Blossom the School Calf

1980?
I was teaching at Pooraka Primary School, in the unusual, and to me novel, capacity of Primary Science Teacher. I used to teach elementary science to all grades from Reception to Year 7. It was a big double-decker school, 800-odd kids, two-and-a-half classes of each grade as I remember. Each week and lesson period I had to zip around the school to visit the littlies, we'd do bubbles or fizzy stuff or magnetic tricks, then it'd be Year 4 for paper models or pulleys and levers or magnetic tricks, then Year 6-7 for air pressure or Newton's Laws or magnetic tricks . . . Busy I was, yes indeed.

I started there at the beginning of the school year, and right from the start I went looking for local nature-study-type possibilities. They were very limited indeed. Pooraka School, a hectare or so including a decent green play area, is on busy Main North Road, and nestles in the NW corner of the many-hectare abattoirs stock paddocks (as they were then). No child ever crossed the main road, it's too wide and dangerous and there's nowhere across there to go anyway, and essentially they might as well be in a fully-fenced institution for all the interaction there is with the local community. The only place to look for natural stuff is in the stock-paddocks behind us.

These stock paddocks were only about seven or eight miles out of Adelaide's CBD, and were quite large. Probably a mile by a mile and-a-half, yeah alright one-point-six by two-point-five clicks, (ptui!), divided into biggish fenced sections by barbed-wire fences.
They were cropped with wheat or barley year-on-year, then grazed mainly by cattle waiting for slaughter. Pretty sad really, the cattle and the state of the paddocks both. Well at least the cattle were well-fed, for commercial if not for humanitarian reasons. As for the cropped paddocks, they were wheat in winter, stubble in late spring, and red dust as summer wore on. Nothing of ecological interest whatsoever.

But the whole perimeter of the paddocks was bounded by a double fence, one inside the other, about 8 yards apart. (OK, 7-point-xyz metres). It was neither grazed by stock nor walked on by humans, and was planted with two lines of quite-old trees, pinus radiata on the outside, some lopped and rather sad gum trees on the inner line. Grass and weeds and occasional toadstoolish funguses grew between the trees, and you could find stones and parrot feathers and red meat-ants there. Murray Magpies (mudlarks) and Willy Wagtails nested in the pines, though I wasn't about to betray their presence to the children, even though the few bird species were really the only genuine wildlife left. Most of the kids would have left them alone, but I wasn't prepared to take the chance that a few might have destroyed them. All in all the ecosystem was cactus, as they say.

Nevertheless, within a couple of weeks of starting at Pooraka, I decided to take the Year 7's for a 'nature walk' across the bare paddocks, to see what could be found in some distant and disused old sheds. At least we were out of the classroom, and since no-one ever walked in the paddocks there was a certain sense of outlawism by going there at all. The kids knew where to get through the fences, and we set off in good spirits.

As we neared the sheds we saw a group of half-a-dozen abattoirs workers, sitting down for a break. They saw us too, and called us over. I feared that they were going to give us a hard time, but not so. Instead they showed us a tiny red calf, still with umbilical cord, and looking in desperate condition. She had not even been licked clean, and was almost too weak to stand. The blokes told us that she had been born on a cattle truck 4 days ago, that her mother had already been slaughtered and that she too would be killed if no-one was prepared to foster her.

The kids were aghast as the callousness of the whole abattorial exercise suddenly came home to them,and they were desperate to save the calf. "Oh Mr Bilney, can we keep her, pleeeeeze?" came from every side, and I was done for. I never saw any group of children more moved by pity, nor more determined to get their way.

Holy Cow! Well yes, Calf, but, what to do?

There was a rush of blood to my head, and I picked her up to carry her the half-mile or so (you work it out) back to School. (She was too weak to walk at all.) Now I'm a little light bloke, but then so was the calf, and I managed the task OK. But how she stank! As I said, she'd never had the luxury of a maternal licking, poor little mite, and my clothes reeked for the rest of the day.

So then I had immediately to broach the whole matter with the Headmaster. (OK, Principal, but he was the Headmaster back then.)
Though he wasn't a decisive man, he was fairly decent as HM's go, and he didn't actually ban the kids caring for the calf that day.

How to care for a tiny starving cold little calf? I'd never had any close contact with calves at all, though as a tiny child I had adored my Auntie Mardy's Jersey cow Cutie. (Or was it Q.T.? I never knew. I called her Cute Cow, she let me ride her once or twice, and with a bit of help from Auntie Mardy, she was able to squirt fresh warm creamy milk direct into us kids' mouths - or eyes! - at a distance of 2 or 3 yards. She never thought in metres.)

The first thing was to find the wee calf a name. Names immediately engender enhanced protectiveness, when you come to think of it. I put it to the Year 7's, and instantly Matilda, a big fat pimply frog of a girl with a heart of gold who yet commanded absolute respect amongst every kid at school - most especially, and critically, the Year 7 girls - responded Blossom! There wasn't the slightest doubt that that was the calf's name, she was Blossom from that moment on. And all the bigger kids at the school, but especially the girls, fell in love with her there and then.

