
Rebecca Gayle Howell (ed.)
et al.
Published online:
18 May 2023
Published in print:
07 March 2023
Online ISBN:
9780813197418
Print ISBN:
9780813182438
Contents
Cite
Priddy, Melva Sue, 'The Trouble with Young', in Rebecca Gayle Howell, Ashley M. Jones, and Emily J. Jalloul (eds), What Things Cost: an anthology for the people (Lexington, KY , 2023; online edn, Kentucky Scholarship Online, 18 May 2023), https://doi.org/10.5810/kentucky/9780813182438.003.0108, accessed 14 May 2025.
Extract
One fresh heifer never left the dairy barn,this all new, and she just wanted her calf.She wouldn’t stand for milkers and he wouldn’t give in.He beat her head with a 2×4, killed her,then cut her throat to bleed out, saved the meat;three of us, seven, eight and nine, watched, did as told.We opened the doors, released the other cows.Once he’d loaded her carcass for the slaughterhouse,we washed out the blood, we rounded the cows back in,we finished milking, sanitized.We always had trouble breaking in heifers,young and small their first timeinto the milking stalls after calf weaning.He gave them tight quarters, stairs, a sharp turn.He gave them narrow stalls.Some kicked and balked after he left,and he was mad if we called him back again.The older cows knew what to do. They stood still,dirty hooves at our shoulders’ level.Within the year, another heifer, fixedwith new mechanical kickers, threw a fit,pitched herself back and forth, bellowed,startled the other cows who broke the doors and gates.They all fled the barn. The heifer bucked across the fielduntil she broke the kickers. We chased her, wild-eyed,back in, and he tied her to a tall metal post.He used the same 2×4 until she fell and hung herself.Mad we’d needed his help, mad she’d broken the kickers,mad she’d wasted our time running around, mad because,god knows, a cow won’t give down milk after running around.And then to fight and hang herself—poor,the meat, because of her recent calving.
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