The Fight!

 

A mock bull fight in action

Two months passed after Anandi had the traumatic episode ofa prolapsed uterus  just after Somavathi’s birth.  The first few weeks were tough -  administering her medicine thrice a day with all 3 of us holding her down while one of us poured the medicine down her throat, keeping her area spotlessly clean,  applying ointment on the stitches taking care to avoid her well aimed sharp kicks  and ensuring that there was no other unwanted problem.  Slowly things came back to normal and she started looking her healthy self again.  It was time to start letting her out to graze.

Anandi eager to go  for her walk..... the large doorway behind her through which all the cows proceed towards the gate.

During the time when we were not letting her out, she would bellow her protest as the others trooped out of the cow shed each morning.  We did realise that she was extremely upset about it, but there was nothing we could do.  And how upset she was and how much pent-up anger she had was displayed only when we finally released  her one morning.

Our farm hand always releases them out in the same sequence beginning with the left most – and they all make their way  in a peaceful line, out  of the large doorway from the cow shed which leads to the gate.  This day when Anandi was released, she shoved her way   towards the exit and butted Saraswati who was walking out.  Saraswati was taken by surprise, and stumbled heavily causing a little blockade.  The ones behind halted a bit too close to them and Anandi turned around and butted the one nearest her.  The cows are generally unperturbed by a little shoving and butting, but Anandi was persistent and Kaveri got agitated and started flailing her horns menacingly.  There was a bit of a melee but with a bit of yelling and thwacking the long herding stick in the air we managed to sort it out and all of them trooped  out.  I   followed them out with the herding stick as our farm hand proceeded to clean the cow shed.  I just presumed that once out of the gate in the open air, they would all go their normal friendly shoulder brushing way in search of green pasture.  But how wrong I was! 

They walked  out of the gate  and I latched it and turned to get back when I heard a heavy thud and scuffling sound.  I turned around to see that Anandi had butted Kalavati so hard that she had fallen on her side and Anandi was repeatedly butting her as she struggled to get up.  The other cows seeing this started butting Anandi and in a  minute it looked like a free-for-all… everyone seemed to be butting and fighting with someone.  Eight or nine of the adults were raising up  a dust storm and the younger ones were running helter skelter in panic.  All my thwacking of the stick and yelling made no difference – a full-on fight was in progress.  I yelled out to Vivek and our farm hand, both of them hearing the panic in my voice rushed out.  It took a good deal of yelling and thwacking to get them sorted out. I scooped out a tub of water from the drinking watertub and hurled it at them.   Finally peace was restored, the three of us were left  a bit shaken while the cows nonchalantly went up the hill tossing their heads, swishing their tails and maintaining  a ‘I’m not speaking to you’ distance between one another.  Giving each other a  Cold shoulder of the bovine kind.  I was worried that they might get into another nasty scuffle once they were out of sight.  We watched them for a long time and it appeared as if peace was really restored.

Watched them go down this path until they were out of sight

And so it was indeed.  In the evening they were all at the gate shoulder to shoulder with happy expressions.  None of them showed any resentment towards Anandi and none of them wanted to prolong or repeat the fight. 

Cool animals indeed!

Anandi as a baby.

An emergency!

 

Monday morning.... I still get the Monday Morning Blues. although we have no weekends on the Farm.  I was just thinking that I really need to stick to a strict schedule  and  focus on getting the important things done on time.....such as Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner...  and of course.... all the other paper work, the bank work, replying to emails...... I seem to be running behind on everything.  So I started the day on a steely resolve .... yes today I would clear the pile of papers on my desk , clean up my PC and sort out the storeroom and make sure that All our Meals are on Time. 

I had just finished my coffee and was about to go to the Cowshed to check on Anandi (she was due to deliver a calf – her second one)  when Yogesh, our farm hand came running to call out to me. 

“What is the matter I asked him?  Has she delivered already?”  

“No  I don’t see a calf but ‘IT’ has come out” 

“What?”  I asked as I ran to the cow shed.  

Anandi was sitting morosely and behind her was a large bulbous sac streaked with blood.  It appeared to be pulsating.  

What .....in......the ....world....was this?  Was the calf still inside?  Where was the calf?   Was this a case of the ‘Prolapsed Uterus’ that I had read so often in James Herriot’s tales of veterinary practice? 

