Ochre

Ochre the cow entered our lives over ten years ago when we decided to upgrade our cattle herd with stud stock. We finally settled on Queensland’s own breed, Droughtmasters. Purchased from a Droughtmaster stud, Ochre had the official name of Okra. All stud cattle have two registered names for identification purposes, the stud name first and then the animal’s own name. We found that “Okra” was just too harsh and unofficially renamed her.

Two attributes were very much apparent from the start. Ochre had a mind of her own, and she was not just any type of cow. Her price alone established that fact.

While her largish flap in front of her udder was an initial detraction during her previous entries at local Agricultural Shows, the size of her udder and the calf she was feeding gave very good indications for her future as a breeder. The stud manager told us she was definitely a future “Top Cow”.

Introducing Ochre to the herd was a somewhat bittersweet exercise since the then Top Cow (TC) was a crossbred Brahmin favourite called Deary (as she looked vaguely deer-like). Deary had taken over the small herd and ran a tight ship. She wasn’t about to relinquish her title without a fight. The contest when it came was fairly mild however and Ochre assumed the title with a minimum of fuss and just a few head-to-heads to sort out who was heavier and stronger.

When it came time to breed, Ochre was everything we had hoped for. The standard is one calf per year and Ochre kept to this routine with unnerving rectitude. When the time came to be joined, Ochre would place her rear end as close as possible to the bull’s nose and swish her tail backwards and forwards energetically. This ensured the bull got the maximum dose of pheromones and told him he needed to get working.

Ochre never willingly overstepped the mark, although she came close once. Once when I was taking some feed to the feeder, the herd decided to make a run to see who could get to the feeder first. As TC, Ochre was of course leading the charge. I became aware of the avalanche of enthusiastic bovines with an average weight of at least 600 to 700 kilos rapidly advancing just behind me. Reaction times in these circumstances are very tight. I swung around and punched Ochre in the forehead with my gloved hand. Ochre stopped abruptly and gave me a horrified look as if to say, “I wouldn’t have crushed you.” While I accepted her apology I’m sure the same could not have been said for some of the other cattle.

Those keeping large animals and cattle in particular must establish very clearly who is the boss. Cattle have a well defined hierarchy that is rigidly maintained through continual competition. Head-to-head tussles usually settle who is the stronger and heavier and the loser gives way without too much fuss. In a herd without a bull, the matriarch is always Top Cow while ever she can maintain her authority.

Being TC can lead to some interesting challenges. When I had to lead the herd to another paddock (as the substitute bull), Ochre would lead the rest of the herd behind me. I would then have to demonstrate that the gate was open and the way clear to progress into the new paddock or into the cow pens. When Sue was following me however, she would have to have a discussion with Ochre as to who would be next in line to follow me. Sometimes Ochre would defer to Sue and sometimes Sue would say, “You go”, and Ochre would dutifully take over in second place with Sue following her. Then the rest of the herd would follow in order of precedence.

To those who may scoff at the notion that cattle can talk, I can only say the cattle do talk, they just don’t speak. If you know how to communicate with animals, and cattle in particular, it’s mostly fairly easy to interpret once you are accepted by the herd.

Here are two of many examples of how Ochre and I communicated. As I walked to the gate of the paddock one day where the herd was, Ochre gave me her “look”. That look said to me, “Please give me your attention.” She then purposefully looked at the water in the large fenced-off dam and then looked back at me. I got the message and walked down to where the cattle watering trough is next to the windmill that fills it from the bore. The plastic pipe between the header tank and the trough had been broken, presumably during a minor scuffle to see who would have the first drink. The 3000-gallon header tank had drained dry and there was no water in the trough. If Ochre had not told me about the problem, the herd would have suffered needlessly.

On another occasion as I was walking past the paddock, Ochre came to the gate and gave me “the look”.

“What is it?” I asked, and she used her head to “point” to the middle of the paddock.

“Oh oh!” I thought. That might be a poisonous snake or perhaps some other problem. Opening the gate, I told Ochre to show me what she was pointing to.

Ochre walked over to the middle of the paddock and again pointed with her nose to something in the long grass. As I came up to her, I could see a large reptilian head slowly progressing through the grass.

