Anton Coaker farms 1,500 acres of tenanted peat on Dartmoor, lying roughly between 900ft and 1300ft and enjoying just under 100inches of rain. He is also an active grazier on the adjoining common, the Forest of Dartmoor, and writes a monthly column for the South West edition of British Farmer and Grower magazine.
With one clear TB test behind us, we’re trying work out when is the best moment for the next one.
The soonest we can go is early Jan, when handling hundreds of cattle through our open air, hilltop race can be an ordeal. Alternatively, with tolerable threats of expulsion from the officers of the state, we could delay until March, when the weather might be kinder.
This would be handy, as a clear test would leave us free to trade cattle at the spring store sales. Mind, if we’re harbouring a problem, any delay would then have been a mistake. And an early (clear) test would allow the hire bulls out for their New Year jollies.
There’s also the fact that 300 round bales of hay await cows at winter lodgings, at which there is no crush. We need to have cattle there very early in the New Year to avoid having to cart this hay 20 miles. (For tis easier to cart 2-3 lorry loads of cows than it is many loads of hay, and that at least puts the dung back where it should be. Oh the conundrums.
Home on the range, the mild November has evaporated, leaving a raw blasted start to December.
This was brought to sharply my attention on Sunday morning when Daisy was missing. Daisy is a very sweet natured Angus cross cow, reared (and much loved) tied to a stake in a garden, before coming to live here with all her hairy friends. Last winter, Daisy was indoors with an autumn born Angus calf at foot, and loved the South Devon bull she was lodging with very much.
Although she carries a lot of gut ordinarily, she was the size of a whale this year. Still, having 5-6 calves under her belt, and the South Devon bull being very easy calving, I was quietly confident. I had made sure Joe and I had worked her back through various outlying groups, so she was close to home as she bagged up.
Then, come Sunday morning, she was conspicuous in her absence. After hunting round the two fields she should have been, I found her two fields further out, having somehow got under/over the fence, to get herself tucked almost down at the bottom of the valley. Unfortunately, it would’ve been about 3am when I needed to have been there, as she was by now cast, upside down (all four legs in the air), with a big calf stuck toes and nose out –and those wedged tight against the dry stone wall to boot.
As I approached, she waved her legs at me a bit, to show me she was still alive…‘Hello daddy, wondered when you were going to show up.’
First off, I checked the state of the calf, but it was too late. Its tongue was swollen, and cold, and its eyes had no blink reflex showing. Still, Daisy looked quite chipper, considering her position.
I guessed the calf would come away easily enough if I could but get her turned away from the blessed wall a bit. That meant I needn’t rush off for the calving aid - by the time I found her, it was a long walk back up to the Landrover, never mind going back for gear.
And bringing the handler down this far to pull her round is by no means a foregone conclusion once the ground is wet – and it was sodden. And quite apart from all that, being on my tod feeding Sundays, I don’t have too many minutes spare in the shortening daylight to dick around. Right, man power.
Dragging her round to get enough access to baby was a struggle, but we got there. Then, my wet cold hands couldn’t grab his toes tightly enough to get him moving. At least Daisy was still game to push a bit, meaning at least we weren’t too late for her. Luckily, a piece of quadrant bale cord was looped over the wall nearby, from when Joe had fastened a hurdle in a gap to detain an errant bull. This might cut into your hands when serving as a calving rope, but not half as much as little bale cord, or god forbid, doubled up round bale cord, as has happened in emergencies before.
Between Daisy and I, we got the calf out, with a few cotyledons coming away off coloured indicating that we were indeed too late to bother with the calf. Next job was to get Daisy sat the right way up. More pulling and shoving, using the cord looped round Daisy’s leg. With hands going white as the cord felt like it was going to cut them off, we got her the right way up, facing downhill, and looking like she might fight another day.
I went on my way, having many mouths to feed, and many miles to cover doing it. Taking her a drink and some sweeties later, she was scrawling about, lurching downhill as she tried to get up. Nothing to be done really. Either she’d get up, or she wouldn’t.
Rolling her into the CAT bucket on my own would be quite a feat, but getting it back up the slope would’ve been miraculous – and then I’d have advanced from having a downer cow sat in the lee of a wall, well down out of the weather, to having a cow stuck upside down in the bucker of a bogged telehandler.
Come Monday morning, after a rough wet night, there was good news and bad. Despite the skin of ice across everything, suggesting I might be going to find a much loved but very dead cow, she was up and tottering about. The bad news was that I’d wrenched a shoulder which had just about stopped hurting since I last did it damage. So now, while Joe is trying to set a calf on Daisy, I’ve got a goblin hammering a rusty nail into my right shoulder.
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* Anton has published a compilation of his musings, in paperback. ‘All the usual bullocks’ is drawn from a diary kept for the NFU’s British Farmer and Grower magazine, this blog, and The Western Morning News, along with some previously unpublished work.
It’s priced £9.99 from various South West outlets, or can be bought direct from the author- with some postage. Email wood@anton-coaker.co.uk.
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