Having been employed by a friend's family to help with chores at his family's dairy since I was old enough to do such things, I was asked if I wanted to join their Dairy 4-H group as well.
I was excited to do that, because that meant I got to "adopt" one of the calves each spring and prepare it for the cattle shows over the summer. I had seen my next oldest brother show calves and heard about the other things the group did, I was glad to be part of it.
The time came to select the calves we would show. The dairy's registered name was Bridgerland Holsteins, or something like that. If I remember correctly the calf I would show was "Bridgerland Rocky something or other" ....
I had been around cows and horses since I was young. It was no surprise to me that animals don't always like to be interact with people, especially if a halter or rope is involved. It was a surprise, however, at how similar putting a halter on a calf can be, compared to say, water skiing. That is, if you can stay on your feet for any period of time after said halter is attached to the calf.
On this much anticipated day, we herded the group of calves into a corner of the corral and went to work attaching halters to the ones selected for showing.
It wasn't too terribly difficult to walk up slowly and get the halter on, but once it was on, leading the animal anywhere was another matter. A calf that doesn't want to be led will generally pull back, or bolt, or otherwise express it's anxiety.
This is where the similarity to water skiing comes in. If you were agile enough to stay on your feet you could enjoy quite a ride, manure rooster tails included. What usually happened is the calf would soon head off for the fence and use it to try brush you off the end of the rope. It was a rather successful ploy.
After a while the calves would tire of this game, and we could start to acclimate them to human contact. Each day that we worked with the calves it was pretty much the same story, with some improvement in the tame-ness that was displayed by the animals.
Before long we would be able to walk in and put the halter on our calves without a rodeo. Once that was accomplished we were able to leave the corral to a nearby field or dirt patch to teach advanced leading skills such as stopping in the perfect stance, which is a required element in the show ring.
Of course there would be the occasional time when one of the calves would sense freedom and make a break for it, leaving the fellow at the end of the rope little choice but to hold on until the road rash became too severe or some other obstacle suddenly prevented him from maintaining a grip on the rope. After the aching stopped, retrieval of the escapee became an entirely new drama.
It was finally time to take our prodigies to the first show of the season, Black and White Days in Richmond. This particular year, my friend and I would go up to the show grounds earlier than the rest of the group and spend the night in the stalls with the first load of animals.
This was the real fun of being in 4-H! Skipping school for a couple of days, and getting to stay out with the calves, what a treat! My friend and I were deposited at the show barn with a few calves and some equipment, and we settled in. A bit later another 4-H group from another part of the valley came in with a few animals and left a couple of kids with their animals for the night.
I shudder at the thought of it all, I mean, I couldn't of been more than 13 years old. I don't know how our parents let us do this all by ourselves. But we made the most of it. Before long we had hatched some plan to play a joke on the kids from the other 4-H group, and we implemented that plan. I don't think it was anything malicious, just some 4-H humor of some sort. The problem was, the other kids were a few years older than us ....
Well, we were severely chased around the cow stalls until my friend - who they believed to be the instigator of the prank - was captured and hauled kicking and screaming to the indoor arena where he was deposited into a very large barrel of wood chips, and left there. I was lucky enough to be spared the same fate, but I had my share of wood chips covering me by the time I had rescued my friend from the barrel.
After laughing over the fun we had just had we decided to go to the bathroom of the indoor arena and brush off as many wood ships as we could. While doing that we heard some motorcycles pull into the arena and a moment later into the bathroom came two of the scariest fellows I had seen up to that point of my life.
They must have known that there was restroom access in the arena, I guess, and had no other intention than to use the facilities and leave. But for a couple of 12 year olds basically alone in the wilds of Richmond, Utah, we were quite taken back and we quickly went back to where our calves were tied. Okay, our exit from the bathroom/arena was probably way more dramatic than that ....
Somehow we were able to get some rest that night, even with one eye open watching for further prank-revenge attempts - or unfamiliar visitors.
1 comments:
Speaking of Black and White Days...we went to the parade today. It was fun. My husband grew up on a farm and he could totally relate to your post. I avoid cows like the plague ever since he drug me out on the farm and made me witness the branding of the calves. That was too much for me!
Post a Comment