The Yorkshire Vet: A tale of two curious Cod Beck cattle - Julian Norton
Catching the last of the autumn sunshine, Emmy and I had just enough time for a walk after work. We headed to her favourite spot by Cod Beck, where it makes its way across Sowerby Flatts. I’ve mentioned this place before in this column, partly because I visit most days, partly because it is beautiful, but also because of the smorgasbord of animal life that makes this area its home. The Sandmartins have gone now, but the dogs with their walkers and the cattle remain.
There is a pleasant coexistence. The dog population is relatively stable, though as regulars age, their visits dwindle, and newcomers arrive: pups who are mini but with maximum vigour, testing the limits of all that is new and exciting.
The cattle reside on the Flatts for a few months at a time, munching the grass and slowly becoming accustomed to humans and their pets. Occasionally, walkers are perturbed by the cattle, but since they are usually calm steers – not agitated by having calves to protect – the cattle are seldom worried by the people or their smaller, four-legged friends. But the batch is changed every so often, moving on to new pastures, so we never get to know the beasts more personally. New ones arrive and have to become acquainted with their new surroundings, the places for river crossing and the most peaceful parts of the paddock.
This evening, Emmy’s and my game on the riverbank was interrupted by a pair of stirks, that came over to investigate. I was throwing a stick into the water, and Em would run and dive in, grab the floating stick and swim back to the shore. The cattle stood next to me on the sandy beach and watched intently, as if trying to fathom the rules of the game. The rest of the herd was nowhere to be seen, and these two had obviously gone off piste. This was slightly unusual because typically the cattle would hang out together, broadly in a group. With tan coloured coats, slightly fluffy and with a white blaze down their faces, these two looked identical. Both went into the water as deep as their front fetlocks, before supping the cool water. When cattle drink water, a bit like a horse, they submerge the lower part of the nose and suck effortlessly. It’s nothing like the lapping of a dog or cat, but for some reason these two made quite a loud noise. Emmy continued her swimming game with impunity, oblivious to the large beasts who had waded in beside her. They, too, largely ignored her, although they surely could not fail to have been impressed by her heroic dives and speedy swimming. Doggy paddle is her preferred stroke.
It got me thinking about what had brought these two to the water in the first place. Obviously, they were thirsty, but were they more thirsty at half past five in the afternoon than an hour earlier? Were they thirstier than the rest of the herd? Was one thirsty, and the second just followed along because he thought it might be fun? Rosamund Young (whose own herd I briefly tended to during the time when I worked in the Cotswolds) alludes to the enormous capacity of bovines for cognisant thought in her book The Secret Life of Cows. In the foreword, written by Alan Bennett, the final sentence is this: “…passing a field of cows nowadays I find myself wondering about their friendships and their outlook, notions that before reading Young’s book I would have thought fanciful, even daft. Not anymore.” As the cattle left the riverbank, I couldn’t help but notice that the two creatures had adjacent ear tag numbers. I quickly presumed they were twins and had been friends since birth.