Jasper the Cow

Bah, vegetarians. So bloody self righteous and lecturing they secretly think they're so much better than the rest of us because they've managed to survive despite eliminating from their diet foodstuffs which are packed full of lovely protein, fat and tastiness. Cry me a river you hippies. My ex-girlfriend Amy however has my complete respect for eating just leaves.

A few years ago she took on a temporary job as a receptionist / general admin assistant at a farm in Fife that also did B&B, hired out a refurbished shed for big events, quad-biking etc. Amongst all these activities they also had a small flock of cows*. One day I was told excitedly that someday soon there would be some calves being born and apparently Amy, with her exciteable nature, had managed to wrangle getting let out of the office and would be accompanying some of the other staff members to the barn where she could see them.

A couple of days later she came home quite sad that apparently one of the smallest calves didn't look too healthy, wasn't feeding and looked like he was going to die. This poor cow was the runt of the litter and it wasn't likely to survive. Worse still, since disposing of even a mini-cow corpse was effort, a farmer down the road was going to come pick up the poor thing for free and use him to feed his dogs. Amy was distraught.

She pestered her boss endlessly to try and save him - I've been on the end of this pestering many times and I pitied him. He quickly caved and the calf was given some sort of vitamin/protein/glucose injection. As he was so weak he hadn't ever been suckled by his mother and she had now rejected him so milk formula was made up. The first lot went down without touching the sides so another batch was made. This seemed to do the trick and it looked like a few extra days of rest and feeding had spared him from becoming I Can't Believe It's Not Winalot. As Amy's persistance had saved the poor sod she was allowed to name him. He was called Jasper.

Later when a vet examined Jasper it turned out he had a hole in his heart but he was fine enough now and he just wandered around the field contentedly. He made friends with one of the bulls since he'd been shunned by his mother. The formula milk had to be made for him every day and Amy even got to feed him a couple of times. Apparently he excitedly and affectionately slobbered over the carrier of the milk and mooed for more when it was all gone.

Amy and I moved away from Fife but she kept in contact with the friends she'd made at the farm. The reality of the purpose of breeding cattle hit home a while later when she was told that Jasper and most of the other cows were to be butchered at the age of 18 months. This is farming in the UK folks (I can tell you that this farm was a bloody good one though who looked after their animals properly). Almost immediately Amy became a vegetarian for the first time in her life. If enough people gaz me I'll upload a pic of the little fella, he was very cute.

* - if you pass by a field with cows in it with a mate say,
"Look! A flock of cows!"
"*Herd* of cows."
"Of course I've heard of cows, there's a flock of them over there."
( djtrialprice, Tue 12 Jun 2007, 17:01, Reply)