This three-part installment follows Donna as she and the surrounding community try to solve what has killed her calf. Donna and her wife farmed in Folles, France, with their two children.
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Thursday
I fed the poultry at first light and checked on Blossom. He looked better, and I felt reassured that killing Kinky Boots had been the right thing to do. Then I took the Traxter down to the lake to check on the calves. As I walked up the hill to reach the wooded area where the herd sleeps, I saw Sweetie picking leaves from a bramble bush. I began counting cows, counting calves. I saw all the girls–they were okay, but I wasn’t worried about them anyway. They were big and hardy and horned.
But the boys? One was lying down. Right where I had found Scaredy. Two others stood near him, staring. Who is it? Don’t be dead. Don’t be dead. I rushed over. His body was intact. If he’s dead this was definitely all my fault, I thought. I knelt next to him. It was Uno, my favorite calf. His head was tucked back toward his chest. His left eye was open. I knelt next to him. Uno, don’t be dead! I urged silently as I cupped his chin with my hand and lifted his face toward mine.
I saw his ribs move. He was breathing. He was alive.
Uno…….. I breathed too. A long breath. I held his head, stroked his face. He was alive, but slow. The other boys were waiting for him to get up but he didn’t seem interested in moving. I stood up, rubbed the hair on his side, his hips, his neck.
“Come on, get up Uno,” I encouraged.
Eventually he decided to rise. I petted him and told him was a good boy. Then I looked around and found the other two calves standing nearby, on the other side of a bush. All of the boys were together and accounted for, and Uno was standing. Phew.
Then Uno lay down again.
That’s not normal. My heart sank again. Maybe it is too cold for them. Maybe they’re too small to be out here without a mother taking care of them.
I drove back to the house immediately and asked Wendy to come help me put Uno in the Traxter so we could bring him up to the concrete building. Darwin was home because of another COVID-related strike at her school. So she put on her boots and jacket and joined Wendy and me in the Traxter as we drove down to the lake again to retrieve Uno.
But when we arrived, the girls all ran to the fenceline. Ran. It was weird. Desperate. I couldn’t open the gate to drive the Traxter into the field because they were in the way. So I led the girls into their paddock and closed the gate. Then I walked into the woods to check on Uno… and he was up, browsing bramble leaves on his way out of the woods.
I was so relieved. Up and eating. It made me wonder if maybe he was fine and had just had a slow start to the morning. It was cold after all. Perhaps he just needed some time to wake up and get going.
While we were checking on Uno, Wendy remembered we needed milk. That meant we had to be at Patrick’s around 9am during milking. So I drove up to the house and Wendy grabbed the milk bottles while I closed gates. Then we all headed up to Patrick’s in the Traxter, with Darwin wearing her hat and gloves, and (as we learned later) two pairs of socks.
After Patrick filled our milk bottles, I asked if he could sell a bale of hay to us. If Scaredy had died from the cold, maybe it was because he’d been hungry. Maybe the girls were acting desperate because the paddock I’d moved them to the day before didn’t have good quality forage. Maybe I was unwittingly starving our cows. Everyone seems to think it’s crazy not to feed hay; maybe I’d taken it too far and our herd just wasn’t getting enough nourishment. So I explained to Patrick that I thought maybe our cows were hungry and would it be possible for him to drop one of those big bales of hay in our field?
He looked at me the way I look at people when I don’t understand what they just said. I tried again. And again, he had no idea what I wanted. I looked to Wendy, and Patrick tried to make me feel better by saying it’s hard to communicate with face masks on.
“We had a calf die yesterday,” Wendy explained. “We don’t know if it’s maybe because the cows are hungry. Can we buy a bale of hay?”
Patrick understood Wendy no problem and said of course he could deliver a bale later in the day. A small bale of hay from the local feed store cost five euros. A half-ton round bale from Patrick? Fifteen.
I tried to communicate again, explaining that we had found the calf without a throat and OFB wasn’t sure whether he had been attacked by a predator or had simply died on his own then been snacked on by a badger.
