Surrey Homes | SH65 | March 2020 | Good Living supplement inside

Jane Howard’s
Fables from
the Farm
Jane gets set to welcome this year’s calves to
the farm and clarifies the difference between
grass-fed and intensively reared beef
Excitement is rising at Coopers
Farm. It’s nine months now since
our new bull Captain Fantastic
ran out with the cows and hopefully
he’ll live up to his name and produce
some suitably impressive calves. I’ve
been shopping in anticipation of the
patter of tiny hooves. Lubricant, ropes,
iodine and some calf starter paste –
effectively a tube of concentrated Red
Bull – to help the ones exhausted
by a tricky birth get up and get on
with the business of surviving.
It couldn’t be more important. New
calves, like lambs and piglets, are
delivered into a world that is far from
hygienic – no clean sheets or sterilised
bottles for them. Immunity comes
from their mother’s colostrum – the
first thick milk which is stuffed with
antibodies – but the problem is they
can only absorb it for the first six or
seven hours of life. After that, the
lining of their gut changes and they
Captain Fantastic
himself
can no longer absorb the big antibody
molecules. So in the first few hours
they must consume at least two litres
of colostrum and if they don’t, then
the likelihood of them succumbing to
infection in the weeks ahead is high.
And it’s not just the calves that need
to get going; the mother also has to
be a willing partner. So imagine, it’s
three in the morning you’ve pulled and
tugged a healthy calf into the world
and left it with mum to vigorously
lick dry (it’s where the saying lick into
shape comes from) and then push and
nudge to encourage it
to stand up and drink.
Time for a cup of tea.
It’s sooo annoying then
to return back half an
hour later to discover
nothing has happened,
the wet confused calf is
still lying where it was
born and the mother is
nonchalantly munching
hay with the other cows as though
nothing much has happened. This is
most common with heifers – first time
mums – who are far from impressed
by the effort of giving birth and see
no good reason to pursue motherhood
and its associated responsibilities
any further, thank you very much.
What then follows is an hour of
making a slippery, wet, heavy (about
40kg) calf stand up with its head by
her udder. If you open its mouth
and squirt milk from a teat down
its throat, trying to avoid a faceful
yourself, it gets the message and starts
sucking. And then nature takes over
and it doesn’t stop. In these situations,
the only way to encourage mum’s
“Immunity comes
from their mother’s
colostrum – the
first thick milk
which is stuffed
with antibodies”
participation is by bribing her with
food. Give her a bucket of grub and
you usually have about 10 minutes
when she’s more interested in the
bucket than kicking you away, to
get the calf on and sucking. Phew.
We usually calve the heifers first and
then move on to the cows which is all
round less eventful. Not surprisingly if
you’ve already had six or seven calves,
number eight is likely to pop out fairly
quickly and you know exactly what the
job description involves. Happy days.
Except this year there are a few clouds
on the horizon for all
British beef farmers.
I don’t think the beef
industry has done a
good job of explaining
to you, the consumer,
the difference between
eating grass-fed beef
living an outdoor life
pretty much as nature
intended, and eating
intensively reared beef that is fed
inside on a high protein diet – which
pretty much describes all supermarket
beef. It’s important we all eat less
meat, but truth is a plate of grassfed
locally produced steak and chips
has far less environmental impact
in terms of carbon footprint, water
used and food miles travelled than an
avocado (Mexico), tomato (polythene
hothouse in Spain at this time of
year) and mozzarella (Italy) salad
washed down with an almond milk
(California) latte. Food for thought.
Follow Jane Howard – and the farm – on
Instagram @coopersfarm
surrey-homes.co.uk
128