For the Love of a Cow...

Sarah
I don’t believe in fate, so much as I believe in rewards and consequences like karma. What good things that you do, as well as bad things, is what you get back. What you give is also what you ask for. In my summer activities, when school is out and it’s time to prepare for MSU’s dairy show or the local Shiawassee County Fair, a cow that participates and is not too unruly gets a five gallon bucket of water after five minutes. On the other hand, if you just ask the glorious Yearling AJs Golden Minor Anarchy....a fifty-two minute walk to Megan Creviere’s house and back till she was tired. Rewards and consequences, these two words were what shaped my life for a while, tho i just felt like I was punished for being born.

You see, My dad never, ever, in a MILLION years paid child support. My mom and him were very young when they had me and never had gotten engaged. He was in highschool and she was in nursing school. He married my stepmom and she paid me and my sister’s child support. Every day from then on was an ongoing war between them and my mother. Penny would get my dad stirred up and me and my sister would get kidnapped and held ransom until my mom agreed to whatever they wanted. she had three kids, 4 if you count the one that won’t talk to her. The only one that turned out remotely right was Kevin, Tony is a little older than me and he is about right but not quite there. My stepsister is who messed up my life a lot. She shoved stuff in me and my sister’s pockets when we were little in order to shoplift, it was fun in all...unless we got caught and I found out quickly that it was wrong and my punishment was a belt. She did all kinds of things, talked about sex, told my dad I talked about sex, belt, said I cursed, belt, said I was humping a teddy bear! once again I got the belt! Sometimes I wondered if my dad just felt like he was teaching me to wear floor length skirts or if he thought I would get pregnant in highschool. I guess things really didn’t get better...or more worse until she did what you could expect happened to a girl that talked about that all the time at 14 and got pregnant. I was completely ignored and all attention and money went to my niece. Which I wouldn't trade for the world by the way. Right about this time is were my life changes slightly with the Sparty spectacular sale. My grandpa talked my dad into going to MSU with him and looking at the calves for sale, I didn’t know about this yet...but he was about to take a large amount of money out of my college fund to buy my first real best friend. I was 10 when I got her, she was barely 2 or 3 weeks old and she would forever be referred to as the only thing my dad ever spent money on for me. The first time I saw her, she was in a small pen that my grandpa built out of boards and twine, something I would later find out to be redneck ingenuity at its finest! something when I got in highschool would introduce me to the people I call my friends. Her full name, which I would find out months later, and have to give up calling her Majesty, was StevenCreast HC Sarah. Sarah was this adorable orangey-brown color that all baby Jerseys are in pictures that quickly win them cutest baby breed in a lot of people’s eyes. In mine, she was the only thing I owned, even if my name wasn’t on the papers. She also had a broken tail, but that never messed with her confidence!

As she got bigger, it became more and more clear that there was something there between us. Sarah was the reward of how much my life sucked, due to crappy parenting. my dad didn’t want to be a parent, my stepmom sucked at parenting, my stepdad had no clue what he stepped into marrying my mom, and my mom pretty much gave up parenting me when a couple years after marrying Bill she found out she was pregnant. I am an anomaly that still somehow manages to be detected only when tempers burst. Before Sarah, it was grandma and grandpas, and a barn full of cows...Now? it was home. As she became a yearling the next year on April 8th her coat darkened and her face and legs turned black, that was me, that was my friend mirroring my reflection. My cousin Ben, and my relationship changed because I had Sarah. His parents bought him a Holstein yearling at the same time I got Sarah, and when she was a bred and milking, they took the calf and sold Madlyn. It’s something I think Ben hates deep down tho he doesn’t show it. Why should I get to keep my calf when he had to sell his? My dad’s side of the family doesn’t emotion, and kindness is weakness; I still don’t do much right in most of their eyes. Sarah didn’t like Ben, or my dad for that matter. When either of them took her from me she showed a spark that she would have for her whole life. She rammed my cousin into the side of the barn, and my dad got thrown around, knocked down and kicked, but he still held on. Sarah even did it to me until we reached a respect in the fact that when you normally watch people show, they smack their cow on the nose when is misbehaves. But I was always different. When I was twelve my dad tried everything in his power to sell Sarah, but, lucky for me she was placed in my grandpas name just incase this kind of thing came up and my dad decided that he was going to sell her. My dad couldn’t railroad me. Besides me, she only liked my grandpa, most likely because that was where the food came from. Things only heated up between us when it was time to breed her…

