The Secret Life of Cows

We had always been proud of our herd of cows. We milked them, spoke to them by name, stroked them and generally enjoyed their individuality. But I was fully thirteen before I realised that they liked each other.

In 1968 we were dairy farming with a herd of pedigree Ayrshires. That summer we rented three fields on a steep, unspoiled hill four miles away and hired a lorry to take the dry cows and heifers to their summer grazing. They stayed there for three months, eating lush grass, drinking ice-cold spring water and altogether enjoying themselves. The left-at-home milkers seemed as happy as usual too. When the expiry date on the short-term tenancy on the hill drew near, we booked the same lorry and on the appointed day we brought the holidaymakers home again.

I believe all four of us noticed that for several days after the two halves of the herd had been reunited, Sunbeam and Moonbeam, mother and daughter, stood shoulder to shoulder in the yard and in the field talking over the last three months, not exhibiting any emotion but just very glad to see each other again.

They had not pined when they were parted. As a milking cow, Sunbeam had not reared her daughter and we did not even know that they recognised each other, but that demonstration of mutual affection opened our eyes to a whole new world, the world of bovine friendships.

A little bit about ingenuity

When Wizzie, also an Ayrshire, had her second calf (a chunky, pretty, short-legged strawberry roan heifer called Meg), she told her daughter she was the best and the calf believed her. Once winter set in and mud became an everyday problem, Meg made it clear that she hated getting her mahogany-coloured feet dirty. Somehow she managed to negotiate the steep flight of a dozen narrow, Cotswoldstone steps up to the granary and early one frosty-cold morning we watched her come out onto the top step, yawn and look around to see if it was worth getting up - i.e. coming down. She had spent the night in great comfort on the wooden granary floor, away from mud and draughts and bullying. We had left the granary door open because we knew that no bovine could possibly climb the steps. Subsequently she taught two friends the same trick and we used to put hay and water upstairs for them.

Alice and Jim

We stopped milking cows commercially in 1974, from then on allowing the cows to rear their own calves, but we still milked one or two cows for our own domestic consumption.

Alice became one of our house cows in 1990 and during the time we spent walking her in every day and milking her we discovered not just how intelligent, utterly kind and gentle she was but also what a sense of fun she possessed.

Alice was big and black with a wide, intelligent forehead and large, dark eyes, and she was quick to learn the milking routine. We milked only once a day, our aim being self-sufficiency rather than quantity. Every day, in the early evening, one of us would walk to fetch the milkers. They were nearly always in their favourite L-shaped field. This field commands one of the best views on the farm, is flatter than any other field and seems to go on for ever, but we are not sure whether the view has anything to do with the preference. From the farmyard you have to walk uphill through the Walnut Tree Field, home to five 120-year-old trees, and when you reach the top, the L-shaped field stretches out before you. More often than not both the house cows would be as far away as they could possibly be. But they knew why we had come and would walk back to the farm quite happily.

Sometimes Alice would liven things up a bit and from ambling by my side she would suddenly change speed, kick up her heels and disappear out of sight. I would continue to amble with the other house cow and then several hundred yards further on would spot Alice trying to play hide and seek. She would do her best to hide behind a walnut tree but of course she was too big and as soon as she realised I had seen her she would gallop off again and hide behind the next one, and so on until we reached the cow pen.

After her year as a house cow, Alice had a three-month rest out in the fields with her friends. As it drew near the time for her to calve again, we walked her down to the barn so that we could be close at hand in case she needed help. Alice realised we had come to take her home and seemed happy to comply. However, after fifty yards or so at walking pace she suddenly accelerated and dashed off to the other side of the field. She flew over to her friend Toria and told her where she was going and why, then trotted back to where she had left us. We finished our journey home uneventfully, and the next morning Abou was born, without our assistance. Toria had Gloria a week later and all four were soon reunited with the herd.

The following year Alice had Jim. He was jet black with a white tail and a very high IQ. When Jim was a year old, his twin siblings, Alice II and Arthur, were born. By this time Jim had weaned himself physically and emotionally from his mother and had taken himself off into another part of the farm with his friends. He kept half an eye on his mother and when Alice brought the twins out into the sunshine for the first time and left them for a while to go and graze, Jim jumped the fence and half trotted, half marched over to introduce himself to them. They were much too small to be of any real interest to him so he turned and trotted back. Arthur, barely twelve hours old, decided to follow. His legs were still a bit unsteady but his determination not to be left behind grew with each step and we watched as he bumbled and stumbled and hurried after his big brother. Jim reached the fence, popped over and was gone. Arthur stared in unbelieving disappointment, examined the fence from every angle then slowly made his way back to his sister.

A few months later, in gloomy winter, Jim worked out a way to make each day far more interesting than it would otherwise have been. Fat Hat II was living in the same barn as Jim and, as usual, was allowed to go out whenever she asked, always choosing to head for the silage face and eat ad lib for an hour or so. Jim could not understand why he was not offered this privilege too. After watching carefully for a few days he worked out a solution that amused and amazed us all.

I was standing in the kitchen with a friend, probably drinking tea and certainly looking out of the window, when we saw Jim walk out of the yard into the field. The gate had been left open, but as it was so cold none of the others had ventured out. He walked single-mindedly away from his friends and food towards the Cherry Tree Field. It suddenly occurred to me what he was going to do, and I gave my friend a running commentary as Jim continued walking for about a hundred yards, turned 180 degrees, tiptoed over the cattle grid, walked along the road in front of the house and joined Fat Hat II at the silage clamp. Needless to say, from that day he too was allowed to go by the shorter route.

Mothers and daughters

Relationships between mothers and calves are often complicated and fascinating. Some mothers are mild and bossed about by their calves; some are overbearing; others too casual. But perhaps two of the more interesting stories concerned Dolly and Dolly II and Stephanie and Olivia.

Stephanie and her daughter Olivia enjoyed a normal, close relationship and went everywhere together until Olivia had her first calf. When the calf was due to be born, Stephanie advised and comforted Olivia and helped her choose a good spot to calve, close to clear, running water. Stephanie settled herself down at a handy but not intrusive fifty-yard distance. Olivia calved without difficulty and was immediately besotted by her beautiful cream-coloured bull calf, whom we named Orlando. She licked him dry, suckled him and quite simply doted on him. Stephanie came along a couple of hours later to be introduced and for the next few days grazed nearby hoping to be a useful and integral part of the threesome. As young calves spend a great deal of time sleeping in the first few days, grandmothers are often useful for babysitting. Sometimes cows who are not related are called on to babysit. It is quite common for one cow to look after several calves at once, but the job allocation is done democratically and cows take it in turns.

Sadly, Olivia did not want Stephanie's services. She did not wish to stir from Orlando's side. She ate as close to him as possible and whenever he moved she followed. She even refused her mother's offer of grooming. She ignored her shamefully. On the fourth day Stephanie's patience broke. Hurt and amazed, she turned tail, jumped the nearest fence and went off into another field to graze with her erstwhile friends.

To the best of my knowledge they never spoke to each other again.

The case of Dolly and her daughter was altogether different. Dolly was a wise, fairly old cow. She was dark mahogany, slim, neat and very, very clever. She had had many calves and had looked after each one superbly. She gave them four or five gallons of milk a day for several months, gradually reducing the amount over a nine- to twelve-month period so that when the time came for them to be weaned they were deriving their basic diet from grass and hardly missed the milk. She groomed every inch every day. She...