Honey, I’ve mooved right in
After she nearly died at birth, this calf was nursed back to health in a Devon farmhouse. Now, Honey is part of the furniture . . . and the family are all udderly devoted to her
LIFE on the Northmore family farm requires a certain order; with two cattle herds, sheep, horses, chickens, a goat and ten dogs to tend to, the day starts early. Everyone chips in, but apart from making sure minimal mud ends up in the house, there aren’t many rules.
Except, that is, for one recent addition: when one particular family member is present inside, shoes are an essential requirement.
Because, as Molly Northmore, 18, can attest, going barefoot can be a bit of a hazard when there is a delightful, perfectly formed, 300kg cow wandering around. Indoors. But not for the reasons you might think.
‘Look,’ says Molly, with a smile, as she removes a shoe to display a small, but vivid mark on one bare foot — the sort of mark that might be left by a cloven hoof. ‘It was very painful, it was about a month ago and I’ve still got the scar. I had to put ice on it.
‘One of the house rules is that when Honey is around, you have to have shoes on,’ she chuckles, throwing a besotted glance in the direction of the culprit, Honey Calf, as she is affectionately known.
Honey, equally smitten, looks as if butter wouldn’t melt — least of all that she would stomp on the bare feet of the young woman she considers to be her mum.
Limpid eyes rimmed by long lashes; an inquisitive nose gently exhaling puffs of warm air; silky, curling waves of creamy white fur — she is what Claudia Schiffer would look like if she were a cow. Only shorter.
She trots across the slate floor in a blur of fur and legs with the rest of her rather unusual herd — two golden retrievers named Ada and Ivy, a Kelpie called Treacle and a border collie called Archie.
Molly’s mum Carolyn, a veterinary practice manager and ever-practical farmer’s wife, admits Honey is a cow with a bit of an identity crisis.
‘She grew up playing with dog toys, thinking she was a puppy and that Molly was her mum,’ she says.
‘I don’t know that she knows what she is. She certainly doesn’t know that she’s a cow. If she walks past the barn the other cows moo to her, but she doesn’t moo to them. She’s like a puppy, or probably more like an adolescent now,’ says Carolyn, oozing the patience of a farmer’s wife who is used to taking drama in her stride.
For taking a poorly, premature calf into the family home last spring and committing to hand-rearing that calf, so feeble it couldn’t even stand for its first two weeks, certainly qualifies as drama.
Even more so, when you consider that the country had just gone into its first national lockdown amid the first wave of the pandemic.
It was Carolyn’s husband, farmer Michael, and their son Jack who brought Honey back to the family farm, just outside Ivybridge, in Devon, on a cold, wet night last March.
‘Molly and I were in bed and oblivious,’ says Carolyn. ‘Michael and Jack knew the cow was getting ready to calve, so went out to the field to check and found her calving and in distress, so they called the vet.’
The vet duly carried out a caesarean section, only to be surprised when Honey’s small, soggy white form emerged. For everyone had assumed that Honey’s parents were from the family’s Dexter herd, cows which are only ever red or black.
Honey, whispers Carolyn in conspiratorial humour, was the product of an ‘illicit liaison’.
Honey’s mother, one of the family’s small herd of eight breeding Dexters, was ‘ introduced’ to one of the Dexter bulls, ready for first-time motherhood, but, unknown to Michael, an excitable young Charolais bull from a neighbouring field had already taken a fancy to the heifer, jumping a hedge in THIS pursuit of the prize.
would not necessarily have been a problem, if not for the fact that while the Dexter breed is petite, by contrast the Charolais, a French breed, is the Mike Tyson of cattle, stocky and strong, and weighing more than a tonne.
Cue the difficulties that arose on that cold Sunday night in March. ‘Honey’s mum just didn’t have the mothering skills to cope with a premature calf, too weak to suck and struggling to breathe. None of us thought she would make it.
‘When I first saw her she wasn’t much bigger than a small Labrador and couldn’t stand.
‘Every farmer will tell you they give every animal every opportunity to survive. So we decided to bring her inside.’
For the first few weeks of Honey’s life she lay in a vegetable box next to the fire in the living room, alongside Archie, who arrived as a puppy within days of her birth.
‘She lived in the vegetable box 24/7,’ says Carolyn. ‘She literally fed every few hours. We had a rota to feed her through the night, at first through a tube because she didn’t have the instinct to suck. You knew she was poorly because from hour to hour she didn’t move, we had to keep turning her over.’
