This is day 2 of our 7-day series on the farm characters. Yesterday we met the cow that always seems to know when something is happening. Today we are dealing with an entirely different sort of personality. Every dairy farm seems to have one cow that regards fences, gates and carefully planned boundaries as more of a personal challenge than a restriction. She is the escape artist.
There is always one
You can have a perfectly respectable fence. The posts are straight, the wires are tight, the electric fence is working and there is no obvious reason whatsoever for a cow to be anywhere other than exactly where you put her. And yet, somehow, one cow is on the wrong side of it. It is not necessarily the first time either. She may have escaped yesterday, she may have escaped last week, or she may have been responsible for a series of unexplained appearances in places where cows definitely should not have been. At some point, the farmer stops being surprised and simply starts asking where she is.
The remarkable thing is that the rest of the herd can be perfectly content where they are. There she is, however, standing somewhere else entirely. It is difficult not to give a cow like that a reputation, particularly when she has demonstrated more than once that she has an impressive ability to turn up where she was not invited.
The fence is not the enemy
It is easy to imagine that an escape artist is deliberately plotting her next move, particularly when she has developed a history of getting out. In reality, there can be many perfectly ordinary reasons an individual cow ends up on the wrong side of a boundary. She may have found a weakness that was already there, followed an opening, pushed through somewhere that gave way or simply taken advantage of circumstances that happened to suit her. What makes her memorable is not necessarily that she understands how the fence works. It is that she keeps finding opportunities.
Once a farmer has dealt with the same cow escaping several times, however, it becomes very difficult not to wonder whether she has somehow worked out that certain places are worth investigating. We cannot know what is going through her mind, and there is no need to turn an ordinary bit of cow behaviour into something more complicated than it is. But when the same animal repeatedly ends up in unexpected places, she earns her reputation honestly.
The investigation begins
Finding an escaped cow can turn into an investigation surprisingly quickly. You know where the herd is supposed to be, you know where the cow is not supposed to be, and now you need to work out how she got there. You walk the fence line, check the gate and look for a post that has shifted, a wire that has sagged or an opening that was not there yesterday. Sometimes the answer is obvious. Sometimes it is not.
Then there are the occasions when the fence appears completely innocent. Everything looks fine, yet the cow is standing outside. At that point, there is usually a moment when the farmer simply looks at the situation and wonders what on earth has happened. The cow, meanwhile, is rarely providing a statement or offering any useful explanation.
This is where farming experience comes into its own. A farmer who knows the property well will often have a pretty good idea of the places worth checking first. Years of seeing how animals move around the farm build up a sort of mental map. It is not something that necessarily gets written down, but it becomes part of knowing the place.
Some cows earn a reputation
Once a particular cow has escaped more than once, her reputation grows. Her number becomes familiar, her habits become familiar and her favourite opportunities become familiar. If she has a history of getting through a particular gate, that gate is suddenly treated with considerably more suspicion. If she has somehow managed to find a weak point in a particular section of boundary, somebody remembers it.
This is one of the interesting things about working with animals over a long period. Farmers develop an informal knowledge of individual cows that would be difficult to capture in a manual. They know which cow tends to be where, which one needs watching in certain situations and which one has a history of doing something unexpected.
When somebody says, "She's out again," there is rarely any need for further explanation. Everyone knows exactly who they mean.
The problem with success
There is another reason an escape artist can become such a character. Once a cow has found herself somewhere different, she may discover that the new location suits her rather well. Perhaps there is a patch of grass she likes, perhaps she has found herself somewhere quieter, or perhaps there is simply something about the other side of the boundary that interests her. We cannot assume she has deliberately decided to repeat the escape, but from the farmer's perspective the pattern can certainly become noticeable.
Once a cow has demonstrated that a particular boundary can be crossed, nobody is especially keen to give her the opportunity to prove it again. The practical response is usually straightforward. The farmer repairs the fence, checks the gate, strengthens something, moves something or changes the arrangement that allowed the escape to happen.
The problem is solved, and everyone gets on with the day. At least until the next time.
The unexpected part of the job
There is a particular kind of interruption that comes with having an escape artist on the farm. You might have a full day mapped out, jobs waiting, somewhere you need to be and probably several things that were already supposed to have been finished. Then someone spots a cow where she should not be and suddenly the plan changes.
This is one of the realities of farming that is difficult to explain to people who have never worked around livestock. A farm is not a workplace where everything remains obediently in place until you have time to deal with it. Animals have their own movements and reactions, and occasionally they have their own ideas about where they would rather be. The escape artist simply seems to have a particularly strong opinion.
Sometimes it is a minor interruption. The cow is quietly standing in the wrong paddock and can be guided back without much fuss. Other times, the situation becomes considerably more complicated, particularly if the cow has decided that she would prefer to continue exploring.
The chase nobody planned
Getting an escaped cow back where she belongs can be surprisingly straightforward, but it can also become an event. There is a difference between a cow quietly standing somewhere she should not be and a cow who has decided that being caught is not currently on her agenda.
Suddenly there are people appearing from different directions, gates being opened and closed, plans being reconsidered and a surprising amount of concentration being applied to one particular animal. The farmer is trying to think several steps ahead while the cow is simply trying to keep moving. Sometimes the whole thing is over in minutes. Other times it becomes the story everyone talks about later.
There is something particularly frustrating about spending half an hour trying to deal with one escaped cow when the rest of the herd is carrying on as though nothing remotely interesting is happening. The escape artist, meanwhile, appears to have all the time in the world.
Why every farm remembers one
The escape artist becomes memorable because she creates stories. Years of farming produce plenty of ordinary days, but it is often the unexpected events that stick in people's minds. The cow that somehow appeared in the wrong paddock, the one that turned up somewhere nobody expected or the one that made everyone wonder how she possibly got through all become part of the farm's history.
Eventually, her escape record becomes part of the farm folklore. Someone new arrives and gets introduced to her, usually with a warning that is delivered with a mixture of amusement and resignation. It is not necessarily that she is difficult or troublesome in every other respect. She may be a perfectly ordinary cow most of the time. But she has a talent, and on a dairy farm, talents have a habit of becoming reputations.
Some cows leave a mark
There is something rather amusing about the fact that an animal can become memorable for doing something that, on paper, is hardly remarkable. She is a cow, she finds a way out, the farmer puts her back, the fence gets fixed and life continues. Yet when people look back on their time on a particular farm, these are often the little stories they remember.
They remember the characters that made everyday farm life unpredictable. They remember the cow that always managed to get out, the places she was found and the occasions when everyone had to stop what they were doing to put things right again. The escape artist becomes part of the fabric of the place, not because she has done anything extraordinary, but because she has managed to make herself memorable.
Every farm has boundaries. Every farmer knows where those boundaries are. And every now and then, there will be one cow who seems determined to remind everyone that boundaries only work if everyone agrees to respect them. Fortunately, there is no shortage of fences. Unfortunately for the farmer, there is usually no shortage of cows willing to test them.
Tomorrow, we meet a very different farm character: the boss cow, the one who seems to have appointed herself in charge of the herd without waiting for anyone else to approve the position. See you tomorrow for day 3 of the farm characters.