there isn't enough money now

The Killing Fields

 the calf graveyards

    

  Sometimes we have jobs we all don’t want to do, and at times even though it goes against your better nature you have to bite your lip and go on. I came from an old school mentality and that even though you were going to college and should have a mind of your own; you were still dumber than a box of rocks according to them, and never free of your parents will to interfere in your life.  , still you needed a job. Some jobs and some days are never worth the money and this is one job and one day I could never do again, now that I am older and could care less.

      This story is a little more gruesome than some I have wrote and at times you may wince, when I say that what I am going to tell you, when it comes to the good, the bad and the ugly, I fully intend doing that as I go along, not for shock factor to invite you in to read what it is I am talking about, but instead more for therapy at times, as maybe if I tell the story enough times I can finally get it out of my head. At times it was particularly gruesome but at the same time, a common place method of dealing with this same situation on any farm.

     When they bred some of these cows they would buy whatever breed was available they could, as cheap as they could, being interested in heifers, and cows with beef breeding and some very limited dairy breeds that were better able to handle the task before them. When bred to the purebred Simmental bull they would sometimes encounter calving troubles. In fact, the reason I was on a midnight shift was to birth cows more than anything. Seems like they could breed them alright but getting them to calve on their own was a problem with some smaller breeds such as the Angus, and Hereford cattle requiring more of an assist with those breeds than ever. The Simmental cattle were huge in comparison like a Volkswagen Beetle trying to give birth to a Sherman tank. Sometimes you would have calves born dead inside their mothers, or having so much difficulty getting them to calve, that you lost both in the process. Also calves subjected to heavy pulling used in the process of getting them to calve sometimes suffered front leg problems, crippling them, or had a look to them as if they were actually squeezed through a small hole and were not so bright , kinda listless etc., off their feed slow gainers. We lost a lot of calves, and I would say 40 in one quarter of the year 1975, while I was there working which would make it around a 15-20 percent loss of life.

    Each calf when it hit the ground was worth 2000 dollars as a purebred calf in 1975, listed as a 1/2 purebred and one could get papers to that effect. The idea was to keep a cow a couple of years and sell her off and hopefully raise her daughter to replace her. Eventually working your herd up to what they called a totally purebred herd with 15/ 16 or better blood line to sell calves from. Heifers calves were worth more than bull calves till you reached purebred status, then the bulls could easily outpace the heifers in value with some full grown bulls such as the one we had in the bull pen which could easily make you millions of dollars. But it costs a lot of money to keep at least four hands available to take care of cattle like we were doing, and under the harsh conditions the cattle would be treated. Peta- People for the Ethical Control of Animals, would have had a field day with this place.

      On one occasion we had a cow having trouble birthing as the calf was still born when it presented itself for delivery or when the cow tried to abort it. With no help from the calf and its dead lifeless body stuck in the birth canal our manager Shorty, as he was called, yet who was nearly my stature in size and had lesser value in humanity, decided to not call the vet and help this cow. Insisting instead on his own, trying to pull the calf by whatever means, and it was an ugly scene to say the least with the mothers head tied to a post by means of a halter and pulling the calf out with a bobcat loader and chains. It came but left the cow paralyzed from her hips down. And of course the calf was dead.

        Calls were made and I was to dispose of the cow by taking her to the butcher shop, still alive and paralyzed, that the owner knew almost 25 miles away, one way. We were to have her ground into hamburger so that the owner Boyd Heminger could feed his 2 bull mastiffs with her. That wouldn’t be so much of a problem but she wasn’t dead and they didn’t put racks on the truck. Instead they loaded her up into the bucket of the Bob Cat loader since she couldn’t get on her feet, and then shoved her in the back of the pickup and threw a tarp over her, and told me where to go to deliver her. They should have never let me leave that place like that, as I was alright with her back there unknown to other motorists at stoplights beside me, till my worst fears were realized.  At one light on State Route 62 in Canton, where I come down to the intersection before Mahoning road and it was a busy intersection that was when at first I heard a bellow from the cow, and the truck lurched one direction then the next, and  I was sitting at the light and blocked in by traffic every way. Even on this cold snowy day I looked round at the back of the truck and here was this cow starting to get up on her front feet and it seemed as if every motorist at the light could hear her and see her too, then as she started to raise her front end up getting her feet under her and pushed  up the tarp over her head in a ghoulish fashion and all I could think about, was her suddenly jumping over the side of the truck and dragging her rear end down the road in front of everyone.