I ran back to the house and picked up my phone.  I was just 6.30 am and hopefully I would be able to catch our vet Dr. Gourish Padukone.  He is a busy doc , travelling quite a lot to remote farms and if he was already out on a case, we could do nothing but wait.  

I sent a silent prayer as the phone rang.  He answered and I described the condition  in as calm a voice as I could muster.....and ended on a panic stricken squeal ...   "Please come over soon.......”  

Thankfully he was at home and  said he would arrive within half an hour.  He instructed me to place a clean  plastic sheet under the protrusion and keep pouring cold water over it. "Don't let it dry out" he said.

I instructed Yogesh to milk the rest of the animals quickly, give them their feed and release them out of the cowshed. Vivek joined in and the three of us worked on top speed – we had to get the other cows out of the way and clean the area before the vet arrived.   In all the panic stricken activity, the new born calf was almost forgotten – she was sitting coolly in the farthest corner with her 3 aunts – Kalavati Saraswati and Purna! 

Dr.Gourish came in just as we finished washing the cow shed.  In a few minutes he assessed the situation and got down to work.  

In all these years of revolutionary advancements in science and health care, some problems of veterinary science are still dealt in the same way that James Herriot has documented in his memoirs during the pre- First world war Era.  So the Uterus had to literally shoved back in place with the 3 of us holding down the cow and  the vet using every ounce of his strength against the resisting cow.

It was a struggle. 

Anandi was obviously not happy being held down and was not too keen on receiving back what her body had just seemed to expel a few hours back.    She in turn tried her best to push it back out.  After what seemed an endless struggle, finally the uterus was pushed in all the way and positioned properly.   But we were not done yet.  Anandi had to receive stitches to prevent the problem from recurring.  She had to receive a drip and several injections.  

Finally all done!

By the time it was all over it was almost 12 noon.  The vet had to rush off to another case in a far flung village.  We got back for a much needed bath and to catch up with the rest of the work.

Well,  for the record,  we did have lunch  on time.....forget about the breakfast!

The next few days were critical for Anandi, she needed constant monitoring,  quite a few medicines to be poured down her throat and she had to be tied in such a way that she could not crane her neck and pull out her own stitches.  She also had to be tied on  a mud flooring .  So we tied her outside under the guava tree. In a weeks time everything seemed back to normal.  The little calf Somvati frolicked around and grew sturdily, little concerned about the upheaval her birth had caused.

Anandi and Somvathi under the Guava tree

We were also instructed not to let Anandi out to graze for at least 2 months.  She would bellow her protest with all her might when the others trooped out happily each morning.  She took it very badly that the others left her behind inspite of her protests, but we did not know it until the day when we decided that she was healthy enough to join the others for their daily outing.  But I leave that for another  post.

And I cannot  end this  without a Special Thanks to our vet Dr. Gourish Padukone  who incidentally, like us, moved several years ago from Mumbai (where he had a bustling small animal practice) to  rural Karnataka  to provide good veterinary care where it is needed the most!

Of Cows and other beings.

 

The cows on Go Puja day.

How little do we actually know about all the animals around us! Among the creatures whom we ‘own’ as pets, the obvious things like their food-habits, their likes and dislikes are easily understood.  The intelligence of dogs, specially the ones that are working dogs,  guide dogs etc has always been acclaimed and acknowledged. But what about the multitude of other creatures around us?

When we moved to the farm, we actually knew next to nothing about cows and buffaloes. To these bovines too, we must have seemed rather strange.  Fortunately our farm-hand was the only continuing familiar link for them.  One of the first things we noticed was that the cows always greeted him with their loud ‘hummaaaaeee’. We could hear their sound all the way from the cowshed to the kitchen and little later, he would be at the kitchen door to take the milk vessels.  I realised that the bellowing would start as soon as he crossed the boundary and entered the farm.  He used to come in through a short-cut entering the rice-field beyond the arecanut plantation, so it was quite a distance away, yet the cows would know.

Can you spot the narrow Donappa or entrance at the far end?

Bit by bit we have started realising and understanding bovine behaviour and are amazed by their intelligence.

