I understood the need to put down the occasional cow that got badly injured or irredeemably sick. Since I arrived, Brassard had twice shot cows who had broken their leg or pelvis, carried their bodies in the Deere’s bucket loader, and dumped them into the pickup bed. I myself had sorrowfully shepherded a number of limping, head-hanging cows, declared unsalvageable by the vet, to the truck that would take them to be butchered.
After two years on the farm, I thought I had left behind a lot of my stupidity, but when I took part in the regular culling, I discovered I still had plenty in reserve. This culling was based on hard pragmatism—determining which cows had lived out their profitable milking lives and then selling them off the farm. It occurred regularly, but I had never taken part in selecting culls; Brassard himself oversaw it.
Before coming to the farm, I unconsciously assumed that cows just gave milk automatically, the way hens lay eggs. But that’s not true: They have to get pregnant and give birth to lactate. Once impregnated, they carry their calf for about nine months—amazingly, still giving milk to the tube for seven of those months. A cow’s milk production is highest just after giving birth, then dwindles until, after about ten months, she’s allowed to “dry off”—not be milked—for two months. Calculating these cycles for a hundred cows; maintaining another sixty heifers at various stages of maturity until ready to breed; staggering the timing of impregnation, milk giving, drying off, and calving; and projecting cash flow from it all—I couldn’t imagine how Brassard or any other dairy farmer did it.
Calves arrived throughout the year. We took them away from their mothers three days after their birth, moved them to a different shed, then fed them by hand on a mix of milk and other nutrients until they matured enough to eat grain, hay, or grass. At first, the calves were bawling, lonely, hungry little animals, and their vulnerability awakened the maternal instincts of Robin and Lynn and me. But they calmed quickly and started eating grain and forage within a few weeks, and their frisking told us they enjoyed the company of their fellows in this cattle kindergarten.
But Brassard didn’t need the calves; they were largely a by-product of his need to keep the herd in lactation. He sold the males immediately to be raised for beef or veal; he also sold some females, keeping only enough to replace the older cows who would be culled. The ones he kept would mature to about fifteen months—that’s what a “heifer” is, a young cow before her first pregnancy—and then he’d impregnate them.
When I first started at Brassard’s place, I helped feed the calves but didn’t participate in the removal of the ones to be sold off the farm. As low man on the totem pole—Earnest loved calling me that—I was the designated specialist in manure management, so I was usually otherwise engaged. Anyway, I had too little experience to help choose the older cows to be culled; in fact, it had never completely dawned on me that if new cows were entering the herd, an equal number had to leave it to keep the overall herd size constant. I didn’t really know what became of these healthy cows, only five or six years old, when they left the farm. If asked, I probably would have said they went to someone else’s farm, or to some vast cow retirement pasture to live out their lives in contentment.
But that’s not how it goes. When they get culled, they’re trucked away to be butchered.
In big commercial operations, farmers pump the cows full of hormones so they produce lots of milk. Such cows get used up fast, typically lasting for only three lactation cycles before becoming a “loser”—that is, she’s costing more to feed than she’s earning from her milk output. At four or five years old, she’s culled and shows up at McDonald’s or in your supermarket’s meat or dog-food section.
Brassard’s cows were not exploited so hard. He ran an old-fashioned farm in that his cows spent five months outside each year, eating fresh grass along with high-quality foodstuffs we put out for them. Even in the cold months, they ate mostly hay and corn silage grown on the farm, and since Brassard bought less feed, his costs were lower and his cows could remain profitable longer. A few had been around for as long as ten years.
Given that he really was a cow whisperer of sorts, Brassard amazed me by his ability to accept the necessity of culling, while sincerely feeling affection for his animals. His gentle but firm treatment always calmed them and made them more amenable to being compelled to do things. He talked to them fondly and his goadings were more like suggestions. Certainly, I had no such talent.
When he asked me to help with selecting culls, I told him I didn’t want the responsibility. I wasn’t up for handing out death sentences. I couldn’t maintain objectivity about those cows I had come to know as individuals and had given names to. But when he insisted, I understood his rationale: By now, I had seen each cow up close every day and had a good idea of her health and behavior and milk output.
I also figured I should face into this hard fact of where the food I ate came from. Feel like a burger? A cow has to die, I told myself sternly. Put cream in your coffee or have a cheese sandwich, a cow has to be milked, and every cow that’s milked eventually gets culled and killed.
Reasonable cognitive dissonance, mentally balancing two conflicting imperatives? Or just hypocrisy? I still haven’t entirely decided.
Will and Erik inadvertently made culling much more difficult for me.
One evening after Robin and Lynn left, milking