Patrick asked some follow-up questions and I showed him the photo I had taken. “No, no, no” he said. “A badger attacks from behind. There was something. My cows were scared two nights ago. I even called my wife and told her about it. There was something.” He seemed to think it may have been a wolf.
I instantly felt better. Maybe Scaredy’s death wasn’t my fault after all. Maybe I wasn’t a crap cow keeper.
When we got back to the house, I poured a cup of coffee and checked my email. Still no response from EDE or Atemax. So I finished my drink, read the morning news, then drove up to the agri-tunnel to load the Traxter with a bale of hay we had purchased in preparation for a vet visit two years ago for our first-ever cows. I set the towable wheelbarrow near the piggery door and tipped it forward so the front rested on the ground. Then I dragged Scaredy from the piggery for the last time, dragged his body into the wheelbarrow, pushed his body in, tucked his head, arranged his legs… and finally got him stable enough to hitch the wheelbarrow to the Traxter and drive him to the top of the driveway.
Then I parked, unhitched the wheelbarrow, and tipped it out by the side of the road. I arranged him one last time, then covered him with the old bale of hay. That’s it, it’s over now. Sorry Scaredy.
I came back inside and made an online request to Atemax to come collect his body. No collection date or time was given, but the site confirmed my request and reminded me to have his bovine passport ready at the time of pickup.
Patrick had been so interested in the potential attack on our calf that I realized I should probably inform other local farmers. So I sent a text to Christophe, since he raised Limousin calves. We used to laugh about the first time I ever talked to him when I saw him putting step-in posts on the edge of my field near the agri-tunnel and stopped to ask him what he was doing. That was our property after all–why was some guy putting fence posts on it?
Darwin was in the Traxter and I asked her to translate. She was three. It didn’t work. So Christophe tried to communicate with me and I tried to communicate with him, asking him to speak into my phone so Google Translate would help me understand what he was saying. It was, as Christophe says, catastrophique. But he was patient and eventually I realized he was cordoning off our field so he could move his cows down the road. After that, we struck up a friendship.
I also texted Patrice, the farmer whose cows occupied the land in front of our house when we first moved in–the farmer whose hay rested in our agri-tunnel for more than a year while he built a new storage facility. Also the farmer who came over the same day I texted him when I was having a problem with the electric fence. The same farmer who drew a diagram for me to explain how the whole system worked so I could diagnose our low-voltage issue. He raised Limousin cows and I thought he might like to know, in case he needed to protect his own calves.
Patrick pulled up in his tractor around noon, with a bale of hay stuck on its forks. I quickly emptied the bucket of grass seed I’d been spreading on the ground where I’d recently removed brambles to improve the cows’ grazing area.
“Bonjour!” I called to him. “I’ll show you where it goes.”
I walked back up the driveway, back toward Patrick’s house. “Ici,” I told him, pointing to a corner of a field near the road. Patrick set down the bale of hay, pulled a knife from his pocket, and cut the twine.
“There will be a lot of waste,” he said, referring to the fact that the bale was simply placed on the grass and not in a feeder. Yes, there will, I thought.
As I walked along the road back toward our house, I saw a familiar car coming my way. Christophe! I waved and he stopped. His customary smile had been replaced by a somber look.
“Ça va?” I asked him.
“Non, ç’est horrible,” he answered. Christophe went on to explain that he had received my text but he had recently learned that the barn he was renting had burned down over the weekend, along with 29 of his cows.
“It happened on Sunday,” he said. “Did you see it?”
I had seen it. I had driven toward the plume of smoke to investigate and found two fire trucks blocking the road. So I turned around and assumed the Fire Department was overseeing a controlled burn of brambles or something similar.
“Ç’est horrible,” Christophe repeated.
“I’m so sorry,” I told him. Here I was, consumed by the death of one animal, when he had just lost 29.