After the cows are milked, they are all left free to graze in the forest near our house. By 3 pm, they are all assembled outside the gate waiting to be let in. Do they have an inbuilt clock?  

Waiting outside the gate.

Except for the rare occurence  of Bhairav falling in a well or Kaveri playing truant in our first week at the farm and wandering far from home (was she in search of the previous owner? ), all of them wait patiently outside the gate. The gate is quite a distance from the cowshed, but the minute the older ones are at the gate, the young calves who are in the cowshed, yell out their greetings and their mothers respond.  How do they know that their mothers have returned and are waiting at a spot  almost 200 feet away and  not visible from the cowshed?  When the gate is opened, they all troop in, the mothers greet their calves with a nuzzle and then stand in their allocated spots waiting to be tied. They are always tied in the same spots and that is where they go and stand!

The fact that each animal always recognises its own young one even from a group is well known, but the fact that cows have the power to release or ‘let-down’ their milk at will is something that we experienced here. Last February, two of them – Kaveri and Shabari calved within just 10 days of each other. Little Kamini  and Shabari’s Jairam looked like identical twins and we could scarcely tell them apart. Vivek would milk the cows and then leave the calves free to drink some more and romp around in the cow shed. We would then tie them back in their spots after about an hour. That day just as I went in to tie them, I heard someone arrive at the gate. So, in a hurry, without checking which one was Jairam and which one was Kamini, I inadvertently tied them in each other’s place. That evening Vivek first took Jairam thinking it was Kaveri’s calf ‘Kamini’ and led him to Kaveri. The little one nuzzled and nudged and butted with his tiny head, tried to suckle, butted again and then turned away listlessly. Vivek was puzzled by his behaviour, but thought that maybe after he milked Kaveri, the little calf would be in a mood to drink. But when he tried to milk her, there wasn’t a drop of milk. He gave up after some attempts, and then decided to milk Shabari instead. But when the second calf- Kamini went to nuzzle Shabari, she turned around and butted the calf and stomped her feet and wouldn’t let the calf come near. This was even more puzzling, Then he looked closely  and realised that the calves had been switched. He promptly led Kamini to Kaveri, and everything was Ok then and he could milk both of them without a problem. He came back and narrated the incident and said “Did you switch their places when you tied them this morning?”.  That’s when I remembered that I had tied them in a hurry without  checking.  So that meant that Kaveri had refused to let down her milk until the right calf was brought to her and Shabari showed her displeasure when the wrong calf was brought to her!

Jairam and Kamini  - bet you can't tell us apart

 The majestic buffaloes have their quirks too!  When they are left out to graze, they are not keen on going along with the cows – they prefer to join their own kind.  We found it very amusing when Madhubala would make strange hrmfff hrmfff  sounds as she walked out of the cowshed towards the gate and each sound would be answered by a similar sound by our neighbours buffalo who would be let out at around the same time.  The hrmff’s would shuttle back and forth until the two came face to face at the corner just beyond the gate and then they would trudge ahead together.

The calves love a cuddle.....and a huddle

The dogs, apart from being able to recognise and differentiate between our cows and the neighbour’s always have a special way of greeting the new born calves.  They troop into the cowshed and ever so gently nuzzle the calf as if to say ‘Welcome to the world!’  Cobol takes it on himself to protect the young calf and you will often find him sitting next to the calf in the cowshed.

Cobol sitting with a day old Somvati

Memories of another day - Misty  and Anandi when she was just a few days old.

Kippi our cat has warned us of the presence of a snake more often than once.  She often snuggles close by at night and you can scarcely notice when she sneaks in or out of  the mosquito net.  But one night, she woke us up by jumping on Vivek and then racing to the corner of the room with a loud meowwrrrr.  And she seemed to be trying to get at something behind  a large wooden box which holds our matresses.  Vivek flashed the torch and noticed the snake.  It looked like a krait.  We would have never noticed it had it not been for kippi’s warning.   

Kippi spots something interesting on the wall.

Small incidents, but they disclose such a wealth of information about our beloved animals, all we can do is observe and learn.  

The Cows are thirsty!

Finally we have a watering hole for our bovine family!