What I first took to be a large snake turned out on closer inspection to be a very large freshwater turtle, slowly perambulating through the grass. He obviously thought he would travel from the large dam to the top dam for a change of scenery, however he wasn’t to know that the top dam was empty. Picking him up by the shell I carried him back to the large dam. He thanked me by urinating down the leg of my jeans and I had to put up with that sour smell for the rest of the day.

Ochre would check on the pregnancy of other cows by placing her forehead gently on the other cow’s abdomen and listening to the foetal heartbeat.

One of the down sides of running a cattle stud is that you have to sell animals and cull the herd in order to maintain a business. Ochre’s third calf was a bull and we named him “Red” to go with Ochre. Red turned out to be his mother’s pride and joy and when the time came for Red to be weaned and sold, Ochre’s heart was clearly broken.

In order to prevent any inbreeding and to improve selected bloodlines, a cattle stud has to constantly change breeding bulls. It was very noticeable that the cows had their favourites. Bulls with a non-symmetrical face or other less desirable features were merely tolerated as a sort of necessary evil. However when a champion stud bull arrived that clearly had very good features and a pleasant personality, all the cows lined up along the fence and “lolled” their eyes at him. Clearly it was love at first sight.

Whenever I opened the back door, if the cattle were in sight, Ochre’s head would come up and her head would follow me until she established to her satisfaction what I was doing. If I looked like organising some feed at the cattle yards, Ochre was on to it instantly. 

For some reason, last year’s calving seemed to take a lot out of Ochre. She lost condition and only improved after we separated her from the herd and gave her special food and treatment.

This year’s calf seemed to take a lot more out of Ochre. She started to lose condition seriously and we worried about her health. The calf arrived as usual after nine months but Ochre seemed to lose interest in eating. So bad had her condition become that she was supplanted as TC by Apricot, one of her original herd.

We separated Ochre and her calf as we did last year and fed her up with all the good things she usually liked—grain and pellets, molasses and even green lucerne hay. While she would eat a small portion, she seemed to have lost her appetite completely, yet she still fed her calf.

As she wasn’t responding, we called the vet and he eventually treated her with antibiotics and a rehydration pack. It was not easy getting her into the cattle crush, and Ochre in distress seemed to have taken on a life of her own. She put both the vet and me up on the rails a few times before we eventually got her in to be treated. After her treatment she seemed to respond, however the next day she was looking as woebegone as ever and we called the vet again.

After another energetic yarding session when both the vet and I were on the top of the rails looking down at Ochre tearing around the yards, we eventually got her into the crush for treatment. The vet smelt her breath and told us she was to the point of using her body to provide milk for the calf.

The vet suggested we put her in a small grassy paddock and let her decide what she wanted to do. He thought Ochre’s problem was internal and probably cancer. As he pointed out, cattle are mammals like humans and get the same problems.

We had to keep her away from the other cattle as she was constantly being butted out of the way and we were afraid for her and the calf. I put some pellets out for the rest of the herd and Ochre seemed only slightly interested. Her calf definitely seemed to be hungry and wanted to eat some pellets with the other calves.

I watched her as she watched me and then she seemed to stumble and trip. Over on her left side she fell, with a look of surprise and mild panic in her eyes. Her legs flailed as she tried to get up and then her eyes lost their gloss, her legs stretched out and with one final tremor, she died.

Ochre would never leave the farm where she had lived and worked. It had now become her final resting place. I hold back tears as I write this final testament to her.

That was a month ago and Ochre lives on in her calf. I decided to call the calf Oliver as in Oliver Twist, given he is now an orphan. At one month old, he had already started to develop a rumen so bottle feeding was thankfully not required.

Oliver is now over two months old and doing well. He gets a brush twice daily along with his calf pellets. He has fresh straw to sleep on in his little cattle house and he gets the best of everything we can offer. He is growing very well and very energetic. Sue thinks he looks on me as his surrogate mother.

So there you have the story of Ochre. Who says cattle are just dumb animals?

Paul Oates farms near Boonah in southern Queensland, within sight of the Border Ranges.