What we learned from Lady M

“I’ve got a 100% mad cow for you guys,” said the guy from the Southland transport company. “She should be in Blenheim tomorrow morning.”

“Do you have deer fencing? You’re going to need it for this one,” said his colleague.

“Your very friendly cow should be arriving around 7:30pm,” said the guy from the Nelson transport company.

“I wouldn’t get in a paddock with her,” said his driver. “I’m just glad she’s off my truck.”

Mad, murderous and Scottish... it seemed only natural to name our replacement Highland cow, Lady Macbeth.

She arrived on Thursday evening last week. On Friday, she was quiet and seemed a little dazed. On Saturday, Farmer Wan noticed her staggering, seemingly unable to hold her own weight. We rang the vet in Richmond. He said she had either ryegrass staggers (unlikely, because all our other animals were fine) or a condition that’s uncommon in New Zealand, known as transport tetany. The symptoms are the same as those for staggers but the cause is different: stress from long-distance travel, along with a lack of regular food and water.

Farmer Wan made the two-hour round trip into town to collect a bag of medication. Although Lady M was obviously ill, we still couldn’t risk getting near her. We had to wait.

On the Sunday morning we found her lying on her side. We spent 11 hours in the paddock with her, trying to keep her alive. We gave her the medication, poured almost 50 litres of water down her throat and, with the help of one of our neighbours, propped her up into a more natural position. She struggled hard to get to her feet but her back legs kept buckling. In the end, Farmer Wan built a frame around her to prevent her falling back on her side. There was nothing left to do but hope she’d make it through the night.

She didn’t.

That learning curve just kept getting steeper. We now knew how to give our cow subcutaneous injections (cowhide is as tough as, well... leather) and how to make her open her mouth (hook fingers in the nostrils, pull up and back) but we had no idea how to dispose of her carcass. We couldn’t leave it where it was – in the middle of a paddock fronting the road. We don’t own a tractor or a digger and even if we did, our ground is too rocky to dig a substantial enough pit. The vet suggested hooking her up to the 4WD, towing her somewhere less conspicuous and letting nature take its course. That’s what we did. We bought some agricultural lime to spread over the carcass to hasten decomposition and we’ll cover the remains with branches.  Vale, Lady Macbeth.

It felt disrespectful to dispose of such a magnificent beast in this way but there wasn’t much else we could do. The meat was no good and we didn’t have the knowledge and resources to remove the hide. Farmer Wan took off the spectacular horns and we’ll use them in future when we convert our conventional orchard to biodynamic. It still seems such a waste, though -- so much energy expended down the long chain of human involvement in that animal’s life. The feed, the transport, the veterinary care... thousands of hours, huge amounts of fossil fuel, just to end as a rotting carcass in a gully. We had a vague, theoretical understanding of what's involved in producing our food before, but now we actually get it. And that’s the biggest lesson we learned from Lady M.

Posted by Farmer Nik