Cattle After Their Kind

mimjo
May 8
5 min read

Only one of us on this farm can drive past the herd and see each cow as a unique character and say her tag number as if it is a persons name. The purebred herd is all black angus and the only distinction between animals has to be body shape or movement or a distinct hair whorl in a different spot or a funny ear, high tail head or maybe a leg that swings out when she walks. My husband identifies each cow, can say what year it was born, sometimes he can say the day, and he knows the family line through all the years. Moms and daughters start carrying the same traits and even I in my greenhorn naïveté can start to recognize cow family traits. I’ll never know every cow’s number and family name just from across the field but i find it fascinating how genetics work together and carry traits along. I do better if we name the cow after its distinctive trait or character. Once we had a cow with curled eyelashes and winsome eyes that looked just like a flirty youth girl we knew and we named her after the girl. There have been other human likenesses we name our cows after in good humour and i hope if you hear we us call a cow your name, you can take it as a compliment. Sometimes we just call the cows a character name though, like the one we call Old Swingleg because when we get behind her on trail drive we chuckle at her funny walk.

We used to have a bull that helped produce the most adorable calves ever, their faces and head shape were the finest and daintiest. Each calf he sired had a sort of feminine head with longer eyelashes than normal and good spunk. At birth, we could say a calf was unmistakably his without a DNA test to prove it. I still hope we find another bull one day that produces such fine calves.

I wonder sometimes why God created genetics the way He did. He must take joy in the creative process and formation of each animal and human He makes since he doesn’t have us each line up as a carbon copy of each other. We get mixes, new character points pop out while the old family traits still bleed through and the genetics with keep making unique personalities.

Colossians 1:16 says, “For in Him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created through Him and for Him.”

We read in the Bible how God is good and He likes goodness, He also likes order but i think He must also enjoy the chaos of creativity and the good humour it produces. There are too many coincidences that happen over and over again for me to not believe that God has fun and wants us to take pleasure in good things. He refreshes our lives by cheerful surprises and it reminds me to do the same impulsive loving act for others. There are enough terrible things that happen in our lives that we should take note of each joyful moment and praise Him for it.

One spot of humour every spring on our farm comes from a cow we call George Washington. She’s in the commercial herd, not a highly rated purebred who raises stunning heifers or showy herd bulls. She’s just an ordinary unpapered mother cow but yet she’s special to us and she calves on almost the same day every year. Her tag number is 853.

Before you see our red commercial cow, you’ll need to see a bust profile of George Washington and try to spot his profile in our cows’ white face marking. It’s not perfect. I’m not sure why the bust profile of George Washington is so familiar to us but he is one of the founding fathers of America. Maybe the profile shape isn’t as familiar to other countrymen but everyone in our family can see George Washington and his hook nose and the neck shape in Georgie’s facial mark.

Now here is our female red angus named Georgie Washington with a blonde calf. She’s just another cow in the herd, number 853, but she has provided us with a story by producing a few character calves in her life and by being so faithful in her calving.

Last year she had a calf with a white face with a large black winking eyebrow. right in the centre of her face. We called him Billie Eyelash and enjoyed looking for him during herd checks. I don’t know if he was a musician like the Billie Eilish in the news but the wink on his forehead gave us joy.

One year Georgie calved on a cold gray day when we were craving spring sunshine and my husband sent me a photo. It cheered up the cold depressing May morning. She was standing over her calf as if it was the declaration of independence she was willing to fight for.

That year her calf had a lopsided powdered white toupee like one a drunken colonial man would be wearing in the middle of a billiards game.

One year she had a straight black calf just to show she could be a normal cow even if she was one of the few red cows living on a black angus farm. That was boring of her.

This year she had a calf with a white tear swimming down out of her eye and a white mark higher on her forehead. We haven’t named it yet. The only names I’ve thought of is Scarface or Crybaby.

Not only does God create all these funny coincidences in the cow herd, He gives us the eyes and the mind to notice it. Imagination is no little thing, it is the birthplace of creation and invention. As we feed our dreams and visions, they grow and they help us to grow. We change as the years go by, sometimes our vision slightly changes but each step we take in our growth process means something. I feel like when I see quirky or adorable things in nature, it’s sort of like a wink from God. He’s saying, “Look, I’m sending you a smile to refresh your spirits.”

I think He gazes upon us even more caring than how my husband looks at his cow herd. He knows each of us, all our quirks and our family traits. He recognizes each of our family members and looks fondly upon them. He wants each of us to be in good health, to skip and run in the cool mornings when the fog lifts with the sun. He wants us to stretch out fully on our side at midday and let the sun’s warmth soak into our hide. He also sends the storm and cares for us as the clouds roll overhead. He is in the herd with us all through the long night. He nourishes us each day.

“ He makes grass grow for the cattle,

and plants for people to cultivate—

bringing forth food from the earth:

Wine that gladdens human hearts,

oil to make their faces shine,

and bread that sustains their hearts.”

Psalm 104:14-15