My Grandad used to have a Jersey herd. That was long gone by the time I was born, but I do remember two old cows, which My Uncle Tony used to look after, and which lived in retirement with a donkey called Tina at my Grandad's house. Occasionally, someone would try and sit me on the back of one of these poor old cows and neither she nor I were very impressed.
Then, some years later, when I was about twelve, my mum and dad bought a Jersey calf who we called Buttercup. It was a great excitement, because she was going to be our house cow! I didn't realise at the time (because childen always assume that everyone else lives similar lives to themselves) that it was a bit weird to have a house cow. Especially as we lived in suburbia, and my mum and dad had normal jobs, my dad leaving for work every morning dressed in a smart pinstripe suit and carrying a black leather briefcase. This was the late seventies/ early eighties and my parents were basically Barbara and Tom from the TV comedy The Good Life.
We already drank our own milk and mum made our own butter. But it was from Philipa, and Philipa was a goat. So none of us really liked it. Philipa was also getting a bit old and her teats nearly dangled on the floor. Hence, to buy Buttercup was entirely logical, it seemed.
A cow was nothing new to us, as we already had a suckler herd in our oversized garden. It was a herd of one, who was imaginatively called Beefy. Buttercup would serve the dual purpose of feeding our family, and providing Beefy with some much needed companionship.
Our quality of life immediately improved. The butter was no longer white and watery, and the milk no longer made us gag. The problem was we had rather a lot of it. And it was mainly cream. To tackle this, mum made industrial quantities of butter which she stored. She gave the finest stuff to our freinds and neighbours, whilst us kids were fattened up on the older stuff which was often a bit rancid. When we eventually refused to eat this any longer (my older sisters were firmly in their stroppy teenage years by this stage), mum and dad decided to buy a pig to help us out. She was called Gertrude (and later, Ermintrude, then Betty). Our pigs were Tamworths, a very pretty ginger breed, with lovely dark and flavoursome meat.
So there we all were: Mum, Dad, my sisters Helen and Judith, and Philipa, Beefy, Buttercup and Gertrude. Plus various hens, ducks, dogs, cats and sheep. These were my family, and it is fair to say that I now know it was a bit unconventional. My teachers never quite believed me when I arrived late to school because Buttercup needed chasing back from next door's garden, or dad needed to detour to the abattoir on the way to school to drop off some of Gertrude's babies, or there'd been a fox-based massacre in the hen shed which needed sorting out. It was particularly unfair when I got a detention for having a large streak of cow placenta on my blazer; I'd simply got caught up with looking after one of Buttercup's new calves in the morning before catching the bus to school.
Although it was the life I was born into, I wasn't always over enamoured by these farm animals. Mostly, I resented the extra jobs they entailed. Trudging through muddy fields to help feed the ducks and collect eggs before school, or helping to muck out the pigs at the weekend were not really on my priority list when I just wanted to be like everyone else and play on my ZX Spectrum (which I never did get!) or ride around on my BMX (that neither!). But gradually, as I got a bit older, I guess I became suckered in.
Certainly, by the time my sisters had both left home for University and I was home alone, I was quite enjoying the farming stuff. Driving a tractor helped: it was much more exciting than steering a pretend car in a computer game. My mum and dad also started going away by themselves by this stage, leaving me home alone to look after the small farm that we had by now moved to. Truth be told, I relished the responsibilty this brought, and left to my own devices I would merrily play farmer whilst my Grandma "supervised" - or at least stood by to phone the emergency services (a.k.a. mum and dad's real farmer friends) should anything go too catastrophically wrong. I was 15 years old when I was first left in charge. And this is when I would have first become close to Buttercup.
Dad used to milk Buttercup every morning before going to work, and again in the evening. She was brought into a stall in the shippon, tied by a chain around her neck, and milked using a small portable milking machine attached to a vacuum line above the stall, which was powered by a rather phlegmy sounding electric vacuum pump mounted on the wall. Her milk was then poured through a paper milk sock (filter) to remove the worst lumpy bits (with my veterinary knowldege, I now know that Buttercup suffered from a form of painless but chronic mastitis for most of her life!), and bottled up in glass bottles which were sealed with a green foil top. It amounted to about two gallons (16 pints) per day. The stuff that the pigs and the rest of our family didn't consume was free to a good home!
So when Mum and Dad decided to jet off to Sorento - the first time they'd holidayed without us kids in many a year - it was barely with a backwards glance, as I tentatively donned my dad's cloth cap (to fool Buttercup into thinking I was him, he said!) and took on this milking responsibility.
If you know cows, especially Jersey cows, you'll know this could never be a smooth operation. Jerseys are exceptionally clever and exceptionally stubborn, and Buttercup had me wrapped round her little finger from the get-go. The only way I could get her to do anything like co-operate was through blatant bribery with extra nuts. She pleaded innocence and ignorance throughout and made out she had no idea which stall she was supposed to stand in, or which way round she should stand. She knocked over the milking machine several times, and delighted in kicking me in the face when I went to correct it. To top it off, she would squeeze at least four wees out, and wait until I was right besides her to remove the milking cups before shitting and simultaneously swishing her tail vigorously across my face.
Several buckets of cow cake bribes later, and a lot of pleading from me, Buttercup gambolled back to her paddock, and I limped indoors with my paltry pail of milk, fouled with straw and muck. It was all only to be repeated in a maelstrom of frustration a few hours later that very afternoon.
But the next morning was slightly better. I remembered what my dad had taught me about putting my head firmly in Buttercup's flank whilst I sat besides her and washed her teats and placed on the milking cups. From a very practical point of view, it's difficult to get a good strike with a back foot when your head is so closely engulfed within the fold which separates the udder from the back leg. Again, I now understand from my veterinary knowldege that pressure exerted exactly here makes it quite difficult to raise the back foot. I also remembered what my dad had said about talking to Buttercup, in a soft voice, whilst I went about the work. This, he told me, would let her know where I was which would mean she would be less startled by my clammy hands suddenly touching her udder.
So it was, with a running commentary of what I was doing, and my head pressed firmly into her side, that Buttercup and I gradually became a team. By the end of the week, she was walking into the correct stall, the right way round, and kept her head still whilst I put the chain around her neck (OK, that bit still took a bit of extra bribery!). She was filling the steel bucket with milk, and there was no shitting or pissing or swearing or frustration or kicking from either of us. I think she actualy began to quite like me (and not just because of the extra cake I was feeding her) and I certainly began to quite like her.
And that was it. Me and Buttercup were mates. Emboldened by their initial taste of childless freedom, and making use of my labour before I too left home, my mum and dad went away a bit more often over the next couple of years, and I looked forwards to my milking stints. Meanwhile at school, I decided that becoming a brain surgeon might involve a few too many years of study, and too much time spent indoors, and so at the last minute, at the age of 17 and on a carefree whim I put down veterinary science instead of medicine for my five university choices.
It was the beginning of a life working with cows.
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