Mineral Deficiencies, Cows, and Civilization

Section 3, Chapter 3 from my latest book, Stagtine

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Children of Apes and The Pleistocene

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Mineral Deficiencies and Civilization

The dawn was deep into day when we descended into Nancy’s valley, creeping slowly, past the cedars and behind the crownbeard. Morgan carried little Elowyn in a pack and we held our breath. The late, May morning carried petals and early season grass seeds along the ridgelines to the walnuts but nothing stirred in the deep valley. Breath and its breeze were held, the moment seized everything. Wynnie was rapt, spellbound under the moment’s purity, her little hands scrolled around Morgan’s arms in a radial love, like two trees growing into each other. Her eyes were fixed on the gooey mass whimpering in front of us. She was the first to see.

There, under Nancy’s feet was a little, black calf, shivering like a leaf in the rain. But Nancy was rigid, her heart pounded through a single thread, a slow pulse, a weak murmur of life. Germinate streaks of the valley’s light colored her crescent, high cheekbones and clear fluid, perhaps a tear, cascaded into a free fall to her feet. Pain and Joy, I thought.

“No, something is wrong.” Morgan said aloud, seeing into my mind. A tendril of panic arose in her before her eyes could recognize the dire paint on this life’s canvas and she walked forward, cautiously.

She inspected the calf, a heifer, and found it deeply malnourished. Nancy’s teats were dry and her udder sullen and sunken. To survive, the calf needed colostrum, the first-milk or what olden farmers called beestings. Colostrum provides a calf’s first macro- and micronutrients and supplies peptides for antimicrobial defenses and immunoglobulins for immune system support.¹ It wakes life up, like the morning chill or the bite of a bee’s sting. Without it, after a period of days, the heifer will die.

“Nelly,” Morgan said, turning to Wynnie. “Her name is Nelly, daughter of Nancy.” Her voice was stiff, inflexible, as if her desire for the heifer’s life could find manifestation in meaning, in naming. She turned to me. “I can’t find her placenta or anything left of it. Nelly looks like she’s been licked dry, probably born sometime last night or early this morning, but she doesn’t look like she’s nursed at all.”

Nancy’s afterbirth never delivered, a rare but not unseen reality in the world of cattle farming. After a cow calves, it cleans: the calf, licking it dry, and its placenta, passing it and then, most often, consuming it. On rare occasions, the placenta can hang from the cow and drag for days. Cleaning typically happens within an hour of calving but cleaning requires the calf to nurse—the maternal magic, a hormonal crescendo from womb to mammary that releases the afterbirth and prepares the colostrum. But Nelly was not nursing and Nancy’s placenta was stuck.