She walked me through it on the phone. First round of shots at weaning, a respiratory vaccine and a seven-way for blackleg. A pour-on wormer. Booster round two to three weeks later. Fresh water, long-stem hay, a little feed in the bunk every day.
“The first week is the hard part,” she said. “They’ll bawl and walk the fence. Watch for any calf standing off by himself with his head down. You call me the minute you see that.”
I said I would.
I did not know yet how many times I was going to call her.
We weaned on the tenth of September. My neighbor’s boy came over to help me sort cows off, and then he had to get back to his own place. After that, it was just me.
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Eighty-four calves. Forty-four steers and forty heifers. I ran every one of them through the chute that first day, gave both shots, poured the wormer, and turned them into the pens beside the house.
By the time I finished, my arms shook and the sun was going down behind the windbreak. My shirt was soaked through. I had a bruise on my thigh the size of a saucer from a steer that did not want the chute.
That night they bawled. All of them. The cows bawled back from across the fence, and the whole place sounded like the end of the world.
Shelby lay awake beside me and said, “Does it always sound like this?”
“Three days,” I said. “Maybe four.”
It was four.
The Calls
The second morning, I found a heifer standing off by the water tank with her ears down and her nose running. I stood at the fence and watched her for ten minutes. Then I called Dr. Solberg.
It was a little after six in the morning. She answered on the second ring.
“Temperature?” she asked.
“I haven’t caught her yet.”
“Catch her,” she said. “Then call me back.”
I caught her. She was running a fever of a hundred and five. Dr. Solberg told me what to give her and how much. By the next morning the heifer was eating again.
That was the first call.
The third morning, I called about a steer that was limping. It was a stone bruise. The fourth morning, I called because three calves had not come up to the bunk, and I wanted to know whether to worry.
“Some of them take a week to figure out a bunk,” she said. “Put a little hay on top of the feed. They’ll come.”
They came.
After that it got to be a habit. Every morning at about six, I would walk the pens with a flashlight in my hand and then call her from the tailgate of my pickup as the sky went grey and then pink.