Our premature calf waiting to be seen at the Iowa State University Vet Clinic last month.
If everything is working correctly, you don’t think much about your pooper. When it’s not working is when it gets your attention. Maybe it’s working too much. Maybe it’s stopped working. There are a host of other conditions I won’t go into.
If you have livestock, especially newborns, the pooper is really important. It’s a vital sign that gets your attention. If everything is moving smoothly for a baby calf, it’s an easy verification of good health.
The first check is meconium. This thick, dark, sticky substance is composed of materials the calf ingested while in the uterus.
Following is the colostrum stool. Then it’s onto a milk stool.
You know the look and the smell. As long as the pooper is working, there’s no need for concern. Blood in the stool, time for concern. The calf sucking the cow but there’s no poo, that’s a concern.
On August 20th, we had our first calf three and a half weeks early. The new mamma was Baby D, a first calf heifer. Someday I’ll tell the story of how we transitioned from cows named only by their ear tag number to some names and letters.
I noticed Baby D was in the process of calving on my routine morning check in. It looked like her water had broke. She had the membrane hanging down to her knees.
I zipped back to the barnyard to get my husband Pat and make a plan. The easiest way to address the problem was to bring all the cattle to the barn. I’d planned to do it later that day as they were ready to rotate out of our prairie pasture back towards the barnyard. But I told Pat we needed to do it right away.
In less than an hour I had everything ready to get the cows and lead them over a quarter of a mile to a new pasture near the barn.
When we got back to the pasture, Baby D had already had her calf. I went to look assuming it would be dead. It wasn’t. It was sitting on its sternum. She’d licked him dry.
Baby D headed back with the rest of the cows about 50 yards away in the shade. I grabbed the calf, ran it over to Pat on the 4-wheeler. He started calling the cows and I followed behind. The new mom stayed with the group and we got everyone where they needed to go.
We took the calf to the house to try and save him. He weighed 24 pounds. A really small calf for our Angus cross cattle is 40 lbs. Twenty-four pounds is ridiculously small. We were a little in shock that he was actually alive. He weighed about the same as a big Maine Coon Cat but with the bone structure and frame of a deer fawn.
We were impressed with his will to live and set about doing everything we could to give him a chance at life. He sucked a bottle, although very slowly, and we got some commercial colostrum in him.
We made a call to our friend Seth Watkins who’s spent much of his career calving about 500 cows a year until he slowed down a couple of years ago. He also owned the bull that we leased last December to breed our cows. We calve in the fall at Coyote Run Farm.
“Seth, hey we had our first calf. About 3 weeks premature. You were spot on that your bull throws smaller calves with lots of vigor,” I joked.
Then on a serious note, I said, “How much colostrum are we going to need to get in a 24 lb calf?”
I also called my dad. Small, family farms need a network to keep them afloat. We’re tapping into our network all the time, whether that’s my dad, a neighbor, Seth, our local vet, or even the retired vet that I grew up with back in Anita.
We’re in our third week of working with this little fella. We’ve named him Mr. D. His mamma, Baby D, has been a superstar. She let us milk her in the pasture so we were able to get the calf his mother’s colostrum to add to the commercial powder mix we always have on hand. By day three he was drinking 100% mamma’s milk, and we were trying to help him suck her teats.
Mr. D at six days old. He was hitting all of his marks with sucking, moving, breathing, and heart rate until he ran into bowel problems.
His pooper was working just like it should. Until the end of the 4th day. That’s when the blood showed up. We made a call to the vet. We were worried about bloody scours, which in people talk is diarrhea with blood in it. We did some treatments to support his gut health.
At the end of day five, our fear of scours had turned into concern about constipation. He nearly stopped moving anything and the little that he passed came with lots of effort and very little volume.
We started enemas on the vet’s direction. On his second Friday night with nothing passing all day, he started licking his tummy and kicking towards it. He was in severe discomfort. Could just be colic. Could also be a blockage and a death sentence.
On Saturday morning, we put him in a box in the back seat of our car and I took him to the ISU Vet Clinic in Ames. When the vet walked out of the corral system where livestock is unloaded, he looked right past us.
I hollered at him, “Are you looking for a calf?” Yes he was.
Later, he told me he saw us but thought I was standing by the car with a dog. “He’s so little,” he said.
Four students worked with our vet as the team did an evaluation. All the vital signs were good. The ultrasound indicated a very slow gut, but things were moving. No blockage. Not a death sentence. Just continued focused care and regular feedings. The 90 minute car ride probably actually helped. He pooped a little as they were examining him.
After nine days of constant care, we were willing to keep going. But we were also ready to put Mr. D down if there was a condition that he couldn’t overcome. We were glad to have solid direction. We were glad we got to participate in helping the education of future vets. One of the students said it was her first time working with a calf.
