highly commercialized methods of agriculture, the aspect of domestic stock as living creatures is more and more lost sight of. Strange that, under all discouragement, their temperamental qualities persist, their intelligence continues to function, and their emotions defy the indifference of their thick-skinned exploiters.
Beauty may be only skin deep, yet it has, indisputably, an endearing power. In memory, for me, blended with the lights and shades, the sunrises and sunsets, on my colorful slopes, will always exist, gleaming through the shrubbery, the high lights of my Jersey band. Golden tans, offset with glossy black; slender, whitestockinged legs and polished hoofs; great mournful, appealing eyes; symmetrical, shining horns. Leaping from cover to cover, calves, graceful and beautiful as fawns, will enliven the landscape. Every portion of my 640acre tract will shield their gentle ghosts.
Friar Butte, which forms the centre of the tract, abounds in nooks and shelters, deep ravines and wild retreats, which appeal to the racial instincts of cattle. They love the butte. How reluctantly they leave it, even when pasture fails, and with what alacrity they seek it in the spring, doing such brave walking as they seem incapable of at other times!
This little field, with its ancient, spreading juniper in the centre, is one of the clearings that earned my title to the land, and has remained for some years uncultivated, bearing an interesting succession of weeds, very interesting as a variation to the bunch grass. Jim Hill mustard, succulent and valuable as pasture, gave place to a smaller and less palatable variety of the same genus. To this succeeded cheat grass, taking possession of every inch of soil and furnishing a month’s spring pasture for all of my stock, while the bunch grass made preparation for later pasturage.
In this field, one glorious autumn day, I gathered the herd for the annual migration. Three were missing. Rab, wise old cow pony, knew it in a minute. We made a dash for the spring where the delinquents were, presumably and in fact, in hiding. Returning with them in ten minutes, we found the field unoccupied. Not a horn or a hoof remained, where twenty Jerseys had stood submissive. But, well up on the butte side, among the junipers, golden gleams through inadequate branches, bright eyes watching, unwary tails switching the flies away. They had taken to cover, like wild creatures, in order to escape the drive, which every cow hates, and the separation from their loved pastures. It was on such an occasion that I first experienced the tactics of a bull who desires to hinder the moving of his herd. Keeping ahead, with horns lowered, he persistently turns back each cow that attempts to obey the driver, and successfully, too, for their hearts are with him. It is exceedingly difficult for a single driver to combat the opposition of a bull.
Scattered here and there over the whole tract, in the hidden nooks and crannies of the butte or in the more remote corners of the place, in patches of tall sagebrush or the shelter of Purshia shrubs, how well I know the little birth rooms of my various bossies, selected with all the intelligent care that birds give to the location of their nests. For several days before the event, a cow will frequent the chosen place, testing its seclusion, both from her own and from human kind. If discovered here, she will browse along toward other neighborhoods, with an innocent air disclaiming all interest in the hiding place.
It is in the attempt to hide and keep the calves that the trait of wiliness, well marked in the species, is best exhibited. Past this rocky point and far away, Lorna Doone led me and Scotty, looking into the distance and lowing tenderly. Growing suspicious, we turned back, to find, within three feet of the path we had trod, curled in a soft hollow among the rocks and gnarled junipers, little John Bull, one of Lorna’s choice calves. On this grassy bench, high up the butte side, from which mountain and valley spread in extensive panorama, but screened from nearer view by a dense thicket below and an overhanging rock ledge above,
I found little Dandelion, gentle Nannie’s youngest. From that clump of high sagebrush a little alien’s snowwhite face shone out, to the disgust of Tannie, who had successfully concealed it for a week, coming faithfully with the others to be relieved of her superfluous milk, and returning by slow stages and tortuous routes.
In this sunny hollow I found Brownie’s little Fay, and first learned that the love of milk often persists throughout life. I had milked a good pailful for Brownie’s relief and was investigating the calf. When I turned again to the milk, which had been destined for the chickens, not a drop remained. Brownie had taken it once more into her system. From that day, Brownie had her ration of separated milk whenever it could be spared.
II
Cows receive much less credit for intelligence than they deserve. This is because, in our stupid way, we expect them to exhibit a brand of intelligence similar to our own, notwithstanding that their ends and aims are quite different from ours. Where their own interests are concerned they are intelligent enough. They are very quick to learn a routine that governs their care, and are perfect clocks in their observance of it, impatient and easily irritated by delay or infractions.
Under the informal conditions of my dairy I have milked, in the summer time, under a certain shady juniper, each cow being milked there in turn and receiving a pan of feed. Nothing was better understood among them than that a cow that is being milked must never be disturbed. However, after each milking, while I carried the pail to the house, keen competition was carried on for the milking stand, and when I returned it was to find the successful contestant in position and all but tied beneath the tree.
