Fescue-footed Cow

Another cold hands, pretty morning. It’ll be windy here today. The wind is moving the treetops at sunrise; not on the ground, not quite yet. It’s getting loose, the wind, its calisthenics practiced first at the tops of the trees.

---

White-faced cow’s got red in it somewhere. Breed two white-faced cows, that’s how you get a red one. Some people think Angus meat marbles better, I don’t know. Older people said Jerseys or Guernseys were better. To me, you take the skin off the cow, nobody would be able to tell the difference.

There’s salt in the feed. They cut it with that or else they’d eat it all at once. It’s a protein feed, 20% protein, from the MFA. There’s one in Meta, one in Vienna.

Cows can live as long as twenty years. This one here’s twelve years old, you can see her belly’s getting pretty big. The older cows they call short and solid. Because their teeth get short and square. If a cow has a broken tooth, they call them broken-mouthed cows, and if they have a broken tooth, they’re probably old cows. They break a tooth on a rock, eating dirt. When the grass is eaten down to the ground. We keep our grass pretty tall so that won’t happen.

---

Fescue-footed cow retreats into the woods. He goes back there, feeds her grain, brings her water. Tries to do it in secret, tries to distract the other cows with feed so they won’t follow him. Because if the other cows get a whiff of that grain, that’ll be the end of it. She won’t be able to eat. And if that happens, he says, we’ll have to haul her out of here. Or else just shoot her. It won’t be for lack of trying. That fescue toxin gets in there, it’s hard to get out. One place on her leg did open up, he says, I’ve been rubbing bleach on that spot. I’ll try copper sulfate next, I’ll try that for a couple of weeks. If that doesn’t work, that’ll be the last of it.

---

I’ve been here winters enough to learn that snow will power the spring. Allergies in the morning, same as anywhere. Mold all over the kitchen, returns with every rain.

Gray day out there, cloud cover. Carmack doing his rounds, cows feeding at what he left them in the trough. Sounds of traffic on highway 42 woke me this morning from sleep. I don’t remember hearing them like that before, maybe because of no leaves yet on the trees.

It’s a nice morning, it really is. Forty-three degrees, no wind, burgeoning sun. The cows quietly wander away.

Perimeter walk. But’s it’s 11:30, time for me to get moving.