The pandemic had an unexpected upside; when Carolyn heard the drug dexamethasone was being used to help Covid patients fighting to breathe in hospitals, she spoke to their vet, who agreed Honey could be given colvasone, a similar drug for animals.
Within 24 hours, Honey’s breathing was no longer laboured and slowly but surely she grew stronger.
‘It was then we had to get her on her feet. That’s where Molly took over,’ says Carolyn.
‘She used to carry her, put her down somewhere and say, “Honey, let’s walk a bit,” then carry her a bit further and try again.’
Within three weeks, Honey was taking her first steps — a moment that was captured, along with many other bovine milestones, on camera by Molly. She mastered her first ‘moo’ shortly afterwards and moved from tube feeds to slugging milk (a special cow formula) from a CocaCola bottle with a teat attached.
Her progress went from strength to strength.
‘I kept on working full-time, so Molly would send me updates on what was going on at home,’ says Carolyn, showing me a picture on her phone of a much smaller Honey, wrapped in white laundry.
The accompanying text message from Molly reads: ‘Just in the garden with her and she is taking things off the line that I have just hung up.’
‘Michael’s overalls,’ laughs Carolyn, who insists her husband is very tolerant of having a cow under the family roof, despite the hazards.
‘She used to go upstairs,’ says Carolyn. ‘But we have to stop her trying now. Can you imagine having to call the fire brigade to say: “My calf has gone upstairs and can’t get back down!” ’
Honey is prone to leaving a trail of hair in her wake, which adds a certain rigour to the cleaning regime — but then, there are the dogs to contend with, too.
However, woe betide anyone who leaves bread lying around. Honey is rather partial to a slice.
Back in the kitchen, Molly is investigating the contents of the fridge, Honey, her inquisitive shadow, at her side.
‘Honey, you won’t like that, it’s spicy,’ Molly giggles, removing a tub of chilli sauce from her reach.
‘ Honey, you won’t like that
tomato . . . oh, too late. Okay, one more cabbage leaf, you have been well-behaved.’
Watching on, Carolyn sighs. ‘This is where Molly’s training has failed, because by now Honey should be better behaved.’
On one matter, however, it has to be said Honey is extraordinarily well- behaved. Carolyn swears ‘hand on heart’ that Honey has never had an accident inside the house. That’s right, this cow is house-trained.
‘Because Archie the border collie arrived when she was so small, she was house-trained with him,’ says Carolyn.
‘We would take him out when he woke up, and she did the same.’
Judging by the great gulps of water Honey takes from a paddling pool on the patio and the very long toilet break she takes out in the paddock, I’m relieved to hear it.
Although Honey now sleeps outside the family home — in a cosy little straw-filled pen just by the back door — she still spends the evening relaxing indoors with her two-legged family.
‘Basically, when we are in, she is in,’ says Carolyn, who adds that Honey also knows to ‘clean her hooves’ outside the door before she comes in.
‘In the evenings, when we are all sat down, she is here with us. She just wants to spend her time with Molly. She likes television — she doesn’t like films, she prefers chatty programmes, like quiz shows. It’s the noise.’
To look at Honey now, you would never know that she struggled. She bounds around the farmhouse garden and small adjoining paddock with merry abandon.
She responds to her name (no one can quite remember why it was chosen), chases a Frisbee with the dogs and insistently butts her head against my legs.
It’s affectionate, insists Carolyn, demonstrating how to rub under Honey’s neck with two hands, an action that would be replicated in the cow world by her mother’s
HONEY sandpaper-rough tongue.
is remarkably docile, owing, one suspects, to her human ‘ mum’ s ’ tender care. Her arrival coincided with Molly being furloughed from her first job with a local law firm; tending to the tiny calf, says Carolyn, was just the diversion her daughter needed. So gentle and responsive is Honey now that Carolyn is pondering whether the newest member of the family might have a post-lockdown role as some kind of therapy cow.
Welcoming Honey into the family is quite a commitment, she could live to the age of 25 — by which time Molly may have long since moved out, and she’s hardly likely to want to take a cow, even a small one, with her to her first home.
‘Honey will always have a home,’ says Carolyn, who stresses there is another rule on the farm.
‘Anything that ends up with a name gets to stay. We are a meat farm, but we have compassion.’
As for those outsiders who have questioned the cleanliness of Carolyn’s home — some of Honey’s followers have dared to suggest there must be a whiff about the place — this farmer’s wife brooks no nonsense.
‘Absolutely not,’ she declares. ‘My house doesn’t smell.’ And it doesn’t. you get the feeling Honey really wouldn’t stand for it if it did — a perfect princess in cow form, this is her forever home.