Trooper settled into his new home in the barn, quarters he shared with our cat, Molybolt. Someone showing up with a bottle of milk replacer was the highlight of his day!

A couple of days later, our yearling steers and heifers, except for those we kept as replacement heifers, were hauled to a livestock sale in St. Joseph, MO. Bill drove up to watch the sale. Mid-morning, our landlord at one of the rented pastures called and reported one of our cows appeared to be struggling to deliver her calf. The landlord reported the cow would lie down for a while, then get up and move around. This restlessness is normal labor activity as long as it doesn’t extend beyond a couple of hours. When the landlord, a seasoned veteran of a cow/calf operation—she once pulled a calf by herself!—viewed the cow through binoculars, she saw two hooves sticking out of the vaginal opening.

I grabbed my binoculars, jumped in the mini-truck and headed over to check out the cow. She had not gone off by herself to birth the calf, apparently preferring the company of a support group. I drove within about 25 yards, got out and walked a little closer, then focused the binoculars. I saw the hooves sticking out but something didn’t look right. Then I realized the hooves were upside down, meaning the unborn calf was backward.

I raced home and called the vet. The receptionist said he was not in the office. I explained my situation and she said she would call him. She called back in a few minutes and advised he would stop by the office to pick up his calf-pulling gear and meet me at the pasture.

When he arrived, I opened the gate, pointed to where the cow was, closed the gate and followed in the mini-truck. We parked a few yards away, he grabbed his lariat and I grabbed a small bucket of range cubes. This cow, named Sweet Pea for her gentle nature, will usually follow us anywhere for range cubes. We approached her and I rattled the bucket. Sweet Pea let out a distressed bellow and started to walk away. The vet threw the lariat loop toward her. She saw it coming and ducked her head. I cautiously approached and gently rattled the bucket again. She tossed her head and pawed the ground.

The vet tried again to rope her and, once again, she evaded the loop. Then, her friends decided they’d had enough and headed off toward a pond. She followed at a trot, bawling out her pain and anger. We followed and the vet relooped his rope. We caught up with her at the pond and the vet tossed the loop at her. Another miss. The vet is a roper so he knows what he’s doing and is good at it. But he was no match for this confused and distressed mother-to-be.

The support group headed north of the pond and Sweet Pea followed. There was a fence ahead. If we could keep them contained and moving along the fence, turn them at the corner and continue herding along the east fence, they would eventually arrive at the catch pen where Bill loads out cattle when he moves them. The pen was the best place to secure Sweet Pea and attempt to pull her calf.

It was now mid-day and the temperature was about 95 degrees. I’m not particularly heat tolerant, but despite being drenched with sweat, I was more concerned about Sweet Pea’s welfare and how the excessive heat and activity would affect her. We assumed by now the calf was dead but we didn't want to lose the cow which would likely happen if we just left her alone. So far, she didn't appear to be suffering from the heat. We hoped to get her to the catch pen before that became an issue.

The vet sent me to the pen to make sure the gate was open while he continued to herd the cows along the fence. They all turned the corner and headed toward me. Then, the other cows veered off and started back across the pasture. The vet blocked Sweet Pea from following and herded her close to the fence. He tossed the lariat again and, finally, it looped around her head and slid to her neck.

Then, she went ballistic, bucking like a bull trying to throw off a rider! The vet dug in his heels but was no match for her 1,400 pound rage. He struggled frantically to wind his end of the rope around a tree before she could jerk it away from him. Just when I thought Sweet Pea and his rope were gone, he made one circle around the tree, then another. He worked with her bucking and tugging motion to cinch up the slack in the rope so she was immobilized against the tree.

I jogged back across the pasture to get his pickup truck, a big diesel with a standard shift. I drove standard shift cars for many years, but I killed the sucker three times before figuring out this behemoth needed a much larger drink of diesel to move than I was giving it. To further complicate the situation, I was perched precariously on the edge of the seat because I didn't want to mess up his seat position. There was nothing to brace my back against to maintain balance while one foot was releasing the clutch and the other was pressing on the accelerator.

I horsed the truck to the east fence, the vet unloaded his calf pulling equipment and had the calf on the ground in less than 10 minutes. Sweet Pea bellowed through most of the process, a mixture of rage and pain. As we expected, the calf was dead.

The vet tossed his equipment aside and started the process of releasing Sweet Pea. He loosened the rope wound around the tree to give her enough slack to loosen the loop around her neck. She bucked and lurched, pulling the loop even tighter. The vet finally took out his knife and cut his rope close to her neck. She bolted away from the tree and the loop fell off. She trotted to her dead calf and started licking it, not understanding it was dead.

