The other day, my old cow friend, Buffalo, died. She was the kindest, gentlest dairy cow that I’ve ever known, and I cannot remember mourning the loss of a cow more than I am mourning Buffalo. She has been by my side almost the entirety of my dairy farming career, and it is difficult to imagine the farm without her presence.
Small-scale, traditional dairy farming is unique among all sectors of agriculture due to the degree of intimacy between cow and farmer. I am with my cows from the first minutes of their lives every day until the last minutes of many of their lives. We endure it all together. Rain or shine, I am with my cows every single day, feeding, milking, breeding, calving, fighting them and loving their company. It’s not always romantic. The power imbalance can be brutal. But I always strive to give my cows the best possible lives I can afford to give them under the constraints of the dairy industry.
Some cows are just special. Every cow has a distinct personality, and every year I have a couple cows who just love people. As a kid, my sisters and I called these cows the “pets.”
Some of these pets are aggressive animals who don’t understand their own size and will bowl me over in their enthusiasm. Occasionally, I’ll run across a naturally timid cow who also wants to be my friend. These cows are the best. They make my job as a farmer particularly enjoyable, and I’ve long called them my therapy animals.
Twelve years ago, soon after the first crop of my calves hit the ground after I returned to the family farm, Buffalo was born. When I returned to the dairy farm 15 years ago, my parents and I worked out an arrangement where I would artificially inseminate their cows and I could keep the offspring to begin growing my own dairy herd. My parents had big black and white Holsteins, and I wanted to transition the herd to the smaller brown Jersey cows. The first generation of the crosses between these two breeds are normally born as solid black or chocolate-colored animals.
In the early part of 2013, Buffalo was born. This little, chocolate-colored, furry creature looked just like a little bison, so I named her Baby Buffalo. As this timid yet friendly calf grew up, her name became just Buffalo.
As someone who spends more time with animals than people, I tend to anthropomorphize my animal friends. I am convinced many animals (especially mammals) have similar emotional responses to life as humans. Buffalo was one of those cows who always seemed to have a sunny disposition. She would greet me with a rough lick to the face or would gently sidle up to me for a hug or a scratch. She went about her life with ease and without complaint.
I’m not sure if she was one of the aggressive boss cows, because I rarely remember her being a bully to younger cows. She definitely associated with the top boss cows of the herd who always bullied their way to the front of the line — first to get into the milk barn, first at the feed bunk, first out to fresh pasture. She had nine calves over her lifetime and almost always was one of my top milking cows. She never had a sick day in her life. She had a beautiful udder and was one of the gentlest cows I’ve ever had in the milk barn. If I ever had visitors who wanted to milk a cow, Buffalo would be the cow I took them to.
Last year, during her eighth lactation, Buffalo had her first bout of mastitis. One of the front quarters of her udder never really came back in milk production after that. This past fall, when she had her ninth calf, I decided that rather than trying to milk her bad mastitis quarter, I would make her a nurse cow for raising baby calves. I’ve been playing around with turning my old cows into nurse cows as their retirement plan from the milking herd. Keeping nurse cows seems to be a kinder and gentler way to raise baby dairy calves, different from the industry standard of separating babies from their mothers and bottle feeding the baby calves.
Because dairy cows produce way more milk than a single calf can handle, most milk cows can raise three to four calves. Finding cows with the right temperament to adopt calves can be tricky. Because the maternal instinct has been selected out of many dairy breeds, some cows have zero interest in caring for calves. Buffalo was the exception. She eagerly adopted each calf I put in her pen. I meant to stop with four calves, but I kind of accidentally put a fifth calf in with her. I thought about pulling the fifth calf but did some quick calculations. Buffalo had produced between 80 to 100 pounds of milk (10 gallons) daily her whole life. If any cow could raise five calves, it was her.
So she raised these five with the joy that she always seemed to have. When the calves were a couple months old, I moved Buffalo and her babies into a small pasture with other young calves and another nurse cow. I would still hear her low guttural calls to her babies as she led them around. Some joined in the shenanigans with the other calves while others were more clearly attached to mom.
This winter, through a brutally cold January on the Kansas plains and a couple of blizzards, I noticed Buffalo was losing weight. I’m still figuring out this nurse cow thing, but it does seem that once calves start growing bigger, they take a toll on the nurse cow. Their ravenous nursing sucks all the energy stores out of the cow. I think weaning at this point could be beneficial to allow the cows to recover. But I had my hands full with the hard winter weather and didn’t pay close enough attention to my old bovine friend. She still eagerly greeted me each day when I fed her and the calves their daily allotment of grain.
Buffalo continued to lose weight.
On a cold blustery February morning, I noticed Buffalo laying by herself out in her pasture with one or two of her calves occasionally coming over to her. From a distance, I knew the signs of a drooping head and a sunken frame that indicates a very sick cow. About noon, I pulled together some vitamins, grain, and other medication to go see if I could doctor her up. When I reached her side, I was alarmed by just how rough she looked. She greeted me with an outstretched neck. I knelt down and let her eat some grain, chasing away the other critters.
Once I gave her an injection, she struggled to her feet and continued to gingerly eat the grain. I had the fleeting idea of trying to bring her into the shed and making a small comfortable sick pen for her. As she continued to lick the grain and I, by her side, was stroking her and shoeing away the other calves, her body all at once went ridged and she fell flat on her side, barely missing me. It took me a second to realize this was the end. I took her big head in my lap and stroked her face as she moaned and struggled for a minute or two before her breathing stopped.
Buffalo’s ending was sudden and unexpected. I had a big lump in my throat as I said goodbye to my old friend. I was mad at myself for not intervening sooner. However, it was most likely an infection or cancer that finally took Buffalo. She was an old cow. In an industry in which the average dairy cow only lasts one and a half lactations (3.5 years of age), a 12-year-old cow is as old as Methuselah. Her death after a good, long, honest life should not have come as a shock.
Old Buffalo, I will miss you. It was an honor to be by your side these last 12 years. You were the best cow this dairy farmer could have ever asked for. I hope I gave you the best life I could have given you. Wishing you greener pastures, dear friend.
Jason Schmidt is a fifth-generation Kansas farmer near Whitewater.