Each day after the cows are milked, they are let loose to graze around, walk around and sun themselves.  These are the Malnad Gidda variety of cows and unlike a lot of other cows who are content to stay the whole day in the stables, our cows get quite unhappy if they are not let loose. They need that exercise and the outing.  They all proceed out in a group and are capable of walking quite long distances. Quite often we have spotted them up the hill,  far from home.  But all of them unfailingly (barring a few incidents) always return home by 3 pm. 

When they return back, they have to wait until we open the gate to let them in.  We have a common gate that leads to our home and the plantation with a small path cordoned off for the cows to walk straight into the cow shed.  Our cows know the routine pretty well and walk down the path to the cowshed un-erringly. They sit patiently in the shade outside the gate and it is always a pleasure to see the content expression on their faces.

All throughout the rainy season, there are umpteen brooks and streams that enrich the landscape, but come summer and all of them dry up.  

Even the ‘Holle’ that roars past our farm leaves not a trace behind.  So this means that the cows have no water to drink until they are let into the cowshed.  We  keep quite a few buckets of water for them, but they push each other to get to the water first and often overturn the buckets.  So we had to find a  solution for this, to provide ample drinking water for them. And we found it on one of our trips further south.  We were returning from a trip to Vitla and spotted a Plant nursery on the way.  We stopped to check it out.  It was really huge - lots of fancy plants and /saplings with fancy price tags too.  After the first few rows of roses, chrysanthemums and colourful hibiscus, all with perfect flowers, there were rows of indoor plants and colourful crotons. Then came the saplings of the large trees.  This was interesting as we could buy some for the farm and the forest.  We picked quite a few of these.  Then at the very end, I spotted a whole array of pots and planters- mud pots, plastic ones, hanging ones, name it and this nursery had it!  And in one corner I spotted a huge stack of giant tubs –just the type that I wanted for the cows’ drinking water.  They were meant to make fancy lotus ponds to place in the foyers /lobbies of buildings and hotels.  They had all the apparatus to make an artificial fountains and a mini water fall as well.  But the tub was all that I wanted, and we got it.

Back on the farm, we decided to install it just outside the gate, so that not just our cows, but all the ones passing by can quench their thirst.   

The Tub

Preparing to install it

Finishing touches  - all natural elements used.

Shabari is a bit suspicious- hey! that was not there when I left this morning....

Anandi is curious.....and Thirsty!

Hey that's for us to drink!!!!!

So there it is now, a watering hole for the cows. Watch them make a beeline for it when they get back after their daily jaunts.  

The Tiniest calf

Saraswati and Kalavati – born just 4 days apart are almost identical – rich brown coat and a white spot on their foreheads.  Sometimes it is difficult to tell them apart. 

Both of them had grown up into graceful young cows and seemed in pretty good health.  Kalavati had a bad bout of Foot and mouth infection and had spent several weeks in isolated quarantine.  But she had recovered her health well. 

Kalavati in isolated quarantine with all four feet bandaged.

It was Saraswati who started looking week and skinny for no apparent reason. 

  The vet was called and he prescribed some medicines and she slowly started regaining her health although she still looked thin.  Kalavati on the other hand had started looking plump and we guessed we would soon have a little calf  on the farm.  Probably Saraswati would be late in conceiving and calving due to her ill health we thought.

So it came as a complete shock when we went to the cowshed early morning and saw a teensy weensy calf lying next to Saraswati, who had a miserable dis-interested look around her and was not doing the usual nosing–nudging-cleaning routine that all cows do to their new born calves.  It is nature’s way of ensuring that the new born calf’s body temperature is maintained, the blood circulation is improved and the young calf gets perky and tries to stand up within an hour or two of its birth.  But none of that was being played out here.  Was the calf even alive?  Yes there was life in the  tiny cold limp body.  We rubbed it vigorously with gunny sacking , tried to get Saraswati to nuzzle it, but she seemed caught up in her own misery.   The usual trick of sprinkling wheat bran and maize powder onto the calf which gets the mother to lick it vigorously failed .  We tried milking her to get some precious colostrum  into the tiny calf, but her udders were dry.  We had a premie on our hands – a premature birth – Natures cycle of the full gestation which ensures an abundance of rich colostrum to protect the new born from all the vicious infections of the outside world had been cut short and the baby would have to struggle to survive now.  I held the tiny darling on my lap and rubbed its cold feet and bundled it up in layers of cloth and yet it shivered. 

