The Confinement On my weekly visit to the farm 1
looked into the shippon where a heifer stood. The floor was strewn with clean straw and a hissing pressure lamp illuminated the scene. The shadows in the corners were dark, but the place had a comfortable atmosphere of warmth, and 1 wondered if the animal about to calve was soothed or affected in any way by these conditions. Many generations back her ancestors, smaller and more hardy specir mens, must often have had their calves in thickets, in cold, wet and wild places, but there stood the 'modern version, a potential champion among milk producers, surrounded by modern equipment and with her time at hand. When I looked in an hour later, all was over. The calf, a bull, was being fed and there was talk of beastings and ',castings cakes. The heifer turned her head and did her best to lick her offspring. There was a wild look about her, and 1 thought of the calf that might have been born in a thicket and the link between the heifer and her ancestors. How many years were made nothing when she sought to protect that wobbly-legged calf ?
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