The dead of winter was often tough on our cattle. Frozen ground is no picnic for walking, even with four legs. There’s little roughage in the fields for grazing, and exposure to snow and ice storms can be life threatening, even to critters with thick, tough hides.
Our cows were in a typical winter routine of wandering into the barn lot from the pastures, usually late in the afternoon. The barn door to the cow stable was kept closed until we were ready to feed the herd of 8 - 12 animals. Cows will let you know they’re hungry or thirsty by bawling their fool heads off. When dad, my brother, or I were ready to feed them, we’d swing open the door and watch the cows lumber in. Occasionally we’d have to chase a recalcitrant one into the barn.The old timers knew exactly where to park themselves in the stable. They’d head right for their usual stanchion. We had about a half dozen or so of these metal head locks which kept the cows from wandering willy nillly around the stable. Stanchions look like elongated “o”s, attached to permanent structures at the top and bottom by short chains. Each stanchion has a latch at the top which permits it to be opened wide enough for the cow’s head to easily enter. The cows have ample freedom of movement and can lie down or stand. The trick was to get the ornery ones to put their heads into the open stanchions and get them closed it before they backed out. Corn usually worked wonders.
Once in the stanchions the cows were given a ground corn and cob feed which we ground in a huge burr mill grinder. It was belt driven from our little farm tractor (a future blog entry...) Later they’d be given hay.
For most of my childhood, our hay was stored loose in the barn’s hayloft. How it got there needs to be saved for another blog entry. Suffice it to say, the hay had to be handled with a pitchfork and thrown through a 4 x 4 ft. opening in the upper part of the mow, down to the alleyway below, and then pitched again with the fork into a manger which ran the length of the stable in front of the cows. Our cows could be greedy animals, much like people. If one got hay or corn before the others, the anxiety and tension in the barn would be raised by several notches! Hay was fed in the morning and evening.
Everything I’ve described so far has had to do with the front end of cows. There’s more to the story of course. It’s called manure in polite company. It never ceased to amaze me how much manure a small herd of cows could produce overnight, not to mention what it was like when we had to keep them in the barn for several days if the weather turned really nasty.
Manure had to be shoveled out of the barn every day, without exception. Failure to do so would create a mess of Biblical proportions! The cows stood in their stanchions in an area that was 4-6 inches higher than the rest of the stable floor. The lower and back part of the stable floor slanted ever so slightly downwards towards a large floor drain. Most of the liquid waste was handled by this drain, except when it froze, which only added to mess in the stable. Across the length of the back wall of the barn were windows, several of which were on hinges to allow them to be easily opened.
Most of the time the cows did their business in a way which caused the manure to land in the lower section of the stable floor. Manure shovel in hand, I’d start at one end of the floor and push the shovel towards the middle, then go back and do it again until all the manure was more or less in a pile near one of the hinged windows. I’d open the window and then begin pitching the manure through the window opening to the outside pile. Of course the outside pile could only get so large before the manure was pitch forked into a manure spreader for fertilizing the corn and hay fields. Have you gotten the sense that manure was handled multiple time before it ended up on fields!
Most non-farm folk pinch their noses and make strange noises when the subject of cow manure comes up in everyday conversation. :) Actually it doesn’t smell that bad. In fact, it has almost a sweet aroma. Given the choice of shoveling hog, chicken or cow manure, I’d take the cow manure for sure!
I’d mentioned earlier that sometimes the weather or ground conditions would force us to keep the cows in the barn for several days. During that time they’d need water, twice a day. Cows are not timid drinkers. Typically we’d have to use the hand pump and carry buckets of water to the manger and dump them into the concrete trough. The cows at the end of the manger were the last to get the water, as those closer to where we dumped it often drank it all before it would flow down to the end of the line. It wouldn’t be uncommon to see a cow go down onto its front knees and try to extend its neck followed by its long tongue towards the water. Our cows always received all the water they needed, despite the tens of buckets we had to pump and carry to satisfy them.