Despite his own loss, Christophe asked for details about mine. I explained how I had found Scaredy and what the OFB had said. “They always say that,” Christophe said, referring to the idea that Scaredy had already died before his throat went missing. “They don’t want to pay.”
If livestock is killed by a wolf, the government compensates the farmer. I didn’t know to what extent and I expected I wouldn’t find out.
“I hope it was a wolf,” I told Christophe. “If he died of natural causes I’ll be ashamed because that means I missed something.” I wanted to tell him I would feel bad, but I didn’t know how to say that, so I opted for “j’ai honte,” which I’d learned from watching French shows on Netflix.
“It happens to all of us,” Christophe consoled.
I told him I had just bought hay from Patrick that morning in case the cows were hungry. “You don’t have to buy hay,” he told me. “I have a lot. I can give you some. Just let me know.”
I wanted to express how nice it was of him to offer, particularly in light of the losses he was in the midst of managing, but I didn’t know how. So instead I told him that was nice, but not necessary.
“Do they have minerals?” he asked.
I told him yes as he inspected our herd from his car. Most of the cows were gathered around the hay bale. The heifers were sticking their horns in it and flipping it on top of their heads, like they’d just found the best toy. But Uno was hanging back.
“That one,” Christophe said, pointing to Uno. “That one doesn’t seem right. They’re usually all together. He might be sick.” Then he motioned toward the malherbe in our field and suggested that maybe there was insufficient forage to stimulate his rumen.
I had read about that possibility in a book called “Kick the Hay Habit.” The author mentioned that forage low in protein can prevent the rumen from functioning properly, which means the cattle won’t get the nutrients they require. His suggestion was to include some alfalfa pellets in the diet as needed to ensure the rumen would do its job. There was certainly a lot of old, brown, low-nutrient forage in our paddocks. But there was also new green growth, which is full of protein. It was shorter and hard to see from a vehicle.
I looked at Uno. Yes, maybe he was sick. Maybe I should isolate him and call the vet. But maybe he was waiting for everyone else to move because the bale was crowded. The hay had just arrived and he was a patient boy.
I thanked Christophe and walked to the house. I needed to get back because I’d left Darwin alone. Shortly after Patrick pulled up with the hay, Wendy had to rush out to meet Emerson for lunch. COVID was spreading at their school thanks to the Omicron variant, so we were bringing lunch to the kids instead of having them eat with the other kids at the cantine. Darwin was six and could take care of herself pretty well, but I still didn’t like her to be alone for too long.
I checked on Uno about half an hour later and by then he was helping himself to the bale. Relief washed over me. He’s okay. Everyone’s okay. I started supplementing their diet with alfalfa pellets anyway though, just in case.
I had a routine of cleaning the upstairs bathroom and bedrooms every Wednesday because Darwin has a fairly-severe dust mite allergy. But I didn’t get around to it because of everything that had happened with Scaredy and our trip to Limoges. So after checking on Uno, I focused on cleaning and was vacuuming the floor when Patrice called.
“Can I come over to talk about the calf?” he asked.
“Now?” I asked.
“Yes, I’m on my way,” he answered. Turns out Patrice was the lead point of contact for a local chapter of an organization that tracks predator attacks and plots the data to identify trends. I told him that OFB wasn’t sure if Scaredy had died and then had his throat eaten, or if he had been attacked by a predator.
He asked if he could view Scaredy’s body and I explained that he was currently under straw at the top of the driveway. Undeterred, Patrice pulled back the straw and examined Scaredy’s remains. He couldn’t see much, as the old hay stuck to Scaredy’s wound and obstructed the details.
I sent my photos to Patrice’s phone.
“No, this wasn’t a predator,” he told me. “I think he died first. See his eye? It’s sunken in. That indicates he was sick… But he died when? That could be because he’s been dead for a while.” He examined Scaredy’s nose and pulled back his lips to expose his teeth.
“The OFB said there weren’t any drag marks or signs of a struggle,” I told him, “but the ground was frozen.” Patrice nodded. “Also Patrick said he thinks he must not have been dead first because there was blood, and that wouldn’t be the case if he had died first.”
