A Rural Barbershop

The Jeff Davis Parish Livestock Show takes place this week.  Benjamin will be bringing Amy, our youngest Jersey cow who just calved in December.  We'll need to also bring her little bull, Chuck, even though you don't show dairy bulls.  Chuck will be needed at the Show Barn for two reasons. First, if he's not there, Amy will bellow non-stop and be a source of annoyance to anyone remotely nearby.  Second, he'll nurse on Amy as soon as the show is over, emptying her bag.

When the livestock shows come around, it involves some preparation.  The most time-consuming of which is giving the animals a haircut.  We're in the middle of winter and the animals have put on a nice winter coat and, sadly, that must be removed for the livestock show.  Fortunately, we have some livestock clippers that take care of that.  Saturday afternoon, we got busy.  While Tricia held Amy tight, I gave her a good clipping.  Long rolls of hair rolled off in big swaths.  The noise always frightens the animal, especially once you start clipping around their heads.

I'd like a little off the top, please.

It is unfortunate, because the animals have grown nice coats to keep them warm and now it must come off.  All the shaggy hair comes off and they are shaved smooth and clean.

The first pass of the clipper cut

There are a lot of obstacles to shave around on a cow, so this work is slow and tedious.  I stop several times and blow the hair off of the clippers (and off of me) with an air compressor that I've loaded on a wagon and brought near the pasture. We were mostly finished with Amy when we began to hear thunder rumbling and lightening flashing.  Then big raindrops began falling.  We let Amy run back to the hay bale, and we took shelter inside - postponing completion of the job until Sunday.

Removing the winter coat

The weather on Sunday was picture-perfect, with bluebird skies and brilliant sunlight.  As soon as church ended, we quickly ate a bowl of gumbo and ran out to the pasture to pick up where we left off the day before.  I did some fine tuning, cleaning up some of the areas I missed on Amy and worked my way to her head. The head is the tricky part.  We remove the halter and put nose pliers into her nose so that she becomes compliant as we shave around her ears, eyes and nose.  I'd be compliant too if someone put nose pliers on me!  In no time flat we finished up with Amy's haircut.  Benjamin began to walk her around, practicing how he'd show her in the ring, ensuring that she would set up properly.

Showing off that new haircut

Here is Amy modeling her new haircut, showing her sleet, aerodynamic lines!

But we aren't only bringing Amy and Chuck to the show.  We're bringing Clarabelle, too.  Clarabelle is Rosie's little heifer.  She is about 7 months old and has the most gentle and kind disposition out of all of our animals.  She wasn't always like that. In fact, she was the most difficult of all of our animals to halter break.  Now she is so tame and loving.  She also has a very thick winter coat.  It is a reddish-tint, like Rosie's.  We tied her to a solid post and began working.

Time for Clarabelles' haircut

She's smaller, so her haircut went a little quicker, although we played around a bit. Benjamin thought it would be a good idea if we shaved a mane like a horse on her neck.  It looked pretty funny.

The Mane Attraction

Instead of looking like a horse's mane, though, it looked more like a mohawk.

Clarabelle's first haircut

We figured that maybe the mohawk needed to come off.  By about 3 p.m. we finished up and began packing up the clippers.  I blew all the little hairs out of the clipper assembly and cleaned the clippers before packing it away.  After the shows, we'll bring the clipper blades to get re-sharpened.

All done

The Parish livestock show in Jennings is on Wednesday, January 20th, followed by the Southwest District livestock show in Lake Charles on Saturday, February 6th, and the State Livestock show in Gonzales on Monday, February 15th.  The livestock shows are always a very busy time of year.  This time will be even more so as we have 3 cows in milk.  It can be a little overwhelming if you think about it.  That's why I like to break it down into tasks and the haircutting task is done!