 | Copies of this journal are no longer available for sale, but our other two journals, Society & Animals and the Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science, are available and subscriptions are quite affordable. They can be ordered online via our secure order page. |
Eating is very high on their priority list, but it's certainly not the only thing they do!
When left to their own devices, they organize their days into blocks of time roughly three hours long. They wake up at dawn, lying awake for the hour or so that it takes the light to change completely. Then they stand up, stretch, and have breakfast. On gray days, they sleep in for an extra hour. After eating for two or three hours, they go for a big drink of water.
By mid-morning they are ready for some action. If one of the cows is in heat, activity centers around her. Otherwise, they try to find something else of interest. If I'm working around them, they offer to help. Putting in fenceposts, for instance, fascinates them. While I'm digging, they sniff each lump of earth as it comes out of the hole. When the hole is done, they think they need to inspect it, getting down on their knees and poking their heads as far into the hole as they can.
Any excuse to run at this time of morning is welcomed. If a noisy truck goes by on the road, the cows consider it a challenge to race. On a windy day, they will chase anything that might blow into their field. A piece of newspaper, a plastic bag . . . it's all fair game. Once they chased three crows who were pecking around on the ground. The crows flew just a short distance, then tried to eat again. The cows ran after them. This repeated itself several times, until the crows flew completely away.A small herd of deer passes through the back of the pasture about this time. As long as they are grazing their way through, the cows pretty much ignore them. But if something startles the deer and they begin to run, the whole herd of cows galumphs behind them till they reach the fence.
One day an almost-exhausted helium balloon drifted into the field. The cows stampeded towards it, then surrounded it, making lots of BRRHHH alarm noises. After watching it for quite some time, the bravest cow stepped forward from the circle, reached her long tongue out as far as it would go, and licked the balloon. Apparently the string got hooked in her teeth, and when she stepped back, the balloon followed her. Instant pandemonium! She raced around the field as fast as she could possibly go, followed closely by the balloon and her herdmates. When she got out of breath and stopped to pant, the string let loose and the balloon was on its own again. What did the cows do? They surrounded it a second time, the same cow licked it, and the string got stuck in her mouth again! After a second race around the field, the cows had enough and went for their nap.
Nap is what the cows do with their next block of time. They lie down, one by one, a little while before noon. The lying down is not a simple process. It is one of the ways they use to reinforce their social order. This is especially evident in the winter, when they sleep close together in their shelter. The order in which they lie down, and the spot they lie in, is directly related to their status in the herd.
Bill, the bull, is the boss. (He is an ex-bull actually, but neither he nor any of the others acknowledge this fact.) When he enters the shelter, he slowly snuffles around in the straw, until he finds the very best spot, then plops himself down in it. This best spot changes every few days, but while Bill claims it, nobody else is allowed to lie there.
Once Bill gets settled, it's Beatrice's turn. Beatrice is second in command due to her horns. She joined the herd when she was three years old, and her horns were already full grown. The other cows, Bill included, are hornless. On the day that she arrived, Beatrice introduced herself by going around to each of the cows and jabbing them until they fled. When she got to Bill, he stood his ground. Then he put his head under her belly and flipped her right over! The matter was settled in those few seconds. Bill remained the boss, and she has been duly respectful ever since.
After Beatrice selects her spot and lies down in it, the other cows are free to divvy up the remaining space. Harvey generally picks a place close to Bill, while the mothers almost always sleep close to their calves. This remains so even though the calves are now grown up. Bocita, who was adopted into the herd rather than born into it, always waits till last. This settling down routine is a very relaxed affair, with everyone standing around and chewing their cud as they await their turn.
Once everyone is down, they like to stay there till mid-afternoon, ruminating and drifting in and out of sleep. It's a very peaceful time, during which the cows let me trim their hooves without objections, Beatrice lets me re-tape her horns, and Bill lets little kids use him as a sliding board. It was during nap time that Bill let the vet give him the shot of tranquilizer that put him to sleep for the duration of his neutering. When he woke up, our zero population growth policy was in effect . . . with no trauma to him!
After their nap, everybody gradually gets up, and begins to eat again. Depending on the season, they either munch hay, or graze into the sunset. Dusk is a very active time, when they'll dance around, playing with each other, circling and butting heads. As in the morning, they will take any excuse to run and kick their heels up. This is also when they go exploring. They'll "discover" trees that blew over in the last storm, taking turns rubbing their faces vigorously against the newly exposed roots, butting the trunks, trying to make them move. They'll find foot-wide deer trails going through the brush and briars, and go charging down them, single file, until they are enlarged to cow width.
This is also the time when they test fences, looking for holes that could be made big enough to get through. If it happens to be bright out from the full moon, the activity is extended well into the night.
When they wind down from this it's bedtime. In the winter months, they go back to their shelter, and more or less repeat the nap routine. In the summertime, they like to sleep in the woods, preferably by cedar trees. They change locations every few days, moving from grove to grove. At the farm where they were born they had seven favorite places that they took turns sleeping at, usually a week at each spot.
They don't sleep all through the night, but in two phases. They get up in the middle of the night and get a snack of grass or hay, wander around a bit, socializing, and then go back to bed until dawn.
