A cow never changes facial expression. This 1,500 pound black and white Holstein here in one of the barns of the University of Illinois animal sciences department dairy research farm has flies crawling around the white expanse between her translucent black eyes. She looks up from her trough of dirty yellow hay and stares at me with impassiveness, a touch of guilt, submission.
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Expect stands nonchalantly swishing her tail as farm manager Gene McCoy removes the plug from her porthole. Around here they call the porthole the rumen cannula or the fistula. This black hole inside the porthole full of the hay of the trough in a semi-digested compost form is Expect’s rumen stomach. “As you know, cows have four stomachs,” McCoy says. He sticks his meaty hand inside Expect’s rumen and pulls out a wad of the sludge for me to examine up close. Expect just swishes and chews. She’s so much the perfect placid host for experiments that I picture the vet that carved her hole doing so without anesthetic. He’s wearing a welder’s mask and cutting a circle with a sparking chain saw while Expect swishes and chews.
A few minutes ago in another barn we saw a calf being born. “Looks like brand new,” McCoy said. “It’s all wet so it’s just been born.” Behind a black mound of cow lying in the hay in her stall was a slimy, scrawny, miniature version of herself spattered with pink blood.
Drackley studies the gunk extensively. I have this image of him spending long hours perched on a high stool next to Expect, peering into her porthole, holding a lantern high with one hand and taking copious notes with the other.
The student sprinkles handfuls of lime around. “Helps absorb the urine,” he explains. Well at least he’ll have the ultimate bootstraps story about what he had to do to put himself through school with which to shame his grandchildren.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Lloyd DeGrane.
