Udderly human!
They play games, bear grudges, grieve for lost loved ones – and form friendships that can last a lifetime. In an enchanting new book, one female farmer reveals how the secret life of cows will convince you they’re...
NESTLED halfway along a potholed track lined with mature poplars, Kite’s Nest Farm is bordered by sun-drenched meadows and trickling streams.
Perched on the northern escarpment of the Cotswolds, its 390 acres overlook the sweeping Vale of Evesham in a landscape of ancient trees and, in spring, a riot of wild flowers such as primroses, violets and wood anemones.
In the misty dawn of an autumnal morning, as the air fills with birdsong, Rosamund Young leads one of her beloved herd of muchadmired cows to the milking shed.
It is a daily ritual that she or another member of her farming family have performed for decades since they bought this very special place in 1980.
Since then it has been turned into one of the most respected and successful organic farms in the country, rejecting the intensive techniques of modern agriculture well before the organic movement – as it has become – had been conceived.
The farm shop sells only beef from hand-reared animals fed on the lush grassland of the surrounding fields. Their practices can even claim to have influenced Prince Charles’s commitment to organic farming – it was following a visit to the property in the late 1980s that he was persuaded to adopt fully a similarly natural approach.
But theirs is a family affair in more ways than one. Beginning with Rosamund’s parents Mary and Harry, the Youngs have kept cattle since 1953, and all but a handful of their current herd are descended from five pedigree Ayrshires.
It is their innate understanding of the nature of these docile, gentleeyed animals – their second family – that has underpinned the way they farm.
The cattle roam free and are allowed to live in extended families themselves. In doing so, they ‘look after each other’, with mothers teaching their daughters how to bring up calves.
Rosamund knows that if you have a field of one-year-olds ‘you get the same problems as if you leave children alone – a herd of delinquent boys who, instead of grazing calmly, roam around looking for something to do’.
Her i nsight i s unexpectedly charming and fascinating – so much so that she has channelled everything she has learned about these creatures into a wonderfully evocative and enlightening book, The Secret Life Of Cows.
First published in 2003, it sold more than 10,000 copies but it is now being reprinted and is tipped to be a surprise Christmas bestseller after being championed by the playwright Alan Bennett.
In the book, Rosamund not only divulges that her animals are known by name rather than number ( from Horatio t o Desdemona, Mrs Ogmore and Mrs Pritchard, Straw Beret and the orphan calf Jane Eyre) but that they also possess personalities as diverse as our own. They even have individual moos that not only set them apart but can communicate, to the educated listener at least, a range of complex emotions.
Cows make friends, Rosamund attests. They play games, nurse grudges, babysit for each other, grieve and form lifelong friendships that can begin shortly after birth. In fact, they are remarkably similar to the animals we see as pets, with the same idiosyncrasies that maintain their individuality, despite typically being kept in larger groups.
Take Amelia, for instance. She was, Rosamund writes, ‘an unusually delightful calf, more trusting and understanding than we would have thought possible’. Her mother, meanwhile, was ‘offhand, to say the least’.
‘From day one, Amelia did everything slowly. She seemed thoughtful. When the gate was opened and all her contemporaries rushed eagerly to the next adventure, Amelia would take her time and emerge when she felt like it, sometimes when the others were nearly out of sight. She made a mental note of everything, as we were later to find out.’
Sadly, Amelia was plunged into noticeable grief after her twins were stillborn. Her grieving was, Rosamund recalls, ‘far more acute than any we had ever witnessed’. For her own comfort, Amelia had to be milked by Rosamund’s brother Richard every day after the birth and she developed such a strong friendship with him that she would eye him up jealously if she spotted him paying attention to other cows.
On one such occasion, says Rosamund: ‘Richard went straight to apologise to her but as soon as he got near she tossed her head in high dudgeon, turned her back on him and walked off.
‘Richard went after her, grabbed her round the neck and gave her a determined bear-hug then held out his hand for reconciliation. Amelia hesitated for a second then licked his hand and said, slightly huffily, that he was forgiven.’
Such was Amelia’s affection for him that when Richard left the farm for any reason, Amelia would wait to spot his little red car returning. ‘As soon as he drove up the road, she ambled down and waited in the yard for him. She never mistook any other red car for his.’
That close relationship was far
They all have their own moo … and a range of emotions
Letting cows roam free increases their intelligence
Little Dorothy figured out how to open a closed gate
from unusual and Rosamund describes many amusing anecdotes which illustrate the warmth of feeling between the family and their individual animals.
But what is more common is the tight friendships between the cows themselves, which often begin when they are just a few days old. Fascinatingly, t here are even bovine cultural norms that dictate how – and between whom – such bonds tend to form.
In one touching example, Rosamund describes The White Boys – two nearly identical calves born within 24 hours of each other.
‘ We had never had such white calves: grey, cream, buff, off-white, silvery, golden but not pure white. The first calf walked over to greet the new arrival and stared at him as if looking in a mirror.
