Chewing the Cud by Dick King-Smith Read Free Book Online Page A

down-calving or freshly calved heifers, or at the oldest, second calvers; would have bought good-quality commercial beasts from carefully selected dispersal sales or through a reputable dealer; would have concentrated every effort and all available money towards getting back a decent monthly milk check just as soon as possible. Not me.
    You must believe (I must believe, my diary tells me) that by 10 March 1948, having had possession for four months, I had the apt number of thirteen cows in milk. They were of all ages and sizes and bore as little resemblance to each other as was bovinely possible.
    True, a number of them were Shorthorns of one type or another (pretty colors, you see, all different, not like boring old Friesians), some being first calvers bought from Tytherington for old times' sake. But in addition there were a couple of Ayrshires with horns like hat racks, a blue-gray beast, the second cousin of a Jersey, and a very small short-legged animal of unknown origin that had been someone's house cow, kept in his garage. I fell for her because of her cute size and pretty mottled markings; she gave as much milk as a goat.
    Take Auntie. She was a good example of my technique. I bought her from Bill Tanner, whom I'd known since I played around his farmyard as a small boy. Thinking about it, Auntie was probably there then, she was so old. A smallish Ayrshire with a kind, sad face and lovely long white eyelashes, her overgrown hooves curled like pairs of Turkish sandals, her back dipped like a fairground gondola, and her drooping hairy bag, its four great teats like bananas, was just what a dairy cow's udder shouldn't be. But she was so gentle and quiet (not having the energy tobe otherwise) and so cheap, a real bargain. The bargain of course was Bill's, since I paid him much more than he'd have got from the slaughterhouse. Before the year was out, that's where poor Auntie went, dry, barren, and bony.
    I fancied myself as a good striker of a deal. Buy or sell, I must have been everybody's sucker.
    Look what my thirteen cows were producing.
    Wednesday 10 March
    New moon.
    Sent 30 gallons away.
    Surely I didn't record that out of pride? Probably it was the first time we'd reached such a figure. Of course I never could see, still can't sometimes, that if you want a pair of decent shoes, you have to pay good money for them. I prowled around the local sales and markets till I'd filled the shed with mongrel mediocrities. Not that they seemed so at the time. Each, I thought, was in some way remarkable. They all had carefully chosen names, they were well cared for and generously fed, their mating and their calvings properly conducted, their slightest ailment promptly treated. Sometimes the vet seemed practically to live upon the place, so solicitous was I of the health of my herd. In large measure, they were pets. Too fewcows giving too little milk — not the ideal start to dairy farming.

    We compounded this first basic shortcoming because of this pet-loving mentality — the miscellaneous collection of painted lead animals proudly set out upon the nursery floor — and filled every spare space at Woodlands Farm with one or another bird or beast. On farms, we knew, you could keep all kinds of creatures. We kept them.
    Leaving aside the household animals — three dogs soon to be many, two cats soon to be a legion, and counted in with them the rabbits, the guinea pigs, the mice, the budgerigars (all these we still had), the tortoises set to race on the lawn (first to fall in the flower bed wins) — we wanted to and did keep every kind of living thing that took our fancy. They'll earn their keep, we thought, producing eggs or meat or salable young. They mustn't just be passengers.
    We never in fact kept sheep, because a public footpath ran through the middle of the farm and we feared harassment from local dogs, but instead we bought goats andtethered them all over the shop. They were to provide milk for puppy rearing. Though they