The vet gathered up his equipment and took me back across the pasture to the mini-truck. I thanked him profusely and, when we arrived at my truck, gave him a bottle of water out of a cooler I had earlier thought to grab as I left the house. He seemed unflustered by the whole ordeal. Of course, it’s part of his job. I, on the other hand, was barely able to contain my post traumatic trembling.

We drove our separate vehicles to the gate and I opened it for him to drive through. As I was getting into my truck, my cell phone rang. I assumed it was Bill as I had called his cell three times and left update messages. I gave him the sad news. I must have sounded as distraught as I felt, because he assured me there was no choice but to call the vet. These things just happen. We were lucky to have a conscientious landlord and neighbor who recognized the problem and called us. Otherwise, we might have lost Sweet Pea also. Bill was leaving the sale barn and would be home in about an hour and a half.

I was hot, sweaty and heart-sick. I felt like a hideous monster for putting our gentle Sweet Pea through the horrific ordeal, particularly on such a miserably hot day. I replayed what Bill said: If I had done nothing, she wouldn’t have been able to deliver the calf and likely would have suffered a painful, slow death. Before I drove through the gate I looked back at Sweet Pea, still mothering her dead calf. The emotions of the past couple of hours—helplessness, loss, guilt—smothered me. I cried.

Were we filming a documentary about cow poop for the RFD Channel? Nope, just setting the scene for a picture to use on my book’s author bio page and for our 2012 Christmas card. My vision was for Bill, our golden retriever, Cricket, and I to stand in front of a barbed wire fence with our cattle grouped behind the fence. That vision also included props—cow pies on the ground around us. We selected the spot we wanted to use for the picture, then set off in the mini-truck in search of photogenic mounds of manure.

We had already identified some good prospects on our walk the previous evening. The tricky part would be to move the cow pies to our photo shoot area. For that chore, we brought along a shovel and sheets of tin for transport of the pies.

We found our first prospective pie and unloaded the tools. Bill carefully worked the shovel under the cow pie, gently lifted it onto the piece of tin and slowly pulled out the shovel blade. The pie slid smoothly, but not too cleanly, off the blade. We carried the tin with the pie back to the truck, loaded it in the bed and went in search of the next cow pie.

Oooh! This one was huge and perfectly shaped—symmetrical and nicely domed. Well done, whoever laid this one down! I just hoped it would stay together during transport. As the cow pie slid off the shovel blade onto the tin, it started to crack. Bill slowly finessed the blade out and the pie remained intact.

The next cow pie was not as sturdy as it appeared. As Bill pushed the shovel underneath it, the structure collapsed. He turned the shovel over, dumped out the inferior pie, wiped the mess off the blade with grass and we drove on to the next one.

Once we had six cow pie props, we headed back to our photo site. We carefully unloaded the sheets of tin, set them on the ground and Bill used the shovel to lift the pies and put them in position. The scene was set!

For the picture, I wore blue jeans, blue chambray shirt, gumboots and held a red hay hook. Bill was dressed similarly, but without the gumboots and hay hook. Cricket wore her usual big smile. The cows and calves stood quietly behind us, munching on the pile of range cubes Bill dumped on the ground. Our photographer, thoroughly amused by the whole scene, focused and clicked a dozen times. The Hilbert’s, Cricket, the cows and their calves, and the photogenic cow pies were preserved for all time!

In my Calving Update post on Sept. 15th, I mentioned a calving saga possibly worthy of mini-series production on the RFD channel. This is the story of Trooper, our Holstein adoptee. 

The chaotic week kicked off on a Sunday in September with a cow in one of the rented pastures birthing a stillborn calf. Bill checked #20 (grandmother to Gussie from my post of our first blessed event of the season) about mid-day and found her alone in a far corner of the pasture—her chosen labor and delivery site. Her previous calving experiences were normal so he wasn't concerned. We checked again in the evening. She’d delivered her calf, but it was dead, the apparent result of some complication causing an extended delivery time, stressing the calf. The poor cow didn't realize he baby was dead and was licking and trying to nudge it to its feet. Watching a cow "mother" a dead calf always rips my heart out!

On the way home, I asked Bill if he would try to find a newborn Holstein bull calf at a dairy to attempt an adoption. The closest dairies he knew of in our area were no longer operational but he had heard about one near Ottawa, about an hour away. He called the dairyman and, yes, he could sell Bill a two-day old bull. The next morning, Bill headed to Ottawa and brought home the prospective adoptee.

If you haven’t read my book and don’t have any cow/calf operation experience, this may get a little gross for you.