‘They became devoted and inseparable friends from that minute. The two mothers, now of secondary importance in the lives of their two offspring, became firm friends too, forced as they were to spend all their time together, waiting around to provide milk on request.
‘ Nell and Juliet had both had their own childhood friends but their new circumstances threw them together.’
It was to be a lifelong friendship between the pair. They lived ‘in a world of their own’, Rosamund recalls fondly.
‘They walked round shoulder to shoulder, often bumping against each other, and they slept each night with their heads resting on each other.’
Unlike many human intimacies, such dedication tends to have a specific motive. Rosamund continues: ‘ Bovine friendships are seldom casual. Devotion is the order of the day, although it is directed towards practical mutual help and is rarely over-protective or emotional.’
Decades of observation have helped Rosamund work out what makes her cows happiest and she has noted the effect this has on them physically.
She once read that restricting a cow’s ability to move freely led to a 30 per cent reduction in brain size within a couple of generations. Interestingly, on the family farm where the cows roamed uninhibited, they had noticed their own herd’s foreheads becoming wider and that ‘the cows looked and indeed behaved more intelligently’.
Their way of farming was not simply driven by morality and compassion – they have played a crucial economic function. As Rosamund says: ‘Happy animals grow faster.’ The quality of the meat is also higher, with a lower fat-to-protein ratio.
The methods mean Rosamund is very in tune with her animals’ moods. So much so that she can interpret their moos.
‘Cows moo for various reasons: fear, disbelief, anger, hunger or distress. Each cow, moreover, has her own method of asking a question, either with a look or a strange, quiet moo.’ On one occasion, a less seasoned farm worker had become concerned about a cow mooing ‘in a very loud and agitated way’.
‘To have left the kitchen at that moment would have resulted in burned biscuits so I forced him to delve into his hitherto untapped powers of description to describe the cow in sufficient detail for me to know who it was and to describe the mooing more precisely. I judged that she was not distressed but merely cross at having temporarily lost sight of her calf and he was then able to reunite the pair.’
But one night, the agonised cry of Araminta, who had recently given birth to a son, The Don (named in memory of the late Australian cricketer Sir Donald Bradman), could only mean one thing – her calf was in trouble.
Feeling in the pitch dark that Araminta’s udders were still full of milk, Rosamund knew The Don ‘must either be ill or dead’. Rosamund knew, too, that ‘ her penetrating moo was not just to tell me she was uncomfortable but that I must do something to help her son, since she could not’.
After a bit of encouragement (‘when our cows do give us credit for intelligence they tend to make the mistake of presuming that we know e verythi ng’ ) , Araminta headed towards the fields.
‘After 50 yards I stopped,’ Rosamund writes. ‘She stopped. I gently turned her round and pushed her back the way we had come. This made her realise at once that I had not got a clue where we were going and she t urned herself round and marched off in the original direction at twice the speed. I followed.’
With Araminta leading the way, The Don was found three fields away, looking severely bloated – which can cause death. He was treated, later needing a small operation, and made a full recovery thanks to his mother’s concern.
The same powerful maternal instinct was evident in the young, pregnant Little Dorothy. Generally, a cow does not give birth before 24 months old, but Little Dorothy was just 15 months and still suckling from her mother.
Clues to her condition were found in her seemingly insatiable appetite for hay.
‘We would find her in all sorts of unusual places eating hay. She was small and neat and one night she spent in great comfort and solitude underneath a trailer that had hay both on top of and underneath it.
‘Although we were pleased that she had obviously enjoyed herself enormously, it was very difficult to understand how Little Dorothy had found her way there, and we all accused each other of negligence in having left a gate open.’
Despite double-checking that the farm gates were secure and ensuring she had plenty of access to food, to their surprise Little Dorothy was found under the same trailer the next morning.
It took two weeks to work out that Little Dorothy had figured out how t o open t he gate al l by herself.
‘By using her nose and patiently wriggling the rope to the top of the post she managed to remove the loop and push the gate open.
‘This was much too good a game to give up and, as we later discovered, she could push her way back in again to see her mother and then go back once more to the trailer.’
Touchingly, when the cow gave birth to a daughter, her mother, Old Dorothy, was present.
‘Old Dorothy was giving her tangible, visible advice and was the most superb grandmother imaginable.’ Eventually, ‘the Dorothys’, as they became known, were given their own special area that only they could access.
It is typical of how all of the animals are treated, with the freedom to ‘communicate with or dissociate themselves from us as they choose’. This freedom, Rosamund asserts, is as essential for the cows as it is for us.
Critics will point out that Rosamund’s reflections on the cows’ characters are her own interpretations, a fact acknowledged by Rosamund herself.
She uses personal pronouns throughout when describing the cows because, simply, ‘that is how I think of them’.
But by observing the sprightlier members of the herd as they indulge in a game of hide-and-seek while others forage for blackberries, knowing t hat t he elders babysit their grandchildren with something approaching pleasure – it is hard to argue.
And it certainly makes a wonderful and heartwarming story.