All of our time and energy with Mr. D has given us time to reflect on the network that we are still leaning into to keep him alive. Figuring out when to double down and when to throw in the towel is key to keeping Coyote Run Farm alive. For Mr. D, it’s been all about his pooper.
That network includes our family, friends, neighbors, and rural colleagues. It also includes our local veterinarians. And in this instance, we leaned into Lloyd Veterinary Medical Center at Iowa State University.
People tell a lot of jokes about shit and the pooper, but as long as it’s working, there’s not a lot to be concerned about.
That’s sort of like the federal government. We tell a lot of jokes about it. We make some complaints. But when it’s working, it’s just in the background keeping things moving.
Until it isn’t. Right now it isn’t. Republicans are attacking the federal government attempting to create the same deadly outcome as untreated bloody scours or a twisted intestine.
The jokes that have been told about how much government stinks have taken hold as a social movement. It’s been intentional. It’s been decades in the making.
For example Republicans are smearing feces all over the federal workforce and then blaming those workers for the stink. Here’s a perfect example of how this tactic works.
Senator Joni Ernst has been picking on bureaucrats for years now. And she ramped up those attacks in the past two years to align with the MAGA movement. Those public servants have been easy targets for political points.
Even as Senator Ernst decided not to run, she couldn’t help herself from smearing federal workers in this August 28 press release: Ernst Unmasks Double Dipping Bureaucrats.
Here’s a quote from the, “I’m not going to run again, but I’m still willing to carry shitty water for MAGA” Senator from Iowa.
“It wasn’t just one or two bad apples, either. Hundreds, even thousands, of government employees appear to have been ripping off the unemployment system by claiming to be unemployed. Some of these fraudulent claims may also be the result of identity theft, like the California Employment Development Department employee who applied for and received unemployment benefits using the name of the state’s senior U.S. senator at the time,”
I’m not defending criminals. I’m not suggesting that if you defraud the government you should get a pass. But let’s consider how serious of a situation this is for the federal government. It isn’t.
Hundreds, maybe thousands? OK, let’s say 2000 federal employees have committed unemployment fraud. I’m not saying they have and neither is Ernst. I’m just giving her the benefit of the doubt and taking her largest, most exaggerated number.
The data Ernst relies on comes from COVID times and the programs implemented then. And over several years. The demographic for the fraud is about 2.5 million people who are non-military federal employees. That’s a rate of .08% of federal employees being accused of committing unemployment fraud or eight people for every 10,000 federal employees. And if we extrapolate that over say 2 years of the pandemic it’s more like 4 people per 10,000 per year.
For comparison, here is some data from the Crop Insurance and Reinsurance Bureau, Inc. This PDF lays out the improper payments for the Federal Crop Insurance program: Crop Insurance Myth vs. Fact: Improper Payment Rate.
MYTH: Waste, fraud and abuse are rampant in crop insurance.
FACT: According to the Risk Management Agency (RMA) at USDA, the improper payment rate for crop insurance for fiscal year 2019 was 2.95%, which is less than the average rate for all government programs (4.67 percent). Actual fraud is only a small fraction of improper payments in the program.
You can look at the table to determine what you think a “small fraction of the improper payments in the program” are that would be considered fraud. I’ll say 10% for easy math as well as that’s a small fraction. That would be .295% for the rate of fraud in crop insurance or about 29 out of 10,000 crop insurance participants. This is the crop insurance industry arguing that fraud is not a big deal in federal crop insurance.
That compares to Senator Ernst’s outrage at a potential of unemployment insurance fraud by .08% of federal employees or 8 in 10,000 or more realistically 4 in 10,000 per year. If 29 out of 10,000 is no big deal, how can 4 or even 8 out of 10,000 be grounds for Ernst to go after federal workers?
Here’s why Ernst is pursuing this issue. In her words.
“It now makes sense why there was so much protesting from bureaucrats about granting DOGE access to federal databases to try to detect fraud!”
It isn’t about fraud. It’s all about shitting on federal workers, the hell with any real evidence.
Her toxicity in this climate of tearing down the federal government is a serious health concern for our nation. Her diarrhea of the mouth against federal workers is as consequential to our democracy as bloody scours is to a calf.
The shit show that Republicans have made out of the federal government is a death sentence to our democracy if we don’t pay attention, fight back, and go the extra mile to save it.
It’s everything, everywhere, all at once.
By no means an exception, the Director of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s testimony last week before the Senate Finance Committee was a new level of bloody scours for the federal government. It was so bad, that even Trump attempted to do some damage control while still backing his cabinet member.
Like a pooper that isn’t working, Republicans, in less than the 281 days for the gestation of a calf, have all but stopped the normal functioning of the federal government. The longer these attacks go on, the harder it will be to save the United States of America from becoming something our founders feared, a failed constitutional republic.