It was at milking time that I learned that not only does each cow know her own name, but she knows perfectly the names of all the others, as does the bull know the names of all the cows. In the event of some interesting command being given a certain cow, the others will look with expectancy and interest at the individual named.
Ann’s Lad St. Mawes, the leader of my herd, shared Brownie’s lasting taste for milk. He would lie lazily in the sunshine during the milking hour, only beginning to twitch his cars when the separator began its drone. By the time the milk was all separated, his great black bulk would loom in the kitchen door, and his mouth would be watering in no figurative sense. It has amused the casual visitor to see him toss off three brimming water-pailfuls of separated milk.
Affection for humankind, while it certainly exists among cattle, cannot be said to be notable. Among the hundred that I have handled, only a few have shown a persistent affection for me as an individual. Brownie will greet me to the end of her life, however long she may be separated from me, with the ‘Ba-a-a-aw’ and curved neck that are the sign of recognition and affection both for their own kind and for the human friend. Cows exhibit decided preferences for certain caretakers, but probably not a cow exists that would not prefer a wild herd life to a domestic one if necessity did not compel her to accept the latter. Of their tender and overflowing affection for their offspring there can be no possible doubt. Calving remains and will always remain a pathetic annual experience in the life of each individual cow. More than food and drink, more than all physical comfort, more than personal safety, more than the society of the herd, a cow loves her calf. Does she not deserve from her exploiters patience and consideration at this annual crisis?
Rather surprisingly perhaps to some, gratitude is a quality of which cows are unquestionably capable. It is most often expressed when they or their calves have been delivered from some danger or serious predicament. They will reach their noses to their deliverer with the peculiar soft ‘ B-r-r-r ’ that is reserved for this emotion. Again and again I have witnessed this expression of feeling. Several times it has been in the case of a cow that has been tied and has got entangled in her rope, throwing herself in a position in which she would soon have died. Her gratitude when released was very touching. Once it was in the case of a very young calf that had been left alone and been attacked by coyotes. The whole herd came at a mad gallop in answer to the calf’s cries, but Scotty and I had arrived first and routed the enemy. Twenty cows circled about us and about the tiny calf and its mother, stretching their soft black noses to us and ‘B-r-r-r-ing’ with one accord.
III
In the case of both cattle and horses, running freely together in a small herd, status and precedence are as definitely established as at the King’s court or the White House (more so, possibly). This is most easily observable where stock are watered by hand. Tannie drinks first, then Lorna Doone, then Dolly, and so on to the end. At one time or another, each cow has measured her strength against each of the others and established her standing. In the case of mother and daughters, it is the natural relation rather than the test of strength that determines precedence. The mother continues dominant even down to old age. A cow, however, after satisfying her own thirst, will stand beside her calf, throughout the first year, and keep off aggressors till the calf’s thirst is satisfied. The affection between mother and daughters persists through life and is quite different from the attitude of unrelated cows toward each other.
I take issue with Hamlin Garland, who in his otherwise delightful book, A Son of the Middle Border, cavalierly disposes of the theory that calves are attractive. They are dirty creatures, he says, blowing milk all over one and making themselves generally obnoxious. One must not undertake barn chores in dainty raiment, and why should our domestic animals be regardful of our clothes and our purely human sensibilities? Did they ask to be domesticated, shut in prison pens, separated from their mothers and from their young, and otherwise distorted for our benefit?
Garland was no born farmer. He lacked the tastes and appreciations that are the alleviations of the hardships of farming. I find a hand-raised calf a most delightful and lovable little creature, most appealing in its dependence and trustfulness. I love the patter of its little feet close behind me — yes, they will step on your heels — and its little pink tongue thrust out in anticipation of its milk. I enjoy satisfying the heartiness of its appetite and seeing it progress in size and weight in the proper manner, with bright eyes and glossy coat, and without the bulging stomach that tells the world of a cruel economy exercised in its feeding. All over the land there are calves with dull eyes, rough and shaggy coat, big stomach and spindle legs, whose birthright has been stolen from them. Shame to their owners! There is nothing easier to raise than a calf, but Nature makes her demands. Since I have known the delights of being foster mother to these fawn-like little Jerseys, veal has become an abomination to me, and I fully believe that chemistry and developing sensibility, hand in hand, will deliver us from the stockyards and the habit of feeding upon our fellow creatures.
