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a farm wife
-And
Joyce Bnpp
Surely you’ve been as guilty of
saying the phrase as much as I
have been at one time or another.
It’s a familiar one, heard at family
reunions, holiday gatherings and
any place wh?re people who see
one another only periodically
gather.
“Why, you look just like your
mother!” Or, father, sister, uncle,
or whomever.
Kids don’t always find that such
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a compliment. We recently heard
from an infrequently-seen
acquaintance how our daughter
looked “just like her mother.” The
“daughter” happened to be a son
greatly miffed at the gender error.
Anyway, family resemblance is
an undeniable fact of life. Even in
cows. In bovine offspring,
however, the family resemblance
is not so much physical as it is
tempermental.
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Our Wanda and Wendy are
perfect examples.
From the first day homebred
Wanda joined the dairy herd, her
obnoxious, scatter-brained
behaviour won her special -
deserved - notoriety.
She even looks the part of a
malcontent. As a calf, dehorning
didn’t totally “take” on Wanda,
resulting in a short, but slightly
crooked, whitish-colored horn
growing from the left side of her
head.
Wanda also boasts a wild-eyed
look, one of the few in our herd of
extremely calm, laid-back
bovines. Couple the wild-eyes with
the lopsided horn and she has what
can only be called “devilish” aura
about her - which she plays to the
hilt.
Endlessly I’ve grumbled while
herding her around the bam that
she couldn’t see her stall if it fell on
her. She has one speed, fast, which
slides into overdrive as she sails
past her stall and on down to the
far end of the dairy bam.
Needless to say, in addition to all
the above irritating qualities,
Wanda isn’t above sending the
milking equipment flying oc
casionally or taking aim at the
person attaching it.
Weird Wanda (as she’s com
monly known) has two redeeming
qualities which have earned her
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the tenuous right to hang around
the ’ herd. She’s a consistent,
health-problem-free producer and
breeds back to calve on a regular
basis. Too hateful to do anything
that would get her tossed out, I
figure.
It was inevitable that Weird
Wanda would have heifer calves,
about three of ‘em so far, I think.
The first joined the milking string
last year.
Wacky Wendy, the first milking
daughter of Weird Wanda, is “just
like her mother” in scatter
brained temperament. Naturally,
this family will prove to be heavily
one-sided in giving birth to heifer
calves, more to be “just like their
mother.”
And, then there’s Matilda.
Matilda is an old excellent cow
suffering breeding difficulties
until she spent a romantic in
terlude with the bull in residence.
The end result was a rugged baby
heifer calf, who promises, to grow
up to be just like her mother.”
Unfortunately.
Matilda will cheerfully flatten
anyone who happens to get in the
way of her eternal and endless
quest to eat. Such aggressiveness
and determination are qualities
which have obviously kept the old
NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. -
Members of the New Jersey
Association of FFA Chapters will
be on the Rutgers University Cook
College campus for the statewide
interscholastic fall judging con
tests Thursday, Oct. 30.
Teams from 39 chapters will test
their agricultural or horticultural
skills in land judging, weed
identification and control, fruits
and vegetable identification, and
small engine trouble shooting.
The highest scoring team in the
dairy foods contest will compete at
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NJ. FFA’ers Test Judging Skills
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girl going. On the other hand,
anyone putting cows into their
stalls had better step lively and not
have their back turned when
Matilda marches down the
alleyway to conquer the feed
trough. She simply will not stop,
nor step aside, for a human traffic
director. Or at least not this human
traffic director.
“Just like her mother” is
Matilda 11. As a 3-month-old calf,
she lowered her hard head, and
repeatedly plowed into my legs as I
bedded the pen. Finally, it was
necessary to physically hang onto
her head and wrestle her away
while I backed my way out and
over the gate.
While we have no absolute proof,
it is believed that Matilda II never
sleeps. She has never been ob
served anywhere but with her head
jammed through the hay rack,
jaws going constantly, and ob
viously has but one goal in life to
grow up to be “just like her
mother.” .
Sometimes, in fleeting moments
of dairy farm frustration, I have a
burning yen to be “just like my
mother.”
My mother doesn’t chase
Matildas or Weird Wandas or
Wacky Wendys. Not ever.
the regional competition in West
Springfield, Mass, next Sep
tember, then at the national
competition in Kansas City, Miss.,
m November of 1987. The first
place land judging team will move
on to the national competition next
spring in Oklahoma.
The chapter that accumulates
the most points in the fall, spring
and summer contests will receive
the H. 0. Sampson trophy. Samp
son, a member of the staff of
Rutgers Univesity, was one of the
original founders of FFA.
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