      Now there is no amount of money anyone could pay me to experience this situation again except in my mind as I am doing now. It was horrific and all I had was a hammer and a red light. I looked at the hammer and contemplated jumping out of the truck and smashing her skull in to keep her in the truck bed, and could only imagine in a split second what all the motorists’ reaction to this would be. Or I could hope for the street light and pop the clutch and jam the brakes to make sure she fell back down. I reached for the hammer as I saw her rise again just as the light turned green , everyone I could see around my truck was watching with mouths dropped open as at once it was my turn to go and I popped the clutch , and a little bark of the tires as it squealed against the pavement and then I hit my brakes not enough so the guy behind me would smack me or the cow would go flying in the back window but instead,  enough to make the cow fall back down into the bed of the truck and disappear again under the cover of the tarp. I was finally able to breathe again and all kinds of crappy scenarios played in my mind till I was at the butchers and so relieved to have that cow out of the back of that pickup. She never did get to her feet and they had to drag her in with a tractor. It was sad to say the least. No animal expects abuse like that in our domesticity of them, but at times that seems as if that is all we have to offer. My hands were tied, I needed a job and a passing grade and part of that had to deal with my learning to keep my mouth shut and opinions to myself. It was real hard at times and you can see by writing this, I never really did get over it.  

     Unfortunately with a lot of farmers the term cull cow isn’t something always thrown away, and it could be for a variety of reasons and whether or not the cow had been medicated or not, that the farmers, rather than see a loss would rather eat their mistakes, or feed it to the dogs at least. I have buried cows and calves, but with cows it takes a big hole and calves not so big but it still takes a good size hole. For cows, mostly we used to call a fertilizer or a rendererer who would come and pick the carcass up and use it for a variety of things.

      I still had to deal with the calf when I arrived back at the farm and after my last ordeal; I wasn’t too crazy about burying the calf but at same time had heard about the calf graveyard we kept. And it wasn’t pretty, but instead kind of eerie as I saw, after I had scooped up the calf and started heading for the area in question to finally see for myself what the other workers took for granted in such a hap hazard way, sometimes laughing and joking about the place in some sort of nervous frustration or an effort to cleanse one’s mind of the assault on your senses you experience when heading there to dispose of a calf. As I was heading down there though, my first encounter with the area as it looked in the quick drawing I did last night, it was legs poking from the snow and standing in the air from half buried calves, all around. For it seemed there were bones and pieces of flesh with leathery fur hanging on it. Then there was this fox that noticed me right off and advanced himself towards my running machine in an aggressive manner, and I would say he was frothing at the mouth and rabid if I ever saw an animal do that, but then I never let him get very close. Still it could have been the fox was just enjoying his dinner plate of calf legs and whatever and didn’t intend to share with me.

    Furthermore I could just dump the calf I had in the bucket, as I’m sure the fox felt i should, and forget the burying part as he didn’t really like having gravel stuck in his teeth. I tried to avoid the fox and head off in a different direction to a different area but the fox still chased me. Finally I had no choice, not knowing if he had rabies or what, that I should just dump the calf and head back to the barn and grab a rifle and see if I couldn’t shoot him as we didn’t want him biting the cattle as under these crowded conditions we could lose the whole herd in days, as rabies would go right through the herd.

     When I had returned the fox was gone. I again felt relieved because at times even after dropping the dead calf; the fox would position himself so that he appeared to want to just jump up in the seat with me. I would take the bucket and shoo him away making sure I never raised it too much to expose myself and finally I outran him with the machine, leaving him behind. Where he went or if he was rabid I am not sure, but doubt it, as rabies still isn’t a big deal in our area, but his aggressive nature caught me off guard and made me question why I quit hunting. At times I can see where a gun may come in handy, and this was one. You never know. By all rights they should have put a bullet in that cow’s head also since she was going to the butcher shop anyhow, to relieve her pain and suffering and to help put her out of her misery. Unfortunately state law insists that butchers only receive live animals.

     Now the killing fields as I called them was the calf crave yard and I named them undoubtedly that, after I saw pictures, and heard of the tragedies of the killing fields in Pnom Penh in Cambodia. Later as I read of the horrors of mass killings and then the bodies buried in fields I drew  upon my experience of burying calves and recalled how horrible and ghastly a sight that was to behold. Best intentions were made to bury the calves but due the volume, and the weather making it almost impossible to bury anything in the winter, loose soil settling, and holes were not as deep as they should be. The burial area was at a premium, as I guess there could have been easily a 1000 calves buried there. Legs were sticking out of the ground with in some cases white bleached bones weathered by time loosely being held together or swinging in the wind. Grim reminders of efforts failed and of little lives lost of once cute little calves in some cases were now suddenly decomposing in various stages right before your eyes. A fresh coat of snow would contrast these corpses creating eerie black shadows against a white landscape. Their little leathery legs rose up as if to scratch the sky. There are some things even the beauty of fresh snow cannot hide and this was one to me.

       Thankfully due to calf losses and other factors he eventually went out of business and I returned to college and realized that there was a bigger picture than our little farm. It was an experience working there and something I really didn’t want to see at times. I guess the main lesson I learned there, and have had to face at other times in my life is that I would never have been involved in something like that had it not been for my college and needing the credits. That some of the managements position towards cattle lives and their lack of concern for their welfare is just being ignorant, I knew not the person I was supposed to be instead I was the person who knew who they, management, didn’t want me to be, and that was much unlike them, as they were, uncaring unfeeling, and constantly limited, as to whether there is profit in what you do. But this is the new farming, unlike the days of old.