This is what they do as a herd. Within that general routine, they have all kinds of individual things that they like to do.
Bocita is the most curious. Perhaps she became this way because she was always left out of things until the end, due to the fact that she was low man on the totem pole. When the cows eat, she always gets the last available place in the manger; when they sleep, the last spot in the straw. She soon figured out that instead of just waiting her turn, she could have fun in that time, checking the gates for instance, to see if a person might have left one unlatched, that she could push through to go visit the horses. She loves horses. When there are horses in the barn (and she can get to them) she stands by their doors and visits. She licks them through the wire, and puts herself where they can nibble on her forehead. She also loves to explore the barn -- the parts of it where cows are not allowed! She will enter the empty stalls one by one, thoroughly sniffing every single corner. She licks all the brushes off their shelves. Empty buckets are a delight to her. She picks them up with her nose, and strews them all over. Stacks of straw or hay are the best -- she works hard to see how many bales she can tumble. If they come down just right, they make a sort of bale stairway, which she then climbs. I've watched her go four bales high before I could catch her.
Michelle enjoys human visitors. When she sees strangers by the gate, she often comes running over. If it happens to have been raining recently, and it's muddy, the last few feet of her approach are a dramatic slide as she puts her brakes on. I've been asked, "Why does she do that?" The only answer I know is, "I think she came to say Hi!"
Once we had a visitor who was meeting the cows for the first time. It happened to be a cold, windy day, and the cows were all standing in their shelter, even though it wasn't anywhere near nap time. While this woman scratched Michelle's back for her, I told cow stories, one of which was how I liked to sleep out in the straw with the cows, snuggled up with one or another of them. The woman asked, "Do they really let you curl right up with them?" Just then, Michelle laid down, and looked up at our visitor, as if to say, "Come see for yourself." When the woman settled down beside her, Michelle curled her head into the visitors lap, and peacefully began to chew her cud. They stayed like that for about a half hour.
Crookie chases dogs. She gives warning by making a strange noise with her tongue sticking way out of her mouth. If they ignore this and come into the pasture anyway, she charges, full speed. She also chases most cats, though there is one cat who has chosen the cows' shelter to live in, and Crookie leaves her alone.
Burry found a place in the fence that only she could get through. She's just as big as the other cows, so it must be determination that allowed her to squeeze through. Every morning she would squirm between the wires into the adjoining field, then graze contentedly as the others watched her. They tried to follow her, but nobody else was able to make it. She'd usually stay for an hour, then wiggle her way back to join the rest of the herd. She did this every single day from the time she discovered the place until the day we moved.
Apple lives to eat. She got her name because she was tamed with an apple. Little did I realize at the time that she would eat almost anything. One day I was peeling an orange, and she came nibbing around. I held out the piece of peel for her to smell, thinking she would see it wasn't anything she was interested in. She gobbled it up and begged for more. She ended up eating the whole orange. I regularly bring home bruised apples from the local orchard, for cow treats. Once they had soft peaches, and I brought them too, just to see what the cows would do. Everyone ignored them, except Apple, who devoured the entire half bushel. Same story with tomatoes and beans. After everyone is done eating, Apple carefully checks the mangers for any leftovers, and cleans them up. When I put out straw for them to lie in, she eats some of that too. Needless to say, she is the fattest cow.
Oblainka didn't grow up with the other cows. She is an old, blind cow whose first owner was a rodeo cowboy that practiced bulldogging on her when she was a calf. Struggling against him was how she lost one eye, and all trust in humans. The other eye clouded over as a result of pinkeye. The herd that she belonged to was pastured in a field very close to my cows. Their owner was going through some hard times, and didn't look in on them very often. When winter came, and the grass died, he didn't bring them any hay. They could see me feeding my animals, and would moo like crazy when the hay truck went by. I couldn't watch them go hungry in the snow, so I started to feed them too. I noticed that one cow with white eyes was being pushed out by the others. She must not have been completely blind, or maybe she could tell with her hearing, but when I set a flake of hay down far away from where the other cows were eating, she came right to it and chowed down. By the third day she didn't even try to fight her way into the main pile of hay, she just waited and followed me. That's how she and I became friends.
After about a month, her owner finally started feeding his cows, but when I went by, she still came running over. I'd give her a little grain, which she ate out of my hand. We did this through the winter. One day the man came with his livestock trailer. "That old blind cow isn't bred," he said. "Guess I'll beef her." I asked him what she was worth. "$.60 a pound" he told me. I gave him the money, and she joined our family.
Cows are pregnant for nine months, just like humans. Eight months and three weeks later, she gave birth to Charlie!
Cows have an extremely strong maternal instinct. They really love their calves, a lot. I knew that Oblainka must have had at least nine or ten calves already, and that they had all been stolen from her, so I was happy for her that she was able to keep this last one.
She was determined to keep him, too, unaware that he wasn't in danger. For the next six months, if anyone except me came into the pasture she would position herself between Charlie and the intruder, head down, ready to charge, pawing the ground and throwing clods of dirt high into the air with her hooves.