I got a bottle of warm milk and tried to get the calf to drink.   Slow erratic gulps but slowly the shivering stopped.  

The vet arrived to check on Saraswati.  He confirmed that it was indeed a prematurely born calf and the chances of survival would be very slim.  The mother would need a lot of attention and some tonics and extra calcium was prescribed for her. We were to feed the calf every two hours and keep it as warm and dry as possible.  We carried the calf into the house.  The worst of the rains were lashing the whole of Karnataka at this time and the stormy damp weather was not a nice time for the little calf.

So tiny!

Her tail - smaller than our cat's tail!

Soudamini I named her. A big name for a little calf.  A musical sounding name.  But Soudamini means lightening – and indeed she came and went like a flash of lightening.  Illuminating our home for a brief period of 13 days during which her health and our hopes see-sawed.  One day she would be perky and running all over the place following me all over the house and the next day she would be lying listless, needing to be coaxed up to even drink the warm milk that she had gulped down in the previous feed.  A rash on the skin that erupted and spread all over, a runny nose that made her breathing sound laboured, the chills, the terrible stormy weather and the never ending rain and the consequent dampness all took its toll and on the 13^th day I knew she had given up the battle.  It is heartbreaking to watch an animal die and specially one who had a promise of a whole life ahead, but   that is the way it is.  When I tried to coax her to drink some warm milk, she let out a terrible bleat – the first and last sound that she ever made.  I knew that I had to let her go.  We sat with her until she slipped into the other world – a world where the meadows are always sunny.

Soudamini – you will be remembered with love.

Aaarrghhh! When will I ever learn!!!

Each time some new affliction hits one of our bovine family members, I realise how little I know about the health problems that can ail our dairy animals!

I have seen no less than sixteen calves being born here and not once have I had any problems with the calves.  But this time it was different,  maybe because the calf was not born in the stable, but  outside in the rough terrain adjoining our farm.  The first two days went off well enough and I did not notice anything amiss.  On the third day we noticed blood on the sacking on which the calf was sleeping. On closer examination I noticed the umbilical area looked swollen.  A couple of frantic phone calls to the doctor, the verdict was an infection of the umbilical cord. “Did you not cleanse it with Tincture of Iodine immediately after it was born?” thundered the vet. “Wha......t ? “ I wailed, I had never done it before, for any of the other calves.  Anyway now the solution was to cleanse the wound deep , dress it well and hope for a quick recovery.

I carried the calf into the house,  as,  however hard you may try, there always are a couple of flies lurking around in the cow shed and I did not want any maggots in the wound.

But alas I was too late. As I cleaned the wound, I noticed them. My first reaction was to burst into tears .... how could I have not seen this earlier. ....how could I not have been more careful....

 But then I pulled myself together and braced myself to clean the wound.  If someone had asked me to clean a maggot infested wound 5 years back I would not have been able to do it. But when it is your own helpless 3 day old calf, you have got to push all your squeamishness and repulsion away and get down to the task.  The little one  - I had named her Kasturi, barely struggled as I held her down with my  knee and cleaned the wound and poured the tincture of iodine into it.    As the day progressed she seemed to weaken and grew more listless. Every three hours I was taking her back to her mother to be nuzzled and to let her drink some milk. She would immediately perk up a bit after that. But as evening progressed, even that did not seem to help her. At around 9 pm she even refused to suckle, her head hanging limply down. And when her mother nuzzled her, she just toppled over and fell.  Another frantic call to the vet.  “Ah well looks like she is too weak to suckle.  You could try feeding her with a bottle” he explained.   Now that put me into a slight quandary. With Vivek out of town on work, there was no one I could send across to buy a baby bottle. Besides I knew that the chemist shops would have closed by the time I could get there, and wasn’t even sure whether there was any all night chemist in the next town.  “Don’t try pouring milk down her throat”, the vet had warned.

Oh heavens! What was I to do!

