Native by Patrick Laurie

Author:Patrick Laurie [Laurie, Patrick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Birlinn

CALVES

June

Our first calves were late, or maybe I did the sums wrong. It takes nine months to make a calf, but the date for their arrival came and went again. I drummed my fingers on the table and began to watch summer sliding past in quiet desperation. It was tempting to fill the delay with worry; I conjured up disasters from a wealth of veterinary advice. I wallowed in horror stories of caesarian sections, then stashed money for the inevitable vet bills and tried not to think about the calves which killed themselves and their mothers in birth.

So the first arrival was almost an anticlimax. I walked round the cattle after a cool, dry morning and found one of the heifers absent. The grass was dry and sparse, and the mud crumbled under my bare feet. I wandered quietly through banks of whin and brambles and found that she had been watching me all along. A calf lay at her feet, curled up like a cat and fast asleep. The birse came up on my head with a prickle.

There had been no sign of labour or impending delivery. The calf might have fallen from the sky, but it was hale and hearty, a little heifer overwhelmed by its first few hours of life. Here was a fresh reminder that these animals scarcely needed me at all, and I realised that all my fears of disaster and complexity were based on commercial cattle – big animals bred for size and bulk. In the pursuit of heavy calves, we have pushed cows to the limits of their capacity, so it’s hardly surprising that they now depend upon human midwives. Native breeds can handle the job without much difficulty, and it is unusual to do more than simply let it happen. I stepped quietly away and held the picture of the young heifer in my head. Clear skies, dust and the clattering buzz of craneflies.

We returned the next day with ear tags. Calves have to be tagged soon after their birth, and the chore is a kind of vandalism. Clean, unblemished animals have their ears defaced by neon yellow plastic. But this calf entered the great bureaucratic system of record-keeping with little more than a quiet shudder. Hardwired to hide from predators, she lay flat on the ground with her head stretched out like a fawn. Her mother eyed me warily, and I kept a stick close at hand. New mothers find it easy to flatten and smash the human taggers, and I like my ribs intact.

A second calf has come this evening, not long before sunset. The heifer lies in the shade of the May blossom, doggo in the dusk. We walk towards them and pass through chambers of warm, scented air like rooms in a long corridor. The sun has poured heat into the soil, and now it radiates into our feet. Long rags of afterbirth trail from her tail, and she resents our visit. Mothers know that secrecy pays dividends, and they pull away from the herd in the final hours before birth.

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