Portage River Farm

At about 2:30am on Saturday evening I was awoken from a sound sleep by Finn, our Labrador retriever, barking in the front room. If you have been reading my blog for a while you will already know that this is not an entirely uncommon occurrence but generally leads to something interesting enough that I can't resist getting out of bed to investigate. Upon joining him in the living room, I could tell by his actions that he was reacting to something that he could hear rather than something he had seen. He wasn't looking directly out of the windows but was instead raising his head toward the ceiling and barking more in the way that dogs react to distant fire engines.

I reached for the sliding door handle, hooked his chain on his collar and we walked out into the night air. From the moment that I slid the door open, I could hear that there was a very loud noise outside. My first impression was that of a siren similar to a tornado warning but more low-pitched.

The noise seemed to be coming from the front of the house so I walked in that direction. Finn came along with me as I strained to pick out the sound over the din of his chain being drug along the boards of the deck. We finally reached the front of the house and the limit of his travel. As I walked further away from him and along the driveway, the origin of the amazingly loud sound became clear.

The noise was not coming from a siren at all but instead was the incredibly loud bawling of a cow. It was clearly coming from the farm across the road from ours. I stood in the darkness, listening to the noise and wondering what was wrong with the animal. This was not the occasional moo of a cow calling to the herd but instead was a nearly continuous calling out by the animal punctuated by fleeting gaps as it drew in another lung-full of air. I was greatly impressed by the sheer force and urgency of the call. I honestly wasn't aware that cows could produce that many decibels. It was easily the loudest animal noise I have ever heard.

I tried to imagine what the cow must be suffering to cause it to call out in this way. Was it being killed by something? Was it somehow painfully caught in a fence and dying? As I stood there trying to decide if I should walk down the road to see what was happening, the noise suddenly stopped. As the last echoes died away, I returned to the house and sat on the front step with Finn. We listened for a while longer but no additional sounds came to us. Eventually we headed back into the house to resume our slumbers.

The mystery was solved on Sunday afternoon during a conversation with our neighbors. They mentioned that the cattle across the road had been calving over the last few days. Finn and I had been witnesses to the late night labours of a cow delivering the latest addition to the herd.

We hope to get cattle of our own over the next few years. If nothing else our late night experience has prepared me for just how distressed a cow can get in her last stages of delivery. When that time comes for us, I'm going to try to remember to slip some earplugs in my pocket!