Words of No Syllables: How Animals Bond With Their Human Caretakers

Our lambs seem to be developing new ways of communicating with us. One morning Richard drove Mum to see the sheep. One of them, four-month-old Tilly, greeted them, then walked over to yesterday’s now chewed and leafless willow sticks, picked one up and shook it. Mum asked Rich to fetch some more.

And it’s not just the lambs. One summer evening I went to see Giselle, to find her lying comfortably with her sore teat uppermost, so I was able to apply udder cream without disturbing her at all. I did not speak, of course; I’ve learned better. The old Red Bull was lying next to her, so I seized my chance to check all four of his feet while his weight was nicely distributed along his recumbent length. As soon as I began, Giselle started to complain, moaning quite loudly. I returned to her and immediately saw a short, hard stick, tightly wedged between the clays of one front hoof. I carefully pried it out and she was silent.

Earlier that evening, Tony, for whose sole benefit we receive letters addressed to “The Wages Supervisor,” had come, smiling, to the door with an account of his own. He had walked the house cows in as usual but had not noticed an extra one, a look-alike, until they were in the barn. He began an inquiry and soon noticed a piece of string wound round her back leg, which he promptly removed.

“That’s obviously why she came down,” he said. “They’re not daft.”

If I had been there, I would have advised Tony to put her in the crush to avoid any possibility of being kicked. I had a painful lesson once, when I tried to remove a stick from a heifer’s back foot out in the field while she was standing up. But Tony hardly ever asks for help. He has no farming background and started working on the farm with that admission, plus an assurance that he would do his best. This he always does, many times accomplishing impossible feats largely because he has no idea they are impossible. On one occasion, he brought two totally unrelated animals home from a far field, which I would have needed help to achieve. He has lifted ludicrously heavy objects simply because they are in the way, when I would have fetched help and a mechanical aid. Psychologically knowing that something is impossible makes it physically so and vice versa.

Meanwhile, a young man with no experience of cows was here for one day only, and asked if he could help us bring the cows and calves in from their daily walkabout. As he told us later, the youngest, Amelia—not quite one month old—”informed” him that her mother was stuck in the pond. She had ventured close to drink and, having waded in too far, was now stuck fast in deep silt, waiting silently and patiently to be rescued. One tractor, two ropes and five people succeeded in extracting her and after a two-hour scraping, washing, brushing and drying session, with warm water to drink and mountains of hay to hide in, they both appeared to have taken the incident in their strides.

At that time, Seal, a nine-month-old heifer, was lame and taking it easy. I waited on her, taking hay, water and a grooming brush. She thanked me in words of no syllables by licking my hand and kissing my forehead. There was no obvious cause for her lameness, though I could detect slight heat in a front knee. As soon as she felt fit again, she rejoined the herd.

Filipendula needed to be milked each day, yet she declined to spend the intervening hours near the house. Although there is a much more direct route, she insisted on retracing the steps that first brought her down to the farm buildings and duly plodded up the Walnut Field, across the Humpy Dumpy, Cherry Tree and Rickety Rackety Fields to spend each day grazing by the side of her twin sister and their friends in the Lake Field, returning home on her own by the same long-distance route each evening to be milked. She behaved perfectly and displayed absolute confidence in her own decisions.

Another of the herd, Dizzie, had a large grass orme (an old word we still use for a husk) embedded tightly in the corner of her left eye. I felt an overwhelming determination to remove it for her without having to make her walk back home to be restrained in the cattle crush; it’s a long walk.

I devised a plan and she watched me thinking.

I assessed the problem from several angles, talked to her, then pretended I was more interested in another cow who was standing close to her, all the while waiting to seize the right moment to grab the offending seed. My first attempt failed but, gloriously and amazingly, she didn’t flee after the assault, as I would have expected; she twigged what I was up to and hung around to give me another chance. The second attempt also failed. She creased up her eye, holding the seed more firmly, but waited again. So many cows would have misunderstood my antics. Third time lucky I thought, rather tritely, but no, I missed it by a whisker: one of hers.

She was still there beside me, dear old thing. I owed it to her to succeed. I took a few deep breaths; if a fly landed or hovered near her, she would shake her head involuntarily, so each time I was having to avoid being inadvertently swiped by her horns as I dived towards her eye. I steeled myself. The first three attempts had been a bit desperate, because I was worried that each would be the only chance I got. Though she looked ready to walk off, I calmed down and took measured aim, telling myself it would be easy if I concentrated harder.

Got it!

She was so pleased. How did I know? It would take a whole book to try to explain, and if I tried, I would fail. She knew she was grateful and she knew I knew. To quote Keats out of context, ‘That is all ye know on earth and all ye need to know.’

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From The Wisdom of Sheep: Observations from a Family Farm by Rosamund Young. Copyright © 2024. Available from Penguin Press, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC.