Man vs Beast

Man versus Beast (14 June 2019)

As you can imagine, we definitely didn’t like it when cows swatted us with their manure-soaked tails. A majority of the cows were not malevolent about it and would only occasionally swat, but there were some cows that I am certain knew what they were doing. For one thing, it was almost always the same cows, day after day that did the swatting.  And they got good at it, pretending to have no interest in swatting, then striking at our most vulnerable moments, like at 4:15 and we were still half asleep. The repeat offenders were also often the cows with the dirtiest tails, something I am sure was also on purpose. I even remember watching one of the consistent offenders poop while holding her tail down. It seems to be in a cow’s best self-interest to lift up her tail to poop, and they almost always do, except maybe when they are readying their weapon of choice…

We learned quickly that getting angry and hitting the cow would not help. It was more likely to hurt us than punish the cow, and it surely did not “teach the cow a lesson”. At some point, my dad came up with a pretty ingenious idea of taking two heavy-duty bungee cords, twisting them together, and stretching them on the stalls. This contraption is shown in the picture with a somewhat dirty tail inserted between the twisted bungee cords.

The green arrows point to the cow’s tail inserted between the twisted bungees. I have also circled a set of bungees in the foreground that is not being used.

As I remember, this actually worked quite well for most cows, and was preferable to what some of us boys had resorted to doing. Before this, if a certain cow kept swatting us, we would often take the long hairs at the end of the tail and tie them securely around the metal bar. If we tied our knot well, the cow would try freeing her tail throughout the milking, but would be unsuccessful. The danger with this approach was that we would occasionally forget to untie the tail before releasing the cows, sometimes resulting in a cow leaving behind a portion of her tail. They didn’t seem to notice, but as time passed, the repeat offender tails became less useful. They had less hair to catch manure with, but also less hair to use to tie their tail to the stall.

On the other hand, the bungee cords would easily release the tail as the cows walked forward, resulting in fewer stubby tails on the Greenwood dairy. There was still a small number of cows that would manage to wiggle their tails free from the bungees during the course of milking. These cows were pretty easy to identify over time with their stubby tails.

Another thing some cows would do is kick us when we were milking them. This was actually more dangerous that the tail swatting, and we got good both at moving our arms quickly out of the way, and identifying those cows which would typically kick. It is quite common for a cow to kick her calf when the calf is drinking her milk. I think it stands to reason that when the cow’s udder is sensitive, or the calf gets too aggressive and starts hurting the cow, or a combination of both, the cow will kick and the calf will back away. Apparently the milking apparatus is more gentle than a calf, because most cows did not often kick during the milking process, unless for some reason their udders were particularly sensitive, for example if they had mastitis.  But as with the tail-swatting cows, there were some cows who would always kick.

So, how does man overcome the kicking beast? We had a curved bar, with hooks at each end that we called a “kick-stop”.  We could change the length to fit the cow and hook one end over the back of the cow hook the other end under the cow’s skin right in front of her rear leg. This would make it more difficult for the cow to kick and was pretty effective, except for a small subset of cows that were apparently more determined and would manage to get occasional kicks in despite the kick-stop. We got to know which cows needed the kick-stops and would typically just put it on before starting the milking.

If nothing else, I learned through these experiences that getting angry and losing my temper does not typically result in the desired solution. I think it also taught me to look for solutions to problems within the constraints of the current situation. I really noticed this as a blessing even many years later when I went to Purdue University to study Hypersonics and work towards a PhD in Aeronautical Engineering. I would often be confronted by certain difficulties as I worked in the lab of the Boeing/AFOSR MACH-6 Quiet Tunnel, preparing for experimental testing. In those cases where equations and theories no longer became very useful, the ability to think through a problem and figure out how to accomplish a desired objective with the resources on hand became a blessing. I think you’ll also find that later on in your lives you’ll be able to look back and see how certain experiences early in life helped you prepare for more difficult experiences later on.