Too weak to move, 

I decided to take a chance. With no fluids inside her the little calf would not pull through the night. I had kept the colstrum from the cow aside. I took about half an ounce in a tiny steel pail with a rim that would enable easy pouring out of the milk. I sat on the floor with my legs outstretched and took the calf’s head on my lap. With one finger inside the calf’s mouth I let a trickle of milk flow down my finger – just a few drops at a time. And then stroked the calf’s neck to ensure that she swallowed it right. Kept repeating it.  Sometimes the trickle of milk would flow out from the other side of the mouth. But I got quite a few spoonfuls through. I then let her rest for some time. After two hours I repeated the whole thing. Late into the night I kept vigil over the calf. All animals respond to human touch. So I kept stroking it, massaging the limp neck  and belly, rubbing her ears and whispering into her ears “You are going to be alright by morning”.  At around 3.00  am I gave her one last feed and decided to rest for sometime myself. You never know what new challenges the day will bring and a sleep-deprived state is not the best way to face them. So leaving a dim light on in the room, I finally slept, with my alarm set to 5.30 am.

I woke up with a start even before the alarm went off. I first warmed a little bit of the milk to room temperature and went to check on Kasturi. She did not resist when I fed her the trickle of milk. She definitely seemed better.  I could catch another half an hour of shut eye.

When I woke up again at 6.30, dawn  had broken and at the sound of my footsteps, Kasturi opened her eyes, and with a little effort lifted her head. she looked around with a puzzled look as if  saying “Why am I here in this strange place”.  I threw my arms around her and hugged her close. She made an effort and stood up! This was a miracle indeed. She had pulled through the night! I carried her to the cowshed where her mother greeted her with a loud bellow. I supported her as she weakly nuzzled around the udder and could barely hold back my tears of joy as she caught on and started suckling on her own! 

From then on it was a quick recovery.  I had to subject her to a painful cleaning and dressing of the wound three times a day, but not once did she cry out aloud. Her beautiful large eyes showed a total submission to what must have been a very torturous procedure. 

On the way to recovery!

Today Kasturi runs and plays around and shows no sign of what she has gone through. But we share a special bond and when I rub her head and hold it in my palms she has a special look for me in her soulful eyes. 

Bhairav falls into a well.

It’s been two days since Bhairav has not returned home with the rest of the gang.  He is still too young to play truant like his older ‘cousin’ Balaram who is now two and half years and already a young bull. So whilst we are not unduly worried when Balaram does not return home for a day or two, we were concerned about Bhairav.

  Manjunath searched for him on both the days with no luck.  On the third day, he arrived looking rather tense – “Bhairav has fallen into a well”  he said.  Oh no! What kind of well – fully or partially dug? Was there no embankment? How deep?  How much water is there?  My questions tumbled out before he could answer even the first.  “It is a dry well and not too deep” he answered.  Oh no!  A fall onto hard ground could mean broken bones.  I was almost in tears, but Manjunath assured us that he wasn’t hurt.

 We rushed to get a good length of strong rope from the boot of our car, Manjunath hauled the ladder onto his shoulders and led the way across the fields which were now dry post the rice harvest.  Some  had the rice stubble in them and some of them had been ploughed for a second crop.  From a distance, the fields look so perfectly level, you feel you can run over them, but the stubble, the upturned clods, the narrow embankments made it impossible to even keep pace with Manjunath and Revathi who had joined in to lend a hand.   They walked briskly – it is a similar path that they walk every day from their home to our farm.

Manjunath and Revathi leading the way.  

We soon came to a clump of bushes and Manjunath set the ladder down. I was looking all around for a well when I realised that the clump of bushes itself was growing out of the well.  A perfectly camouflaged natural ‘trap’! 

Would you believe this clump of shrubs is concealing a well?

  I could not see anything in the dark depths, but when I called out to Bhairav, his plaintive voice echoed out and I could see his eyes gleam as he raised his head to look up at us. 

Manjunath got busy wielding his sickle and cleared out a place so that the ladder could be lowered and he could climb down.   

Our 20 feet folding ladder was luckily long enough to just reach the bottom of the well. That meant Bhairav had fallen to a depth of 20 feet!! It was just the dense growth of shrubs in the well that had saved him.  But I couldn’t be sure he was perfectly okay till I could see him properly.

 

By now Manjunath had climbed down and Vivek had lowered the rope into the well.  Mahaveer, who was working in his field nearby came to assist us.

