To Catch A Calf

My youngest cousin, Adam, attended the 2012 DairyPalooza last week, and among other goodies received his very own rope halter.

A rope halter can be adjusted to fit several different sizes of calves, with the only fixed size being the nose band that sits on top of the nose.

Adam was beside himself with excitement when he held his rope halter, a shiny, slick, brand-new heifer-sized black and red thing that was his, all his. He looked up at me, the “expert” with years of experience catching calves, and said, “I wanna catch a calf.”

Catching a calf isn’t as easy as you would think it should be. They’re fast little buggers, and evasive too. It’s difficult to slide both the nose-piece and the head-piece on at the same time, because there’s two big ears in the way. More often than not, an attempt to snag a calf ends in just the top of their head – the poll – being caught by the halter, and with a shake of the head they’re off and running again.

It took me until I was nearly 16 to finally catch a calf by myself, and while I’m still not the great white wrangler – that title belongs to my mom – I will say that I’ve had more than my fair share of fast catches.

But age and experience aside, if Adam wanted to catch a calf, a calf we would catch.

First, he tried snagging one from the weanling pen, a group of calves older than three months that outweighed him by at least a hundred pounds. Needless to say, four calves running around in a large pen being chased by an eight-year-old did not result in a success.

“Let’s try some tied-up ones,” I suggested, and Adam decided that might be a good place to start.

It was hard to control my laughter as he ran up to a calf and just mashed the still-folded halter against her face, as though pressing really hard would make the halter fit. It took a few minutes of explaining the mechanics of a halter before he started to understand how it was supposed to work.

Finally, after a half-hour of trying to catch calves, Adam finally got one, through a mixture of pushing, shoving, and squeezing various parts into place. I felt a little sorry for the calf as she stood there, thoroughly confused at the proceedings, but the look on Adam’s face was one of elated victory.

We may have a new calf-wrangler in the making.