Anyone who knows me probably knows that I love Twilight. Unfortunately for you all, I’m going to reference it for a moment. In the book, the vampires describe drinking blood in a way that describes it as setting them into a “frenzy” at the first taste of blood.

My calves are the same way when they taste milk.

When I’m teaching calves to feed, sometimes they’re unwilling, or are fighting me because they don’t know why I’m forcing them to walk in a certain direction. Then, as soon as I get them onto the feeder and they taste the milk, their body relaxes and they attach to that feeder like it’s the only thing keeping them alive.

Hence, the weird Twilight reference. At the first taste of milk, those calves go into a frenzy and it’s all the can think about until their post-meal nap. Until then, they’ll drink every last drop, and then head butt me and suck on my clothing until I hop over the fence to their pen to escape from them.

In addition to the constant head butting, I’ve also found out that calves take after their mothers and kick. The kicks are much less terrifying and dramatic due to their smaller size, but they’re there nonetheless. I used to always end up with bruises all over my shins I had no recollection of receiving. Now, I’m covered in shin bruises and I know exactly who the culprits are. They don’t always appreciate me walking behind them to move them around, so I’ve taken a few swift kicks to the shins. I might actually prefer the kicks to the head butts however, as those always take me by surprise. I’ve almost been knocked over multiple times when I find myself at the center of a mob, and a surprise calf rears into me from behind. Luckily, I haven’t gotten trampled over yet. But there’s still time.

I may be repeating myself, but I need to set the scene for a story. Every morning, as I’ve shared, we go into the cow paddocks and kidnap all of the newborn calves. I haven’t had to do that in about a week or so, which I appreciate. Instead, now I’m just on the receiving end when they are dropped off at the calf shed, where I help to load them into their new pen. As we have two paddocks with pregnant cows, usually we have two separate trailers come through.

On occasion, we leave the calves in their paddocks for an extra day, but this only happens when there aren’t very many calves. The other day here, the one paddock only had 4 calves (at our current height we get about 15-25), so it was decided they would stay there for an extra day and they would be picked up and brought to the shed the following day when there were more. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but this means they get their legs under them more, and are much stronger than the fresh newborns who are fairly easy to pick up and transfer to their pens.

In the calf shed, it is generally me and the other two female backpackers, Stacy and Maggie, as well as one or two full-time workers who know the ins and outs of the whole calf rearing process. On this day, Maggie was off, so it was just Stacy and I working with the full-timer in the shed. There was a fairly big drop off of calves, as it included the ones from the previous day that had been left there for some extra time.

Stacy is fairly short and small, so it isn’t always easy for her to pick up a calf on her own. The first calf she was handed off the trailer was a pretty hefty one, so she planned to walk him into the pen instead of carrying him.

This particular calf must’ve been one of the day-old ones, as he was bright-eyed and full of energy, something the newborns are not yet. As soon as his feet touched the ground, he made it a challenge for Stacy to get a hold on him, and he pranced out of her grip, playfully dodging her for a few steps. When she started gaining on him a bit more, he lost any pretense of playing, and starting running for the exit, which was a wide open garage door at the other end of the shed.

Stacy sort of looked at me while walking after him, like she couldn’t believe what was happening. I couldn’t really either, as this was the first time I’d experienced a runner within the shed.

The full-timer had seen us, but hadn’t said anything about the situation. That left me feeling adrift, as I generally appreciate instruction on how to deal with things I’m unfamiliar with. But as I saw the calf go through the door, with Stacy still lagging behind, I decided to jog after her to help her wrangle him in if no one else was going to.

Outside of the shed, the land is sectioned out into several other small paddocks that the calves will move into as they grow older and bigger in just a few weeks. The escapee calf ran right towards the nearest paddock, expertly sliding through the fence wires to cross to the grass inside. Generally, the paddock fences consist of two wires strung through wooden posts stationed every few feet. It was easy enough for a calf to get through, but not a larger cow. Luckily, the other side of the paddock was sealed off by a different kind of fence that had about 4 wires and closer together wooden posts. The calf ran straight through the paddock to that other side, and couldn’t find his way through.

As much as I appreciated his tenacity, I was sweating just a few minutes into the chase. It was an extra cardio workout I hadn’t bargained for.

Stacy and I weaved through the wires of the fence after the calf, thankfully finding that this particular fence wasn’t electrified like the others. Stacy ran to one side and I took the other as we tried to corner him and get a good grasp on him. He was a wild thing, and even when we did manage to get hands on him, he was wiggly. It took both of us to manage to hold onto him for any amount of time, as he kept weaving out from beneath our grip if we tried alone.

We struggled to pick him up, me grabbing the rear end as it was usually heavier, and her taking the upper body. He continued to wriggle in our grasp. The most entertaining part of the journey back was that we had to make our way back through the fence, this time with an unwilling victim in tow. Again, we were lucky it wasn’t electrified. We tried our best to stand on the bottom wire and duck underneath the top one without dumping our little friend out of our arms. We weren’t super successful with that task, and ended up taking a wee break on the ground, still holding onto our calf.

Before we decided to buck up and start the rest of the walk back, we heard the second trailer approaching from up the road with the other half of the calf load. As they approached, we saw it was Paul, Stacy’s partner, bringing up the trailer. He stopped, wondering what we were doing there – as one would. Generally, calves aren’t found outside the calf shed. He opened the trailer door at the back and helped us load our rogue calf into the back, saving us from finishing the long walk back to the shed. It wasn’t really that far, but when carrying a calf like that, it would’ve been the longest walk of my life.

Upon returning to the shed, the full-timer still didn’t really say anything, so I assumed all was well. When taking our calf out of the trailer again, we took care to have a strong grip on him and ensure he was tucked away from the entrance as he was joined by more siblings.

In addition to milk maid, calf mother, and cow barber from when I’m shaving tails, I can now add calf wrangler to my resume.

*Author’s Note: At time of completion of this writing, there was unfortunately another calf outbreak involving even more cows. The author is very bad at handling baby cows.