Catch Me If You Can by Fiona Quinn
After I left University, I went to work as a trainee ‘assistant’ farm manager for Strathmore Estates in Glamis. Turns out that title was a fancy name for gofer, but that’s another story. I worked there for 18 months and truth be told I had a great time, learnt a great deal and met some real characters. One of those characters was ‘Annie’. Annie was about 4 foot tall, ginger, very hairy and had horns like pitchforks pointed forward from her head.
Annie was a highland cow and there was one thing that it was very important to know about Annie. Annie was a very protective mother and it was a really bad idea to get between Annie and her babies.
Usually this was not an issue as Annie was a good mother and took great care of her baby calves. This year however, her new baby struggled to feed because her udder was too full and he couldn’t get hold of the teats.
So we needed a plan, because if we tried to chase Annie into the cattle crate to reduce the pressure in her udder, she’d be more likely to chase us and toss us out of the field, as she has a fair turn of speed and not much inclination for our company!
Ian the cattler decided on a rather unconventional approach and this is what happened: I drove a red Skoda pick-up truck across the field to where the cattle were grazing with Ian in the back. I then managed to get the pick-up between Annie and her calf for a couple of seconds, which gave Ian a chance to grab the poor wee fella by his tail and haul him into the back of the pickup yelling at me to Drive! I set off across the field like a rally driver, dodging round trees and wheels spinning on the wet grass as if there was a raging fire behind us. Ian is busy wrestling with the wee fella in the back of the pickup who is now completely outraged by the indignity of the whole thing and is bawling to his mum. And Annie, well Annie was not happy, she was roaring blue murder and racing after us as a fast as a half ton hairy beast is able. We got to the gate in the corner of field barely seconds before she arrived, Ian dived out the back of the pickup threw the calf over the fence and then leaped over after it. I scooted out the other side of the field in the truck and made my way round to the cattle pens, where Ian had himself barricaded in from the now irate mother.
We opened up the crate and put the calf in front to persuade her through the entrance. In she came and once we had milked her out a bit, we got the calf sucking away and once he had his belly full and we gave Annie a wee drink and some hay to calm her down, the giggles started.
I think it was part hysteria, part fear, part relief but we laughed for ages.
I hope no one was watching, God only knows what they would be thinking was going on with all the roaring, shouting and swearing and all. I learned a good lesson that day, never get between a highland cow and her calf, because you just don’t know, it could be Annie.