I remember being really afraid that I wouldn’t be able to show her, and even have to sell her because she wouldn’t catch. I didn’t know that in the future I would have 3 beautiful daughters and a granddaughter from her, all in rotating fashion with bulls. Sarah’s first calf, I had two names picked out right away; I was so excited she was bred. When she threw a bull I was ready! I named him in Tyson. A lot of people, including my grandma still make fun of me and call him Tyson-Chicken-Nugget, the only cow to ever be lactose-intolerant! When he was gone, Sarah caught again and this time had a girl, this one also had a name right way. I begged my grandpa to make me a prefix and when I filled out the registration paper I got my wish. Her name was AJs Golden Talent Sarina, and just like her mother….she was crazy and wild. Her next calf was a bull named Tweeter, and I have never seen a more helpless thing. There was a thunderstorm and lightening was seriously hitting the ground in the field and this calf just stood there with his mom while the other cows ran to the barn. No matter what Sarah did, he just wouldn’t move! In the end, I had to walk to the farthest corner of the pasture, pick him up, and RUN as it down poured and fell six times, dropped him twice, AND lost my boot in the manure swamp. I guarantee that Sarah inwardly laughed and praised me for doing this because she would have left him eventually. It was quite a great video that my mom took, to see me running in an awkward way with my arms full and a big cow running after me too. After him came Anarchy, and she looks so much like Sarah that I’m glad that I have her now. She beat her sister/niece at fair this year. The last calf she had a few weeks ago, Patriot. Sarah never was aggressive with her babies, I could climb in the pen or walk out in the pasture and she would run around and buck and moo as if she was saying “Look what I did! look what I made!”

As Sarah got older, she always got meaner. The milking parlor at MSU and the fair were always like riding a skateboard pulled by a dog, except this dog was huge and there was no skateboard; but I was definitely sliding on the ground. She shoved through everyone, including bigger breeds of cows. Once when that big Brown Swiss you see at fair every year was still milking and Sarah was about two, Caramel got in our way and there was no stopping Sarah as she took on the mammoth that was easily 4x her weight. Long story short Sarah won and I still apologize to Jeanelle for knocking Caramel down. At the same time what can I say? me and Sarah mirror each other in stubbornness. Sarah is big, the normal Jersey as an adult when it stops growing and is in its highest at lactation(giving milk) is easily 900lbs, Sarah as a dry cow(not giving milk) was 1,000lbs. I don’t even want to guess what she weighed while giving! The oldest daughter, Sarina weighs barely 800lbs on a good day and you never know how much milk will come out of her. On a farm of Holsteins and Jerseys, Sarah out milks them all. There is never a tag in Sarah’s ear either, for fair and MSU the cows need a RFID tag. We put one in before MSU and it stays in till the last day of fair and it’s gone by the time she drops the trailer. And I say drop because she is put in the front of the trailer and everyone else is in the back and when she steps off you have to air up the tires of the truck. She has always been a cranky old lady, even as a young lady. Once my sister tried to dump a bucket of water on me and Sarah saw it coming and kicked the bucket right in my sisters face. So she has always had my back, but the one day that I give her the most credit for is when she pretty much saved my life. For the rest of my life, my left knee is going to ache and pain, and I’m going to be grateful because I could be dead or brain dead. My grandpa asked me to start chores for him at this time last year while he finished up the field with the combine. Everytime you do chores, you milk my sisters cow, Sparty, and a big black Holstein named Juno. Juno is out of the biggest cow on the farm and she easily towers over her mother. She also stands right next to Sarah during milking. She has a long track record of kicking. When I took the belt and the Surge off of Juno, I walked out and dumped it in the bucket and brought it back. Juno has kicked me before, but only in the back because I squatted down. I slipped the belt over Sarah’s back and just as I was about to lock the surge into place, Juno kicked my knee and completely shattered it and knocking me onto the ground between them. I hit my head on the concrete floor pretty hard and Juno kept kicking me in the leg and in the hip. Then Sarah started kicking back. I screamed when Juno kicked me in the chest and every headlock clanged because every cow jumped, except for Sarah. I just laid there until everything calmed down and then rolled over under Sarah, she just watched me. I made it over the bar on her right side and fell into the ally way. She knew which leg hurt and kept licking it which didnt feel too good. Later when I was put on crutches, I was told that I had passed out and kept mumbling that “Sarah Saved me” “Sarah didn’t move”. Sarah was my partner in everything, and that would never stop, we had each other.

