I’ve thought of those words quite a bit lately.  And I’ll confess right here and now that I’m not sure how I’ll end this thing up. 

It may just trail off.

I first heard those words some 12 years ago when we were starting our first calves that we had shipped in. 

Remember, we were/are learning this cattle starting thing from scratch.  When I heard those words, I didn’t know what they meant. 

Now I do. 

Firsthand.

When they break refers to the first subtle signs you see or maybe sense rather than see as you go out to feed your newly arrived calves.

I’ve had it where I knew something was “off” and at the time I hoped I wasn’t right; but I was. 

There is a drug we give when we get calves in to boost their immune system.  This drug has live viruses in it for up to 9 known diseases.  When the drug is given, it wakes up the immune system and tells it to start fighting against the low-grade strain of the virus you have just injected. 

My friend Travis told me those twelve years ago, that “you really need to watch them on day 8 or 9; that’s when they break.”

Meaning, that it takes that long for the drug to really sink home and by then your calf is running a low temp, snotting around and generally feeling like crud. 

I could completely identify with them after getting this covid shot thing.

Depending on outside temperature swings, stress from the truck ride in, and stress from the guy trying to learn how to start calves is how badly this group of calves will “break.”

I’ve had some groups blow right through day 8 and 9 without anything wrong.  And, I’ve had some that completely turned into a train wreck, and we ended up working for free, even paying the bank to keep those groups around. 

When we got Pennsylvania calves in, they broke consistently on day 21.  I asked my friend Sid why the delay, and he thought maybe they were breaking form a virus they had picked up at the sale barn that took 2 weeks to incubate instead of the drug we had given them.  At any rate, it’s enough to kick a guy in the gut when he sees his little pretties all going to pot on the same day, and the dead animal pile gets more and more business.

One of the most heartbreaking scenes is firmly etched in my mind.  We had had an exceptionally cold, wet spring.  As the saying goes, “You can get a calf cold, and you can get a calf wet, but you can’t get a calf cold and wet.”  There were definitely some that got cold and wet that spring.

And the water stayed on in the terrace bottoms of the fields these calves were turned out to graze in.  One by one, those lonely, almost totally gone calves would drag themselves out to that water, lay down in it, and die. 

It was gut wrenching. 

I can’t imagine what kind of a fever they must have been running to go lay down in water.  You never see a calf or cow lay down in water. 

And they had been vaccinated until each of them was a walking medicine dispensary.

It had long ago ceased to be an issue with me about the money involved with those poor folks. 

My one and only concern was to try to keep them comfortable but even at that I was failing miserably.

In the end, as the saying goes, ‘Only the strongest survived.’

Did I learn anything from it? 

Maybe.

I’ve changed some of the drugs we use, but that is no guarantee; probably more than anything, it changed me.

And perhaps that is the most important thing to have happen when they break, no matter if it is calves or a day generally gone south, or some huge thing you know you have to wade through, as long as the changes are for the good.