I have found it easy to content a cow with respect to her calf, if she is allowed to see it daily and especially to see it fed. She must smell the milk; if it is proper feed, and she sees the calf contented, she will go away with the herd, well satisfied. If the calf feeding is a little delayed, she will hang about until it is satisfactorily accomplished, and then, with nose to ground, will follow her companions. The sense of smell is a cow’s best guide in the conduct of her affairs. She trusts it far more than her eyes. She is hardly sure of her own calf, nor is a calf sure of its mother, till the nose test is applied. When the caretaker appears in a new garment or even a new pair of gloves or boots, he must expect to be sniffed at by each of his charges before he is passed and accepted.
A cow could tell us many things about food and drink of which our own senses leave us in ignorance. She will detect an undesirable element in the well water long before we are able to do so, and she will refuse her accustomed feed because of some slight flavor carried by an unwashed pan. She detects her own kind at a long distance. In this land of moving herds I have often noticed my cows with noses in the air, snuffing a sudden breeze, and have later detected the dust of a passing herd two or three miles away, on the highway.
In view of the unquestioned daintiness of cows with regard to feed and water, and their love of a dry, soft bed, it might seem surprising that they have acquired no sense as to the care of their feed, water, and bedding places. This applies to all herd animals, however long domesticated. A herd of half-starved cattle or horses, if they succeed in breaking their way to a haystack, will trample and soil as much hay as they eat, thereafter refusing to touch it, though hungry. They will travel all day, in time of drought, to a remembered water hole, and will, in fifteen minutes, render it unfit for further use. Having discovered the remains of a straw pile, they will return at night from quite a distance to enjoy the luxury of a soft bed, but will in a few nights have destroyed its usefulness. The probable explanation is that the race instinct of the herd animal is to wander continually. It is far different with animals which habitually choose and occupy a permanent den or nest.
IV
The coming of Ann’s Lad St. Mawes, grandson of the famous St. Mawes Lad, was something more than an incident. It was an event in the history of my herd. Ann’s Lad, at the age of six weeks, traveled a day’s journey in a crate, half a day’s journey by auto stage, and a short distance in an accommodating neighbor’s wagon. Released from his close quarters, he skipped about in his little blanket, investigating his new surroundings with a lively interest. He had come from ‘The Valley,’ beyond the Cascades, a quite different climate from ours; hence the blanket, a protection against the sudden change. Renewing it now and then, I continued the precaution of the blanket, since it was the winter season. A beautiful, deerlike little creature, with great soft eyes, — which later became true ‘bull’s eyes,’ with a peculiar peak in the centre, — Ann’s Lad, from the first, was ‘different.’ He had his own ways. Whereas the other calves trotted or loped when called to meals, Laddie paced. He was perhaps the besttempered of them all, yet he followed his own line, showing himself a leader. How often I went out at bedtime on a bitter winter night to see whether he was well protected! I need n’t have worried. He was sure to occupy the very centre of the straw bed in the cosy calf shed, protected on all sides by sleeping calves. Passing stockmen regarded this dainty and blanketed calf with cynical derision. Their little Whitefaces were breasting the rigors of the winter storms in complete exposure, to live or die as their constitutions or the untempered wind might determine. ‘You just oughter go by,’ said one to another, ‘and see how she’s got her calves dolled up.’
I have been repeatedly warned against the treachery of bulls, against Jersey bulls in particular, and against St. Mawes Jerseys most of all. I wish to testify that the friendliness of Laddie’s calfish days never suffered relapse during six years of acquaintance. The same was true of his predecessor, whom I cared for for the same length of time, and who once gently picked me up between his horns and set me to one side when I chanced to be in his way at the feed box. I hold the theory that, while there undoubtedly are fierce bulls, the customary use of the pitchfork as a persuader and the brutal use of the nose ring establish ‘association centres’ that identify the man with the horrors of the pain that he inflicts, and call the motive of revenge into action when opportunity offers.
The introduction of Jerseys into the heart of the beef country was a presumptuous act and was, to some extent, treated accordingly. The fences of the region are not built to withstand the assault of a herd sire from either side. A strain of Jersey in a beef animal detracts from his weight and also renders him less able to withstand the rigors and hardships to which he is born. ‘A bullet for the Jersey bull’ might have been the slogan fifteen years ago. The first calf that I destined for a herd sire was removed from the scene of action in his early infancy. Ann’s Lad has bluffed it through, but carries at least one bullet and several scars as souvenirs of visits outside of his proper range. On my side, I have become familiar with the aspect of every range bull in the vicinity. I have milked under my junipers with two great fellows just in the offing, rolling their red eyes at me. My ears have been assaulted at dawn on a summer morning by the bellowings accompanying a classic bullfight, staged just in front of my porch.