Sarah was my ticket to the blue ribbon. Hours and hours, up and down Kerby road, cracked hands, bruises, sore muscles, it was all worth it. When we practiced, it looked like I was getting beat up, but we really didn’t practice. We were playing in the driveway and wrestling. My dad tried to show me how to do something and Sarah refused to do it, so the answer to this was to her on the nose, well I burst into tears when he did that and she completely flipped him over her back and ripped her rope free and came back to me. I won showmanship three years in a row, Novice, Junior, and Intermediate. Sarah was my first Reserve champion, something that Sarina would also do in 2015. She was best udder, best dam and daughter pair, best two year old, best three year old, best four year old, Best aged cow and best dry cow. The reward with my work and the reward of those rewards was how deep our bond was. Where my fingers were replaced in the halter, she would switch her feet for the judge. Sarah always watched the judge and knew his or her hand signals too, in case I wasn’t paying attention and that hand went up. Every judge, even when I never won showmanship at MSU, commented on the size and power of this cow, how graceful and regal she moved for how large she was, and how easily when she fought me; I controlled her. Part of Junior, Senior, and Intermediate showmanship, is that they switch your animals with someone else to see how you handle and animal that you don’t know exactly what it may do. The judge would take Sarah’s halter and she would freeze like a picture, watching where I would go; either in front or behind her. The minute some random person would take her, that tail came up and she became an absolute NIGHTMARE. When I watched my dad show, because he was still young enough to show when I was little, his cows would thrash and flip and buck and it scared me. That is how Sarah would act. Part of me felt bad, but the other part was that people say I needed to teach her a lesson, they just needed to mind their business. Someone broke their wrist once from her flipping on her back. When it was time to switched back, with a short tug she was back to normal and her hair went down and she relaxed into the sleek powerful cow again.

Everything tangles with Sarah...she was someone to talk to and knock me down when I got too cocky; And she knew when to tell me that! She was my peace of mind and my warmth whenever my parents ignored me. Being in the middle of all the kids between my sister and half brother, and then also the drama that my step siblings caused, I wasn’t noticed. I would sit on the cover of the Argus press and someone would comment to my dad that I was just amazing with that cow and my dad didn’t care. My stepmom hated the cows. When she would go to the farm; Penny sat in the truck, Sarah didn’t like her much either. If I brought her out of the barn with my stepmom she made a bee-line right for her. Once Sarah sniffed her hair and she screamed...it was all funny till Penny got mad. I got the belt, but that day the ‘belt’ was my gold chained show halter and my pride that made it hurt so bad because I wouldn’t let my dad beat Sarah. So...Sarah was my everything, up until I met Brian. Starting highschool I thought I would get into a long distance relationship. I’m 99.99% sure that Sarah cringed everytime my phone alerted to a text! I was just so in love with this stupid kid from Georgia that I couldn’t blame her for jumping into a ditch when we walked down Kerby road. When that relationship didn’t work out I always had her there. After cuddling and crying to her, my friends Megan and Ryan practically blindfolded and gagged me, drug me to Mount Morris, and shoved me into a vehicle with some crazy 19 year old kid who graduated from Owosso that summer! I would like to say that Brian and Sarah were both rewards for the things I have had to go through before, I’m not a religious person, but it’s as if god said “Hey there! I messed up! Everything happens for a reason, but my reason is that i forgot to guide a teenage farm-boy in his relationship with his mid-twenties girlfriend in their raising you, here’s your payment!”. Between the two of them I had the perfect support system, when one made me mad (mostly Brian), I discussed this problem with the other. The first time Brian met Sarah she snorted and chuffed at him and then after charging him she decided that he was good enough from me. It was hard not to laugh at this of course. Brian thou, fell in love with her daughter, Anarchy, and it was a nice sight to see him next to me in the ring with a cow in his hand. I think he realized that there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in the wrong side of heaven that I wouldn’t throw my girls in my backyard.

