Calving Fun Facts
It is no secret that calving makes most people weird! I am no exception either… in fact I may be the rule. To help keep my sanity I try to find something fun and time consuming to do while I wait for heifers to calve. A few years ago I wrote a rap called, This is Calving Season, it is a parody to Macklemore’s song Thrift Shop. It took a long time to get the few verses I finished, but I am pretty proud of them! At least I was, until I performed it for my friend and after I finished, the first thing out of his mouth was, “Never sing that in front of a guy you like.” Noted! The fact is, calving takes me to a sleep deprive, cracky, creative, and weird state of mind.
I will spare you a recording of This is Calving Season, but don’t think you are getting off that easy, instead I am going to share a little bit from a book I wrote and illustrated one calving season. It is full of calving fun facts, tips and really bad stick figure artwork. Some of its pages are even stuck together by salsa (see #5… it’ll make sense).
1. Chick jeans and ankle socks are not appropriate night checking apparel.
2. Shower after your night checks are over. A premature shower will result in multiple showers within a three hour period.
3. Using a calf as bait is not cheating. I feel like this one needs a little explanation, because I remember putting it on Facebook and getting told what was up about stockmanship, pressure and release, and making solid pairs… This dude took it the wrong way completely. I was talking about stumbling around the barn yard at dark:30 o’clock while tripping over frozen cow pies trying to get the heifer and calf in a barn out of the snow. I was in no way saying, throw the calves in a trailer and haul them to the next pasture and unload them hoping it will lure the cows in. Okay good, so now that has been clarified.
4. When you feel one leg get warm while packing a calf, don’t just write it off….you got peed on. It will run right down your leg and fill your boot.
5. It is completely acceptable to make breakfast burritos at 2:25 AM.
6. You know calving season has really cut into your dancing time when you get out of the tractor to cut the twine on a bale and you full on bust a move because Footloose came on the radio. (When I say bust a move I mean dance to the whole song)
7. Don’t use up all your swear words before 9:00 AM, chances are, you’ll need some later.
8. Sometimes you just need to tell the cows the plan. I learned this when moving pairs in Nebraska. I got to the point where I would ride into the pasture and make this announcement, “Ladies, this is an exercise where you need to find a partner, and by partner I mean the calf you gave birth to a week ago. You cannot exit this gate until you have the first task mastered. Okay!? GO!”
9. Pretty much everything I learned about the female body I learned from cows.
10. This one is for the ladies- Don’t think that a calving red book can be smuggled in cleavage like a few dollars. Unless you are real chesty it is just going to look like you’ve got a red book hanging out on your sternum. I don’t think I could successfully smuggle a stick of Big Red.
This was just the teaser, if you want to read my book and see my stellar art work you’ll have to wait till it hits the shelves at your local book store.