Somehow she communicated to him that he was not to trust any humans, and he didn't let me touch him until he was three months old, even though she continued to eat out of my hand every day. Eventually she let him share the grain she was taking from me, and soon after that he decided that being scratched all over felt wonderful. Oblainka still worried though, and would jump up the moment I entered the shelter, nudging Charlie to get up too, and be ready to run, if necessary.
As Charlie got older, she became less alarmed, and would let me move about the other cows without getting up, provided that I didn't come close to her and her son. The breakthrough came when Charlie was just over a year old. I came into the shelter late one night, to check on the cows before I went to bed. Oblainka and Charlie were lying down in a back corner. I could hear that there was something wrong with her breathing. It was very loud and wheezy. I moved closer, slowly, so as not to disturb her. When I got right next to her and she didn't get up, I was sure that there was something seriously wrong. Pneumonia, I thought. Kneeling by her side, I tried to listen for the tell tale gurgle in her wheezing. Then she woke up, and the terrible wheezing stopped. Oblainka had been snoring! When she sniffed me, and stayed lying down, I knew that at long last she trusted.
Every cow has a story . . . a number of stories. Not just mine, but each one of the billions and billions served. Every pot of beef stew was once a cow-person. Please think about it before you decide what to have for dinner.
During a stint at a farm when caring for cows to be sent for slaughter, Helga got very attached to six calves who were orphaned after an electrical storm killed their mothers. One calf, whom Helga named Harvey Wallbanger, was particularly special to her. Harvey Wallbanger was a sickly calf who was unable to eat, see, or feed himself and was at a loss when his mother was killed in the electrical storm. Helga worked with him for months and was finally successful in bringing Harvey Wallbanger back to health and independence. Helga realized that these six orphans were destined to the slaughterhouse. She set about saving her money and was able to buy all six.
She currently cares for her own herd of companion cattle, supporting the sanctuary with her art work: Cowches, which are life-sized soft sculpture cow pillows made to order in one of three sizes (newborn, yearling, and full grown) and which are patterned after her own companion cattle; and 'Possum Huts, intricate architectural scale models. Helga's book on 'Possum Huts was published in 1984 by Amaya Publishing Company.
Along with her herd, Helga shares her rural southern New Jersey home with five cats, a dog, and twenty chickens.
Helga is the originator of the COWCH. Here is how she designed it: The idea of a stuffed animal in the shape and size of a cow was born as I kept the sick, helpless little Harvey company in his stall. I leaned against him as he lay drooling in the straw, "licking" him with my hand the way that I saw the other calves licking each other with their tongues.
It stayed just an idea for almost two years. Meanwhile, Harvey recovered completely and joined the herd as a fully accepted member, doing with them everything that they did.
During these two years, I gradually came to the realization that I wasn't going to let anyone murder any of the calves . . . now grown to cows. Quickly after that realization came the obvious knowledge that if I was to take responsibility for their lives, I had better figure out a way to feed them, because my time at this farm was almost up, and I had no farm of my own. If this stuffed cow idea was to be any good, I needed to turn it from concept into reality.
The problem was, I had no idea how. My experience with sewing was minimal -- eighth grade home ec class: beyond that, only buttons and hems.
Common sense told me that without material to experiment with, I couldn't even try, so after feeding the animals and doing the chores, I went to town. At a fabric store, I found black fake fur. I bought ten yards of it, needles and thread, and the store's entire stock of pillow stuffing.
After finishing the evening feeding, I went into the barn's office/tack room, and stared at the bags of supplies I had bought, wondering, "What now?" Just then, I heard a loud, wailing "MOO". It was Harvey, standing at the gate, staring at the barn door.
When I went over to him, I could see that the other cows were way down at the far end of their pasture where it turned into woods, almost out of sight. Why he wasn't with them was a mystery . . . ever since his recovery over a year ago, Harvey had stayed closely with the other cows, not leaving the company of his herd at all.
Yet here he was -- mooing at the door. So I let him in. He wasn't in the least interested in exploring, or eating. He just wanted to stand next to me. It occurred to me that in some inexplicable way, he was offering to help. I draped a piece of material over his back, which didn't bother him at all. With a piece of chalk, I began to mark where his legs were. Harvey stood calmly, chewing his cud. Suddenly, how to make a cow became obvious to me. Just copy Harvey . . . put the shoulder where his shoulder is, put the knee where his knee is, and so on. I started cutting the smaller pieces, and taping them onto him with duct tape. Harvey stood quietly for several hours, until he was completely covered with a fake fur cow suit. At ten o'clock he lay down, and I worked out the more intricate details of his face. At exactly midnight, he got back up, walked over to the barn door, and mooed. I took all the material off him and let him out. We walked across the pasture and into the woods, where he joined the other cows. I went back to the barn and basted the pieces together. By sunrise, the first Cowch had been born.
For more information on Cowches and Possum Huts, please contact Helga at Box 227, Shiloh, NJ 08353, or call her at (609) 455-6637.
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| Copies of this journal are no longer available for sale, but our other two journals, Society & Animals and the Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science, are available and subscriptions are quite affordable. They can be ordered online via our secure order page. |