 Manjunath tied the rope around Bhairav’s belly like a harness and Bhairav panicked. He had never had a harness around his middle ever and this was too much for a frightened, starving guy to bear!  He went crazily in circles in the closed confines of the well, the ladder started toppling over and we were worried about Manjunath. 

But luckily he paused for a while and Manjunath untangled the rope from around the ladder and swiftly climbed out. The ladder was hauled out before Bhairav decided to run a few more crazy circles. Now the need for brute strength!    Four pairs of hands hauled the ropes up and a kicking, protesting Bhairav was dragged out of the well. 

We had to hold him down to undo the makeshift harness of ropes and barely was the last one removed when he broke free and tried to run. 

  In all the excitement I just realised that he was perfectly fine – no broken bones – just a terribly hungry, thirsty young bull with a mightily bruised ego! He almost ran all the way back home, back to the safety of the cow shed where an extra large bucket of feed and a pile of freshly cut fodder  awaited him.  

Back home finally!

And a calf is born!

Although we have been on the farm for almost 2 years now, and have had 4 calves being born, we had not witnessed a single birth. Our farm hand Manjunath, with his unerring knowledge of such things, has always warned us a couple of days before the actual birth.  “Just a few more days to go..”  he would warn us. Godavari, the first one to calve, just a month after we moved in, gave birth to Gomati when she was out grazing in the forest nearby. Manjunath  seeing that she did not return at the usual time, went in search of her and brought her back along with the little calf.

 

Gomati - born in the forest adjoining our farm 

 

Shravani  was born when we were travelling out on work, and so was Balaram. 



Shravani and Gomati both a few weeks old



Balaram enjoying some sunshine while Phoenix and Zuki watch over him protectively

 

 Kalindi’s birth was the quickest, because although I was checking on Kaveri, every hour, she had shown no signs at 8 am, but by 9 she had delivered the little one and both were already up and perky. Incidentally during that time we were getting the cow shed renovated and all the cows were tethered out in the farm.

 

Kalindi born out in the farm where the cows were tethered during the renovation of the cow shed

 

The Cow shed before renovation

 

The spanking new cowshed inaugrated by 5 day old Kalindi

 

 

Then finally this May we were expecting Kaveri to calve any time. We took turns during the night to check on her every few hours. At around 5 am, it was V’s turn and he came back rushing to say that Kaveri seemed extremely uneasy. Both of us rushed to the cow shed.   Kaveri, although uneasy,  appeared in total control of the situation. Most of the times, these animals do not need any help with their delivery.  But still . .....niggling doubts  assailed my mind. What if it was a breech presentation? What if the hind legs appear first, what if........?  Should we call the vet right away?   If there was a need, it would take him at least an hour to get here.  But fortunately all seemed in order. Two little hooves appeared, followed by a tiny limp head.  Does the head always look so limp?  Is it alive?  The eyes were shut tight. Then a slight twitch of the tiny nostrils!   Yes it was alive.  The miracle of birth was unfolding in the quiet stable with a whole bunch of unperturbed cows silently chewing their cud.   A few more minutes and the calf was out!   Come on folks aren’t you all going to applaud?  But no,  the new member of their clan did not yet merit a second glance.  The dark brown, ungainly little creature, still damp struggled to look around.  Large eyes blinked as I shone the torch to examine it.  All seemed in order.   The mother nuzzled it and it responded by craning its neck in her direction.  She proceeded to give it a rough rub down, licking it thoroughly and it seemed to get more and more alert and perky with every passing minute. I took a gunny sack and did my bit of rubbing the little one. In a few moments, it was ready to try out its legs.  The floor was too slippery but this little one was not to be deterred.  It raised itself up and promptly slid down with its long skittle legs going in different directions. Worried that it might injure itself, we spread a thick layer of dry hay  around it. Yes, that did help and on the fourth or fifth attempt, the calf actually stood up and nuzzled close to the mother.  Now the mother and baby could be left alone. As the first rays of the morning sun began to light up the world, the little one gave a tiny barely audible bleat.  A baby born at dawn – the only name I could  think of was Bhairav –the beautiful morning raga which heralds the arrival of dawn!   And so Bhairav completed the trio of male  calves – Bheem, Balaram and Bhairav!

Kalindi has a little brother now - Bhairav