This year I retired Sarah from the fair because my grandparents told me she was too old to win anything and she no longer looked good. The Last week of November 2015 Sarah developed a Uterine Infection. My grandpa had surgery and so I had to get up every day and do chores, which explains why I fell asleep in Mrs. Trimble’s first block and Miss Monke’s second block every day. She was getting 10ccs of penecillion in the morning and at night. For an old cow it took me, my sister, and my friend TJ to give it to her. In the morning on December 5th, she only gave enough for Patriot to have 1 bottle and in the afternoon i had to take some from my sisters cow, Sparty, because she gave none. The next day on the 6th, while I was at the fair banquet, she went down and couldn’t get up. A vet came on Monday in the morning and gave her laxitives and anti biotics. That night she wouldn’t come in the barn...I don’t know why...maybe I just wanted the drugs to work, but I made a twine halter and pulled her in with Megan Creviere and Tj pushing her. I was already thinking the worst and I just wanted to think she was okay. The vet had told my grandpa that she had a blockage...like someone forgot to pull the twine out of the hay in the bunk and she ate it. According to him she was bloating because the rumen couldnt push past it...thats why she wasnt eating. thinking about it now with my vast knowlage….while writing this paper; a cow has four stomachs, big stuff gos to the Rumen, while small stuff like grain would just pass to the second stomach easily...so she wouldnt stop eating! A crazy old farmer that I know thinks that when she gave birth to Patriot, she probably ate the placenta, which cows do to get back important minerals and it got stuck somewhere. Whatever really happened I’ll never know and will haunt me for a while. Thursday was the 10th, It seemed that just as I was having a good day, I got called out of second block to go to the office. I hadn’t checked my phone, but later I would find out that no one planned to tell me...but my stepmom wanted to mess me up pretty badly and had texted me: ‘Hey! your cow is dead!’ My sister was down there with Mrs. Lennemon, and she just kept trying to hug me. My first thought was that Brian was in an accident, someone was in an accident! It had to be Brian! I believe in consequences and rewards….I had fought with him before school, so he got in a car accident as the consequence….

Sarah had passed away sometime early in the morning...I still don’t know the exact details because I couldn’t bare to ask or go to the farm. It was like I got shot, my legs came out from under me and I let out some strange noise that had Mr. Constine running and dragging me into a random office so no one would see me. As one good thing for my dad, they said he rented a backhoe or borrowed one and buried her for me so that I wouldn’t have to deal with winter blowing over and the pain of looking at her body for months, and possibly do something stupid.
I’ll never get those moments back...I won’t get more moments. You can act like this is not really a good topic to write about, a few people including my stepdad told me it was nothing but a ‘my dog died’ story. But it’s not. The only people that may relate closely are the people that have lost a dog. People used to call her my ‘Over-Grown-Dog-That-Moos’ Well my ‘dog’ was dangerous, but not to me. My “Dog’ could kick a dog clear a crossed a field. I have tested that with footballs! My ‘Dog’ took four grown men to hold her still to do anything. My ‘Dog’, she lead me to bigger things, greener pastures and strengths that I didn’t know I had by just being the listener and trouble making twin. When the entire dairy barn found out that she had passed away they had a moment of silence on their facebook page for whom they quoted as a ‘LegenDairy Bovine’. May she be remembered alongside Starlit-The-Destroyer and Moonlit-The-Killer, cows that were so crazy their owner couldn’t handle and I had the honor of attempting; For no one attempted Sarah. She was worse than the mother daughter pair put together. I regret retiring her, I wish I could have pulled through one more MSU show and fair. For 2016 is going to be hard, there is no one standing in the first headlock right when you open the milk house door, the largest pile of grain will no longer be placed there, the last cow out of the barn after chores will no longer be the one that walked beside me through everything. When people say “cherish who you have because you may not have them tomorrow!” It’s a true statement. But the one that says “time heals all wounds.” is a lie. Sarah taught me that in the lowest places there is hope and a friend and that giving up isn’t an option, and that’s something that isn’t going to leave me for the rest of my life.