Bill stopped briefly at home on his way to the pasture to get his deer skinning knife and some nylon baling twine. At the pasture, he skinned the hide off the dead calf, poked two holes at each end of the hide, draped the hide over the Holstein’s back, tied it on with the nylon twine, then wiped afterbirth on the hide. The mostly white-with-a-few-black-spots Holstein calf now sported a slimy black overcoat.

The theory behind this process is the cow will smell the scent of her dead calf on the adoptee and accept it as hers. Bill pushed the calf over to #20. She sniffed it and walked away. He pushed it toward her again and she repeated the rejection. But the calf trotted after her, so Bill left them together to have some quiet time to bond.

He went back to the pasture a couple of hours later to see how the adoption was progressing. It wasn't. Another cow, #21, and her calf wandered to the back to check on the situation and the adoptee was hanging out with them.

In the evening, we both went back to the pasture to look for the adoptee. If #20 wouldn't take it, we needed to get it home and give it milk replacer or it would dehydrate and become weak. The calf had returned to the area but the cow was still rejecting it. While Bill was cutting the hide off and loading the calf, I observed #20 walk away from us. What appeared to be afterbirth still hung from her vaginal opening. Earlier, Bill had attempted to grab and pull it out, but it broke off. I thought it odd she hadn't expelled yet. Then I noticed her girth and the way she walked. She was still almost as large as before she birthed the stillborn calf, and her walk was more of a waddle. I brought all this to Bill’s attention and he peered closely at her. I speculated, “Do you suppose she was carrying twins and one of them is still in there?”

“That explains why she hasn't cleaned yet. What’s hanging out isn't afterbirth, it’s pre-birth and she’s trying to have another calf,” was Bill’s analysis. “No wonder she wouldn't take the Holstein! Mother Nature told her she still had another calf to deliver.”

By then, it was almost dark, meaning by the time we went home and Bill hooked up the stock trailer to the truck and returned to get the cow, it would be really dark. Anyway, Bill would have to herd the cow across the pasture to a catch pen to load her into the trailer. After all she’d been through in the last 24 hours, chances of this all happening were slimmer than none. Bill said there was nothing we could do; he would come back the next morning to see whether just the calf was dead or if we had also lost the cow. So we took our little rejected adoptee and went home to put groceries in his rumen.

Side note: Bill promoted me to Certified Bovine Midwife Assistant II for my observation about #20 actually carrying twins.

Bill’s first thought was to take the Holstein to a livestock sale and attempt to recoup his investment. Then he decided to keep it for about a week, just in case another unfortunate situation occurred and we needed an adoptee. We put the calf in the barn and wearily dragged ourselves to the house. I commented that with all the Holstein had been through since morning, he sure was a trooper. Bill agreed and we named him “Trooper.”

The next morning, Bill went back to the pasture to check on the birth of the second twin, hoping he wouldn't have to load #20 and bring her home to pull a presumably dead calf. #20 delivered the second twin and it was dead, kind of a mixed relief. Since we now have no income-producing product from this cow, she will be sold later this fall.

"Under the Cow Pie" is a collection of the back stories of my book—little-known entertaining tidbits that became adventures or funny experiences during the writing and publishing process. But first, let's explore what is really under a cow pie.

One evening on our walk, I noticed dried up cow pies that were flipped over. I asked Bill who or what was responsible for exposing the underbelly of a cow pie. He responded that wild turkeys flipped them over to hunt grubs and other forms of mini wildlife found underneath. Grubs are the larva, or infant, stage of the Green June Beetle ("June Bugs"). 

So, my namesake insects grub around in cow pies in their infancy. Hnh!

By the time we see flipped cow pies on our walks, the grubs are long gone. They've either provided a delightful meal for the turkeys or burrowed into the cow pie or the ground. They can move about as fast as a naughty human two-year-old when it doesn't want to be disciplined by a pursuing parent!

So I strapped on my camera and went on a little cow pie flipping excursion as part of my evening walk. These pictures aren't as gross as you might imagine because the underbelly of a dried up cow pie looks like dirt.

The picture below shows two grubs on the underside of a dried cow pie. See? Not so gross. Well, at least the flip side of the cow pie isn't gross!

Roly-polies sometimes live in and under cow pies. Smaller than grubs, these little tidbits are probably snacks or appetizers.

Earthworms are also found under cow pies. Happy is the wild turkey that can score one of these full meal deals!

Finally, what turkey can resist a delectable centipede for dessert!

Now you know about life under a dried cow pie and how fleeting it can be once a hungry wild turkey flips it over!

As promised, for the fans of Tina Turner's version of the song, "Proud Mary," here is a picture of our Proud Mary and her calf, Tina.

This photo was taken about three weeks ago and Proud Mary looks almost skinny. She is filling out nicely and Tina is growing fast!