Bovinalities

We do about 4 or 5 official farm tours every summer, and the number one most frequently asked question is "Do the cows have different personalities?" Now understand, in that they are not persons, we prefer to think of them as bovinalities, but regardless of the official terminology, they are in fact quite different from one another. Let's use the relationship with grain as an illustration...

Jerseys are obsessed with grain. Period. We don't feed very much grain - just a little treat to make the whole coming-into-the-parlor-and-standing-still-for-a-whole-ten-minutes process a little smoother. But still, the first four cows into the parlor every single morning are the Jerseys and Jersey crosses - Gingersnap, Ipe, Sophie, and Simone. Now only three cows fit into the parlor at one time, so while the first three are joyfully snarfing down their handful of grain at the speed of light, the fourth is standing outside the parlor door having an apoplectic fit over the fact that the other three are eating grain while she is not. When they have finished their grain, in order to express their distress at the empty nature of their dish, Ipe and Gingersnap will reach out and try to eat your shirt, Simone will bang her head against the gate, and Sophie will growl. Like a dog. Selina, the fifth Jersey cross is slightly less obsessed, in that she did not inherit the grain-eating tongue dexterity gene, and is only capable of pushing it into a pile at the back of her dish, and then giving you the puppy dog big-eyes "help me!" look so you will come and push it all back to the front. So she can push it to the back again.

The Normandes, on the other hand, have a lukewarm relationship with grain. Some days, they are quite excited about it, other days they are sure they ordered the baby greens salad with the balsamic reduction and shaved white truffles, and since that is definitely not what is in front of them, they'll just sulk until they can get to a different restaurant. Sylvie, Therese, Tatienne, and Segolene are polite eaters - they clean the plate without any throwing of food or complaints about yucky parts. Rosie, Princess, and Titi, however, mostly enjoy spilling grain on the floor. With these three, we have had to resort to making cardboard shields that catch the grain and dump it back into their dish. Princess spends the whole time in the parlor attempting to wedge her snout through gaps in the cardboard so she can continue to dump grain on the floor. Rosie is rather embarrassed about the whole cardboard problem, and turns her head away so no one will see that it is her who has to eat behind the cardboard. This leads us to occasionally think that Rosie doesn't need cardboard, at which point she starts spilling it on the floor again. Titi? Titi just eats the cardboard.

And then there's Thea and Uma who don't even like grain, and therefore have never understood the whole hoopla about going into the parlor anyway. I mean, why would you go anywhere if there was nothing to eat, right? And really, though they are all quite different, this is the one great shared characteristic among all the many fascinating bovinalities, young and old. You can hear it begin from day one - "Hey Mom, can I eat this?