On one February evening, when snow lay deep, a huge Hereford, with horns like the traditional Texan, tore my barnyard gate to shreds, let seven horses in with him on to the last small stack of hay that I was able to secure that year, tore several cows loose from their moorings in the shed, and occupied their quarters, in which I found him calmly reposing in the morning. What cattleman, if cases were reversed, would not have shot him where he lay?
Yet intrusions upon the dairy herd receive little attention. The industry is considered negligible. More than a score of little Whiteface calves have intruded themselves into my otherwise homogeneous herd, a better testimony than my complaints to trespassing from without.
My own Jerseys, and I suspect they are representative in this particular, are touchy milkers. They are highstrung, nervous, and sensitive under handling. A stranger is a cause of great unrest to them. A kick is a spontaneous expression of irritation. Punishment, as anyone may prove, defeats its own ends. A pleasant association with the milking time brings contentment to milked and milker. A little feed, and all is peace. Even then a pair of hobbles does no harm, and saves many a pail of milk. Have you noticed the reaction of a row of stanchioned cows to the overturning of a pail of milk? If you are calm enough, the breathless silence will interest you. Chewing is suspended and every cow awaits your reaction to this crime of the milking shed.
If we profit at all by the light of evolution, we should be quickened in sympathy and in conscience where our highly organized fellow creatures are concerned, and should cease comfortably to close our minds against the cruelties that still exist on the farm, on the range, and in the slaughterhouse.
V
Migratory with my herd, I have become intimately familiar with the aspect of a long stretch of country, in the spring of the year and its decline. In the spring, riding up toward the rim-rock plateaus and their culmination in the Maury Mountains, I have witnessed the soft, vernal velveting of all their slopes with the rich bunch grass. I have breathed the fragrance of the tiny yellow rose of the ‘chemise’ (which is not chemise, but Purshia), and of the peach blossom of the ‘greasewood’ (which is not greasewood, but Peraphyllum). I have marveled at the exquisite beauty of the little waterlilies of the ‘rock rose’ (which is not rock rose, but bitterroot), in honor of which, doubtless, Meriwether Lewis, scaling the backbone of the continent in the spring and receiving the name from the Indians, named the Bitter Root Mountains. Almost certainly the first white man to encounter it, one can imagine the attraction of its delicate beauty, smiling up at him from the barest and barrenest of rocky soil. The most ethereal and immortal of monuments, it bears forevermore the name Lewisia. I have seen the bunch grass splashed with the cardinal of the Indian paintbrush, and rainbow-tinted with the innumerable varieties of low-growing daisies, and Papilionaceæ.
In the fall, riding downward toward the Prineville Valley, I have looked beyond the sear, near landscape to the emerald of alfalfa fields and the gold of ripened grain, beyond which rise purple mountains, overtopped by the glory of the Cascades — rose quartz at dawn, alabaster throughout the day.
Many an incident of these migrations enlivens my memory. I have had calves born on the road and have got them variously transported — by stage, by private auto (sacked up with just the little head appearing), and by runaway bronco teams, which last well-nigh reduced their little brains to what is often called a table delicacy. I have been overtaken on the road by blackest night, under cover of which was enacted a furious bullfight, taking refuge from which I found myself in the centre of the arena. I have overtaken weary drivers of fat and lumbering Whitefaces, and have been privileged to shorten the long road for them by putting my slender, fastwalking Jerseys in the lead. I have had the nerve-racking experience of driving on short stretches of interstate highway, humming with traffic.
I have passed through fenceless towns, when the greens of gardens, lawns, and borders were irresistible to cattle just down from the arid country. Good-natured women have come out with brooms and laughingly helped me through. Bad-natured men have descended from their lairs to the curb and venomously ‘blessed me out.’ One gentleman opined that, if he had left his front door open, I should have driven through the house.
In the course of my latest migration, which may very well be my last, I tarried on the high bank of an irrigation canal to allow the cows to drink. Workmen were busy with the repairing of some structure on the floor of the canal. They were talking together and had not observed our invasion. One of them, however, presently raised his eyes, just as my Ann’s Lad St. Mawes, huge, black, horned, and bulbous-eyed, lumbered over the edge of the bank directly above him. His attitude remained suspended, his jaw dropped, his eyes, too, became bulbous. All the superstition of his ancestors breathed in his single, whispered ejaculation, ‘Hell!’ Then, as reality gradually dawned upon him and physical fear replaced the fear of the spirit, with more force and less awe he exclaimed, ‘What the devil!’ Finally, raising his eyes another fifteen degrees, he spied me, sitting my horse, up on the high bank of the canal. Confusion now superseded the two previous emotions. ‘Oh!’ he gasped. ‘Oh, madam, excuse me! I did n’t see you! I was talkin’ to this felluh, yuh know.’