The Dairy Scale

Back in the olden days, some forty years ago when we first bought this farm, the Angus Breed was different in size and temperament. We had large framed, brutish, animals that suited the desires of consumers who were looking for animals to produce copious amounts of meat for their tables. It seemed that bigger was better during those times. The animals were of a crankier variety as well, they tended to think of fences both regular and electrified, as suggestions for boundaries rather than defining lines and would chase off or run down any stray critter or stranger or us if we got too close. Newborn calves were averaging 100 to 110 lbs., the birthing was very difficult for the cows and the babies. Manually ‘pulling’ a calf to help the straining mother was common. We lost a lot of cows due to the strain of delivery. The calves were slow to recover from the trauma and had a hard time getting their legs to work properly.

Once the calves were born, we wanted to record the birth weights. If the cow was in the barn when she delivered, we could move the baby into a platform scale chute (think of the scale platform in a doctors office, enlarge it to measure up to a ton of raging critter and ring it with wooden beams as strong as railroad ties). Usually one person held the calf on the platform while another read the weight from outside the chute, then the holder would have his/her weight subtracted from the total for the calf size to be documented. The person on the outside of the platform was also in charge of keeping the cow from tearing down the platform and flattening the holder. It was not a comfortable, quiet or relaxing experience for humans or cattle.

If the calf was born out in the field, we used a Dairy Scale to get the weight of a newborn. This action took at minimum two people, one to lift the calf in a sling attached to the hook at the bottom of the scale and one to read the numbers as the calf was lifted off the ground (not always easy if the birth was in the middle of the night, in the middle of a storm or if the mother was unwilling to cooperate). It was wise to use three people for this procedure because the cow was not happy with the humans that were trying to mess with her newborn and a strong person with a long stick came in handy to keep injuries to all all involved to a minimum.

Nowadays, the Angus Breed has pared down from the bulky ancestors. Lean beef has taken over what consumers are demanding. Lighter frames with shorter bones are the norm. Calves born 65 to 80 lbs., are much more common, they are ready to stand in a few minutes and nursing within the first hour of birth. It is like they hit the ground running, are vigorous and grow quickly. The temperament of the Breed has been something we have consciously monitored throughout the years, if a critter was a fence jumper, mean or nasty we tended to cull the animal from the herd. We encouraged the traits that were of a smaller stature and calmer (even though the mothering instinct continues to be very strong to ensure the calves are safe, we do not get ran over nearly as often as we used to in the olden days).

The Dairy Scale has come in handy over the years and it still works best when at least two people are involved with one lifting and one reading the weight. Mike with his ‘dead eye precision’ had been perfecting his craft over the years and we found that his predictions of the weight of a newborn was as accurate as the Dairy Scale. We pull the Scale out of mothballs every once and a while, but more often than not, we use Old Dead Eye for the official weight in rather that introduce a lot of bothering to the newborn and to the mother.

[Thank you to a special reader that asked the question of weights after reading about one of our recent births! I love to have the opportunity to share the answers.]

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