Riding Miss Daisy

While growing up, my mom always taught school. She put in over twenty years of screaming kids. Guess that’s why she didn’t mind milking cows that much. It would be quite a relief to work with something that didn’t talk back.
Cows are creatures of habit. We normally milked a herd of ninety to one hundred. Our dairy barn had eight stalls, which meant you milked four at a time. Four would have milkers on while four were turned out and another four let in. They always came in the barn in the same order. We had a sliding gate coming in to the parlor. Once opened, the next four would walk in, no herding required.
After the evening milking, they would stay in small pasture just out side the dairy barn that had pond in it. This was so you didn’t have to go far to get them at five the next morning for the milking then.
After the morning milking, they would be turned loose to go to one of three selected pastures at the end of a quarter mile long lane. A lane is like a hallway in your house only the walls are a fence and the bedrooms are pastures. Cows don’t just automatically start producing milk. They have to have a calf first. Then the calf is separated from the cow. The cow then gets milked and the calf is fed milk replacer. The bovine equivalent of baby formula. Our calves were kept just outside the barn in a big wooden fenced corral. We didn’t have the giant baby bottles to feed them with. We had gallon galvanized buckets with a one way nipple built in to the side. When the calves would eat, it sounded like a nest of three hundred pound crickets. They had a hook to hang them from a board on the corral fence, but this seldom worked. If the calf didn’t think it was being fed fast enough, it would give the bucket a hard nudge, knocking it off the fence. The first bucket to be hung on the fence would bring three hungry calves to it. To get these ornery little tykes to their bucket to eat, you’d put your hand down by their mouth to let them suck on your fingers. You could lead them anywhere this way. Some of these guys would about rip your hand off. They could suck start a Harley. We usually fed five to ten at a time. The calves fate was gender specific. The males would be sold and the females would grow up on the farm and two years later become part of the milk force.
As kids, we would pick out an animal, whether horse, chicken or cow, and say it was ours. It really wasn’t, but we didn’t know that and neither did the animal.
I picked out one of these calves and called it Daisy. I fed it with the bucket every day until weaning time. Daisy ended up staying in the corral several months after the others in her class moved on. Daisy was more like a pet dog than a calf. After a year, Daisy went out to pasture with the rest of the herd and I kind of forgot about my pet cow.
Every afternoon, I’d walk with my mom a quarter mile down the lane to the pasture to bring up the cows for the evening milking. I was probably old enough to go by myself but I think my mom was worried I’d get sidetracked poking frogs or turtles with a stick and forget to bring the cows up. Like I said before, cows are creatures of habit, and they have to be milked on time or milk production drops off.
You always hoped the cows would be gathered around the old lone hedge tree in the first part of the pasture. If not there, it meant another quarter mile walk. You didn’t have to get behind the cows to bring them up, they just needed to see you. Once seen by the cows they would start toward the barn. Always in the same order. All our cows had names. I can’t remember them, but I’m sure my mom still can. One that I do remember was called Rheumatism. This old cow had a leg joint that gave it problems and was always the last in line. We never hurried the cows. I was told that if they ran it would churn the milk in their udders and turn it into butter and you couldn’t get it out. My parents had a sense of humor.
Once the cows started toward the barn, you just waited for old rheumatism cow to go past you, then follow in behind.
One day while we’re waiting for old Rheumatism to go by, there is a different cow bringing up the rear. It’s the cow I’d bottle fed two years before. Now a member of the milk force. I wondered if Daisy would remember me. I went up and petted her big ole cow head. Yip, Daisy was just as gentle as could be. After a few days of walking with Daisy at the end of the line, a country brain storm swept over me. I’d lead Daisy over by the old hedge tree and use a low branch, climb on her back, and save a half mile walk back to the barn. After the first few times of me riding and mom walking, it became my job to bring the cows up by myself.