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My mouth dropped open when I saw that he was holding a small length of chain. I backed away. “What are you going to do with that?”
“Pull the calf,” he said, not looking my direction. He was too intent on his task. “Can you hold this?” He shoved the flashlight at me. “Keep it pointed at the birth canal.”
I grabbed it because he was letting it go and moving on whether I was ready or not. I held the heavy flashlight and tried to keep it steady as he wrapped the chain in small loops around the two hooved legs that were extending out the back end of the mother cow.
And then he did exactly what he’d described. He started pulling on the chains, literally yanking the calf out of its mother.
“Push, mama,” he said, as if the mother could understand any of what he was saying. Whether or not the cow was pushing, Reece was definitely pulling. Pulling so hard his muscles strained against his flannel shirt.
It was cold outside, but after a few minutes of pulling, sweat beaded on his forehead. The calf had slid a few inches out, but if Reece’s occasional slipped swear words were any indication, it wasn’t going as smoothly as he hoped.
“Dammit, we’re gonna need the big calf-puller. Can you hold this so it doesn’t slip back inside?”
Oh crap, he was talking to me?
“Uh, okay.”
He’d hooked a handle onto the chains and we did the most awkward handoff. “Just keep pulling,” he instructed. “Don’t let it slip back in.”
Great. No pressure. I dug my feet into the dirt that made up the ground of the barn and pulled as hard as I could to keep up the pressure of pulling that Reece had started while he disappeared into the darkness.
The mother cow was no less restless now that we were yanking a calf from her womb, the poor calf straddled half-in, half-out.
“How long can the calf last like this?” I asked. “Isn’t this bad for it?”
“Sorry, I should have told you. It’s probably already gone. To be breech for that long, there’s not much hope. But we’ve got to get it out to save the mother.”
His words hit me like a brick to the face. It’s probably already gone.
I didn’t stop pulling, though. It was just a cow, I tried to remind myself. A commonplace enough tragedy.
Still, there were stupid tears in my eyes by the time Reece got back with a contraption even more medieval than the chains.
It was a long pole with a T shape on the end that he braced against the back end of the cow. Then he attached a crank to the handle of the pull chains. Instead of us pulling, he turned the crank. Braced against the back of the cow’s behind and legs, it had far more pulling power than either of us.
And inch by inch, the calf emerged from its mother.
Finally, in one last whoosh, the calf came all the way out and fell in one slippery plop onto the floor of the barn enclosure.
Reece immediately tossed the calf-puller pole down and leaned down. Then he let out a little whoop. “It’s alive. Holy shit, I can’t believe it. Little guy’s actually alive!”
“Oh my God, really?”
I couldn’t tell, it was lying limp on the ground. I leaned down, aiming the flashlight closer.
But Reece was getting right in there, sticking his fingers in the little calf’s mouth, checking its airways were clear, I assumed. And indeed, little eyes blinked open against the light, befuddled.
The animal was wet and slick with blood and afterbirth, and then the wet had gotten dirty and muddy from the floor, but it was also one of the most amazing things I’d ever seen in my entire life.
I’d just witnessed the birth of life.
“What now?” I asked excitedly. “Will it nurse?” I looked back up at its mother who was still banging against the chute agitatedly. Maybe she was just trying to get to her new baby?
“First let’s get them both out of here into the yard,” Reece said. “It’s cold out there but maybe if we give them some space Mama will clean…” Reece lifted one of the baby’s legs, “her off and she can get to nursing like any other calf.”
Reece tried to pick the little calf up to see if she would stand on her legs, but she just immediately collapsed right back into the dirt. “Come on, little lady,” Reece said.
Then he lifted it into his arms like it was nothing, even though the calf had to weigh at least sixty pounds, probably more, and carried it towards the other end of the barn that opened to another much smaller pasture, more just a small yard.
