Would you rather
Cow edition
My husband tells me my last post was a little, uh, disjointed. He says I wrote this whole thing about one topic (the fat rendering project) and then abruptly switched to whining about safety seals on heavy cream. My apologies, but welcome to my brain.
And as a follow-up to the tallow debacle, I will just say that I wound up straining what liquid I had after 8 hours and chucking the rest of the fat in the trash. I figured if it hadn’t melted by then it wasn’t going to. The tallow I wound up with is beautiful and white and clean and I can’t wait to fry some potatoes in it.
There. Now we all have fat closure. On to the next topic.
While Ben and I were walking last night, this question came up:
Would you rather be lonely or an outcast?
In other words, would you rather be alone, by yourself and therefore lonely, or with a group but not accepted by the group?
As a lifelong introvert, I can easily say I would rather be lonely. At least you can enjoy a good book, right? And I’ve never had trouble being alone. I realize lonely is different, and I have experienced that a few times, it just never seemed overwhelming to me.
As an enneagram 9, the idea of being an outcast is terrible. If I am with a group but not accepted by the group, that means there is some kind of conflict that is causing me to not be accepted, and the conflict is more than I can bear. I would definitely rather be lonely.
This little bit of drama is currently happening here on Fear Not Farm with Sugar Pie, a Charolais heifer we acquired as a bottle calf last December in the great steer hunt, which, in case you missed it, you can read about here.
The TLDR version is that Ben was supposed to be sourcing grass-fed steers for processing, but he came home hauling a black angus cow (Thelma) and a Charolais heifer (Sugar Pie), neither of which was a steer, and one of which was going to be labor intensive for a while. But look how cute she was. My husband is a cow impulse-buyer.
There was also a Belted Galloway cow/calf pair (Oreo and Chip)—also not steers—but they’re both gone now so we won’t mention them here.
Sugar Pie and Chip were best buddies until Chip went to the sale barn a while back. (Did you know cows have BFFs?) Then she made friends with the two new calves, Jett and Poppy.
Somewhere in there the herd decided Sugar Pie was an outcast and started being mean to her. The cows would head-butt her away from the feed trough and just generally be mean to her. I watched one adult cow put her nose under Sugar Pie’s belly and toss her away from the others. Then we noticed that when they all gathered in one place, they would run her off. She was not allowed to even stand near them.
I hear you saying, “Awww!” and feeling sorry for her and that’s exactly how I feel. I want to charge in there and show those cows who’s boss but then I remember they outweigh me by a thousand pounds. It kills me to watch, but it is a natural part of herd behavior and we can’t change it. If there is one they think is weak, they exclude that one to keep the herd stronger. It’s natural selection happening in real-time. The best we can do is try to keep Sugar Pie safe.
All that was going on when she got pinkeye.
This was right around the time we were going to “work” the cows anyway, which means running them all through the chute, tagging any untagged calves, banding bull calves, giving shots, worming, and putting fly tags in their ears. So while Sugar Pie was in the head gate, we doctored her all up and off she went with the rest of the herd.
The pinkeye was persistent though, and she lost at least partial sight in one eye, maybe both. Plus she was traumatized by all the doctoring, and now she’s pretty skittish around us. So one day when the herd was being moved to a new paddock, which we do daily, she refused to follow them and ran the other direction.
We figured it wouldn’t be such a bad thing to isolate her from the rest for a little while until the pinkeye was completely gone, so we left her where she was. She had plenty of grass, her own water tank, mineral, and shade. And no one was bullying her.
She. Is. Miserable.
For the first few days she stood at her fence line and bawled for the herd—the same ones who head-butted her and tossed her aside like a rag doll.
This fascinates me and I keep thinking about it. I realize they are animals and we are humans, but here’s the question I am asking:
Would I rather be lonely or an outcast?
I’ve already given you my answer: I would rather be lonely.
Sugar Pie would rather be an outcast. She would rather be with the herd even though they exclude her, don’t want her there, and they’re mean to her. She would rather be a hated cow in a herd than a loved (by humans) cow by herself.
Instinct is so strong. God made cattle to be in herds. He made them to sort out their own pecking order and to have a lead cow, which, interestingly, is almost never the bull. Currently our lead cow is #40. When it’s time to move the herd, Ben calls her, she comes, and the rest follow. Every once in a while, Sweetheart (the dairy cow), tries to assert her dominance, but she hasn’t taken over just yet.
It’s been fun learning all the things about these animals. God made cattle to know how to work together to keep the flies off everyone’s faces. This is why they stand side by side, nose to tail. He made the mama cows know how to work together to care for the calves. When it’s calving season and there are many babies, the cows will all stash their little ones somewhere to sleep and leave one mama to stay near them. Then the rest of the mamas go off and graze. They take turns having nursery duty and isn’t that just the greatest?
Our current bull (Alfred) does this weird thing where he rounds the whole herd up and makes them stand in one corner of the pen for a while, as if he’s protecting them from something. Or maybe he’s just a control freak. Who knows? Our last bull would follow all the mamas to the feed trough, then stand back and let them eat for a while before he pushed his way in to get some grain. What a gentleman Marvin was.
Sugar Pie’s instinct is to be with the herd—any herd—even the one that doesn’t want her if they are all that’s available. Soon we will be putting her in a different pasture with a few young steers and we’ll see how she does there. We’re hoping she won’t have to be lonely OR an outcast.
So what about you? Would you rather be lonely or an outcast? I’d love to hear your answer and your reasoning.
Started to answer this when I read it at 5am, and then stopped. Four hours later . . . choosing to be lonely is easy and it could be considered to be the cowards way out. I would choose to be an outcast in the group. There are risks to being the outcast. An older animal in a pack, who has outlived his/her usefulness, is often shunned and may be killed simply to preserve resources. Younger members of the group might be harassed for similar reasons. The group offers more protection than being alone does. Being the outcast is, I think, much more difficult than being lonely (alone). It at least affords the opportunity to become part of the group. I don't know what goes through a cow's mind, but it appears that I might be a cow in another life! Don't give up Sugar Pie!
Lonely, given the way it was worded. However, I have always associated loneliness with the desire to be with others. I would rather be by myself most of the time.