We’ve taken government for granted. We’ve joked about government. But all the while it’s been in the background keeping so much of our nation moving in a regular way. And now Republicans are the bacteria causing the bloody scours and the twisted gut that will rupture and fill our nation with toxic feces that will kill our constitutional republic. Our democracy that for nearly 250 years has been a spectacular experiment in human governance is on the line.
Our farm is tremendously inefficient compared to big commercial operations. But it’s farms like ours that are still the heart and soul of rural America. Our inefficiencies create the economic activity that helps keep our rural communities afloat. The money we’ve spent to keep Mr. D alive is money that went to our local vet, the farm store, even our state university.
I’m not suggesting that every farm needs to be like ours. But I am suggesting that there is tremendous value in farms like ours. It is about romance. It’s about story telling. It’s about relationships. It’s about rural economies.
If you take away all the small and mid-sized farms, large farms and agribusiness will create a rural America unlike anything the vast majority of Americans want.
It’s taking a tremendous effort to keep Mr. D alive. I’ve asked myself many times over the past 20 days if the fight to keep him alive is worth it. There’s no guarantee he’ll make it. But there is joy in everyday that he lives to fight on.
If we leave saving our democracy to the political class, consultants, and big donors, we will not succeed. They don’t know how to fight. They don’t know how to sacrifice. They don’t know the true value of our democracy. They don’t know the joy of leaning into the network of regular, everyday Americans to solve a problem and celebrate the win.
They don’t know how to get down on their knees, in a pile of cow shit, in the dark, holding a calf with both arms, a leg behind his butt, one hand cupping his jaw, and the fingers on the other hand trying to open his mouth and push in his mother’s teat to try against all odds to get him to suck.
And they don’t know the joy when it works. Our nation has always depended on ordinary Americans putting their lives on the line in order to advance our extraordinary nation. And we are living in one of those times. What we’ve mostly taken for granted, our federal government like the CDC and FEMA, is no longer working. And it isn’t going to start working again unless we cut through the bullshit to save it.
I’m coming off of a months-long journey of discernment. I was trying to decide between running for Iowa Secretary of Agriculture or applying to be the full-time executive director of the Iowa Farmers Union (IFU). I had two great pieces of pie in front of me. I could only choose one. I’ve chosen the Iowa Farmers Union and last month the board chose me as well. I’m excited to know that my plans for the next several years are to help lead the oldest general farm organization in Iowa.
I will continue to write at Growing New Leaders: Perspectives from Coyote Run Farm. This column is my voice. Unvarnished. There are no internal or outside editors other than my own boundaries and good sense or lack of it. I do have one helper in my husband Pat. He reads everything before it’s published offering excellent feedback and catching most of my mistakes.
I want to swing as hard as I can politically and culturally fighting for my great state and our amazing nation.
While my columns will align with lots of other organizations I support, belong to, and in the case of IFU work for, this column is never an extension of those groups. Just me.
That said, I do sometimes recommend readers support particular organizations. As I begin my second week as the full time executive director of IFU, I encourage you to check it out. If you are a farmer or friend of the family farmer, please consider becoming a member. As members ourselves for over two decades, Pat and I can say with confidence IFU is doing good work. IFU members have always had our boots on. We’ve always been willing to scoop the shit and get dirty. In these months of the Trump Administration, the Farmers Union family is the most important group of farmers and ranchers speaking truth to power.
IFU has averaged over a press interview or story a day since Inauguration Day. That’s approaching 250 if you’re counting. Our board, staff, and most importantly members are willing to answer any press call to speak publicly about our values and our support for family farmers, ranchers, and rural communities.
Please consider joining as a member or making a donation to support the Iowa Farmers Union. You can do so from our website.
At Growing New Leaders: Perspectives from Coyote Run Farm, I’m aiming for 4 stories a month. This post ends the longest lag time between posts since I started writing these columns. With the start of my full time job and an early start to our calving season, I struggled to get a piece completed for publication.
Thank you to everyone who has subscribed to this Substack. A special thank you to the paid subscribers. You’ve made it possible for me to travel the state to speak, and listen, and tell stories grounded in the lives of rural Iowans. Your paid subscription will continue to help defray my travel costs and carve out time to write. I’ve recorded a special thank you video message to paid subscribers I hope to send you later this week.
On that note, I’ll be speaking at the Eastern Iowa Rural Revival and Candidate Forum in Tipton, Iowa on September 28. Your paid support makes it possible for me to forgo mileage reimbursement and honorarium so that the hosts at 82nd Indivisible (Iowa) can use those resources for other organizing. You can check out the Rural Revival and register to attend here.
I’m a member of the Iowa Writers Collaborative. Please take a look at this amazing group of Iowans publishing their work on Substack who are keeping community-based local journalism and commentary alive. It’s an honor to be among this group.
An absolutely stunning post.
Matt: Your calf column made me cry. I raised Polled Herefords before retirement, 3rd gen. Hereford raiser. The politics in the column were right on of course, but the real farm cattle raising is what touched me. Keep it all going--thank you.