I started thinking about maternal love today. John Bowlby, in his book Child care and the Growth of Love, vividly describes the behaviour of maternally deprived children who often develop into affection-less characters with an inability to maintain deep emotional ties. Mothering has nothing to do with providing food – it is something indefinable which gives spirit, and the will to live, to the young.
I was musing morosely on this while staring over a thorn hedge (still barely greened after the harsh winter) at York. York had been a fine bull calf when he was born. Good strong ribs, broad hindquarters, a perfectly correct ‘frame’ – all the signs of a promising pedigree sire are usually visible at birth. Born just three weeks ago to Evelyn 40, a lovely 9-year old pedigree suckler Hereford in her prime. Not the sort of show-cow you would necessarily pick out as the best looking one in the herd. A bit thin because she “always put the fat in her bag, not on her back” to quote neighbour Bill. That was the trouble, she gave all she had to the calf and kept back nothing for herself. Of course, I blame myself, I did not take a walk round the herd that evening; the wind was a bit sharp so I told the boy to take a bale of hay to the few cows on the banky field.
“Were they all there?’ I asked when he returned.
“ Aye – but old Evelyn’s got a thorn in her mouth I think” he said. “She’s stretching her mouth and licking her lips.”
I should have gone and checked, but the warm fire was too inviting.
Next morning, we took the hay out and the cows relished it – it’s been a long winter and the grass is not growing. I counted heads – one missing? I counted again and was still one short. Then I saw little York in the distance, sitting on the brow of the hill, silhouetted against the pale frosty morning sky and I felt a prickle of apprehension, an instinctive feeling of dread as I walked towards him. Old Evelyn lay cold and stiff – her calf had kept a lonely vigil through the night over the body of his dam.
“Staggers!”
Evelyn had no thorn in her mouth last evening, that licking of the lips is the classic symptom of the onset of staggers. I should have spotted it before it was too late – it’s always the good milkers (the ones who do their calves well) who fall prey to magnesium deficiency, especially coming out of a long winter. We gave her a burial in a good deep grave* – couldn’t bear to see an old friend carried off in the knacker’s lorry.
But that a left little orphaned Yorkie. With no cow available having enough milk to take him, he had to learn to suck from a feeder. He’d had essential colostrum from his dam, and was soon taking a gallon of milk a day from bottles. Even so, looking at him over the thorn hedge, he made a sorry picture. The fine white crest on the back of his neck, which Evelyn used to groom with rasping strokes of her rough tongue, was dingy and caked with mud. His eyes were covered with a yellow film, stale muck clung around his tail and he smelt bad – his Mum would have been ashamed to see him. We couldn’t really sell him in that condition so he would just have to get along as best he could until Spring when, hopefully, the new-grown grass would revive him.
When Sociologists talk of the effects of maternal deprivation they often refer to the classic experiments Harry Harlow did in 1959 on infant macaque monkeys. These were separated from their mothers 12 hours after birth and raised in isolation but with ‘mother-surrogates’ of either a wire frame, or a cloth-covered frame. When given the choice between the two, the infant monkeys always chose the cuddly ‘cloth-mother’ even if they were being fed only from the wire ‘mother’. The young monkeys clung to the cloth ‘mothers’ for long periods and showed violent emotional upheaval if they were removed. It seemed to be this establishment of an affectionate comforting relationship between infant and its ‘mother’ which gave the infant enough security to develop normally.
However, I had never before seen such a clear illustration of the need for this maternal bond in a calf. Calves born in milking herds are removed 48 hours after birth so that the cows can return to the milking machine. Perhaps, because York was 3 weeks old before he was orphaned, he had developed a strong bond with his dam and was dependent on it for his well-being. He had the company of the rest of the herd, but soon became the runt – butted, bullied and lowest in the pecking order.
A couple of weeks after this, a bunch of our young maiden heifers were turned out from their winter quarters. These young 14-month old calves would spend the Spring and Summer growing and fattening, while being kept well away from the bull. Released from their long Winter captivity they stampeded round the paddock, kicking their light white hooves – snorting with the joy of Spring fever. They were very boisterous, but we decided York might fare better with them, than with the main herd.
It was a couple of days later I noticed York seemed to be looking cleaner when he came up to the gate and pushed his warm pink nose into my hand, anxious for milk.The yellow scum was gone from the young bull’s eye and the caked pads of muck on his tail seemed smaller. A little heifer called Dowager came running up too. She seemed to be after the milk so I pushed her away. Two days later, when York came bounding up to the gate I hardly recognised him! Dowager came too, and quite deliberately barged her little horn buds at me before standing protectively alongside the calf. York finished his bottle at double speed, turned and started to suckle from the little heifers tiny and barely formed udder. A look of dreamy bliss came over his face as he sucked and sucked on the empty teats, while the heifer licked and groomed along his back and over his shoulders.
Since then her maternal instincts, prematurely aroused by the orphan, have developed further. She still grooms him – his smart crest and broad white face are spotlessly clean – and twice a day he suckles, even though no milk will flow from that udder for another twelve months! The difference in his life is simply that he has a friend, someone to curl alongside at night, someone to protect him from bullying. In short, he has a Mum.
- this was still legal in 1982
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