“A calf that size would have about two liters of blood,” Patrice responded. “Was there blood when you found him?”
“Just on his throat” I told him. Patrice looked at the photo again.
“No,” he said. “It was cold and the blood would have coagulated and we would see it. He was dead first.”
My heart sank again. Maybe he was right. Where was the puddle of blood?
I asked Patrice if he thought it was too cold for the calves to be outside. I explained that the big cows acted like a separate herd and didn’t take care of the small ones.
“No,” he said. “They’re fine in the cold. And it’s not like they’re out in the open–they have shelter. The only way the cold will kill them is if they’re already sick.”
This made me feel better and worse at the same time. I had not been neglectful expecting our motherless calves to live outdoors, and barring predator interference the boys should do fine in the winter. But if Scaredy had died of natural causes, then I had missed an illness, and that was on me.
I asked Patrice if he would mind taking a look at my cows to see if he thought they looked okay.
He agreed and we walked together through the fields he used to manage, toward the new herd on his old land. I wondered if he cringed at the brambles, the dried thistles, the brown clumps of rye grass, the tall stalks of wild carrot. He left his cows on this land for months, as one big paddock, until he had deemed the forage insufficient. He had left it all rather uniform, if less resilient to climate extremes.
As we approached the herd, the girls investigated his presence, sniffing his gloved hands. He walked calmly among them, scanning each in turn, looking for signs of health, of illness. “Did you give the calves dewormer?”
I told him I hadn’t–that I rotate pastures to avoid parasites.
“That’s not enough,” he said. “The little ones need at least one treatment at the start.”
Patrice paid special attention to the boys and singled out Uno and Goat Boy. He mentioned how Goat Boy’s ears flopped forward, pointing out that’s not normal for a cow.
“He’s always been like that,” I explained. His small, thin stature and ear position were why we called him Goat Boy.
Patrice continued discussing the two calves, saying they seemed depressed, slow. That in combination with the poop stuck to their tails led him to believe they were sick.
He then broadened his focus. “They all look thin to me,” he said, referring to both the boys and girls. “But then again I raise Limousins, so it’s probably best to ask Patrick.” In a community of beef farmers, Patrick ran the dairy. And I had the in-between cows that led both parties to question my judgment.
As I walked back to the house with Patrice, I knew I wasn’t going to talk to Patrick about it. Instead, I was probably going to call the vet. I discussed it with Wendy and together, we decided on a way forward.
I sent an email to the office of André, our vétérinaire sanitaire, asking if he could come take a look at two calves the next day. I explained we’d had a calf die the day before and were uncertain if it had been the result of an illness or predator attack. Within half an hour, we had an appointment scheduled for “the end of the day” on Friday. The secretary estimated André would arrive around 5pm, so we now knew our deadline for preparing the concrete building, isolating Goat Boy and Uno from the herd, and ensuring they were sufficiently contained so André could examine and treat them as needed.
We decided to leave the boys outside for one more night. The weather was good, with a low of 2°C expected. I was extraordinarily relieved because I had complete confidence in André. Wendy and I were both scared of Brown Cow and he handled her like a boss. He calmly, slowly herded her in close quarters along with three other cows while talking on his cell phone. He was too experienced and well-informed to be scared.
But for the last two days, my own fear swirled in its closed compartment. I was scared of my own potential incompetence and uncertain how to proceed. I’d heard so many opinions and didn’t know what to believe. My gut instinct had been rendered mute.
I knew it would cost us money, and potentially blow our investment in the calves. Profit margins were slim and we hadn’t even established a market yet. But at the same time, those boys were our responsibility. I didn’t know if I was a good farmer, but I knew I was a good person. So if my animals were suffering, I needed to fix it. There was no other viable option.
So I went to bed, hoping the boys would survive the night.
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Learn more about Donna on our Contributors’ Page.
(Photo by the author)