First we had to try to get her to feed. As soon as lunchtime came I raced off to a feed store to get a big bag of Denkavit calf-milk substitute, $20 or so out of my own pocket, and some baby bottles from the chemist, (OK, pharmacist), and hurried back to the waiting kids. All the Year 7 girls and some of the boys clamoured to be allowed to be her carers, and on my instructions they washed her with warm shampoo and dried her off. Except for being so pathetic, she was quite lovely when she was cleaned up, with brilliant red translucent hair all over, not a single white one.

We tried to get her to suck the bottle, but to our dismay she didn't seem to get the hang of it easily at all. One of the female teachers had spent time on a farm showed us how to stick our fingers in the milk and then in Blossom's mouth, and we worked at it, but it was still very difficult to get much milk into her. That was so for not just days but for several weeks: she was quite a trial to feed for most of the term. I discovered very early that she should have received a first meal of colostrum from poor dead Mum, and we simply couldn't provide that, we hoped for the best.

But where to keep her? You remember Dear Reader the double fence around the stock paddocks, well we fenced off a little space at the open end - the other end was the side fence of the school - and it made a nice little calf paddock. Well not really all that nice, it had no green grass at all (February in Adelaide!) and precious little dry grass either, not that Blossom would be ready to eat grass green or brown for many weeks anyway. Still it was fairly safe, and indeed Blossom was never hassled by anybody to my knowledge. She had shelter from the worst of the cold winds at night at the SW corner from the caretaker's shed, and dappled shade in the heat of the day from the pine trees to the NE. We gave her carpet to sleep on, and all in all, as an orphan calf, she was as well set up s she could reasonably hope to be.

Every day the girls were there, before school, at morning recess and lunch time, and after school too. There was rarely a moment when Blossom was not surrounded by half a dozen or more kids, mostly but not all female; quite a few boys, but they mostly craved a bit more vigorous forms of play, and in any case many of them seemed a bit bemused by the notion of caring for a baby something. At ages 11-13 girls are so much more responsible than boys, and nowhere have I seen that so demonstrated as in Blossom's case. There were many girls whom I could safely trust with her care, while probably no boys who showed themselves worthy of such confidence. Not that the boys were ill-disposed towards little Blossom, they just weren't so sensible. Some of the girls would sit there with her and each other all lunchtime, sharing matters girly, and even though I sometimes had to chase them up to see that they had mixed the Denkavit properly, or that they had spent enough time in the onerous task of actually getting enough into her, I knew that no harm would ever befall her by silliness or inattention.

Though she was never very robust as calves go, she gradually grew, until I could probably not have picked her up if I'd tried. (Not that I ever did after the first time.) I had to replace the $20 bags of Denkavit more and more frequently, the school never offered to share the cost and I never asked, I wouldn't have lowered myself, several of the other teachers were quite sniffy about the popularity Blossom reflected on your chronicler, even though it was plainly good for the kids' morale and confidence and caring experience, and the Headmaster was really pretty insipid in my support, even though I think he recognized how valuable an exercise it was for those kids.

Weeks went by, Blossom blossomed, and soon I was getting kids to try to find a bit of greenfeed for her. At first she wanted just nibbles, but even then there was so little calf-edible tucker around that she rarely had a proper feed. But at last the rains came, and in ten days or so there were blessed green grass shoots coming up. Sparse and insubstantial as they were, Blossom demolished the meagre handfuls (OK, handsful) the kids brought, and looked for more.

One day an old fellow I'd never seen before came to me, saying he lived directly opposite the calf enclosure, acroos the more crossable Pooraka Road, behind a galv fence which I'd never seen over. He had been watching me and the kids and the calf though, and I glowed when he told me how much he thought of the job I was doing. His house was set in an almond orchard, 2 or 3 acres (or a hectare or so to be exact), and new grass was sprouting everywhere between the trees. His block was safely fenced all round - Would I like to agist Blossom there during the school daytime?

I was nearly in tears of gratitude (as I am now at the memory), and the kids just couldn't thank him enough, their sincerity and manners made me proud. We put a lead round Blossom's neck and walked her across the road, obedient as could be, when you realize she'd never been a yard or metre outside her yard. (Not metre!) As she reached the open gate and saw the vista of greenery before her, she jumped for joy, clicking her heels - no lie! - and instantly got stuck into the grass. It was a wonderful moment for all of us. It was the only time she ever did that, but once was perfect.

Every day before school Year 6 & 7 kids would walk her with care and caution across the road, and after school they would solemnly conduct her back again. The sense of importance and responsibility in walking her across the road was more to the boys' taste than just keeping her company, and a couple of the most sensible were always on hand after school. Although now the kids couldn't be with her at playtimes, they recognized that she was growing up and needed solid food. They still had to give her Denkavit daily, but by now she had learnt to drink from a bucket, though she was never "bullish" about it like other poddy calves you see. In fact she was never "poddy" at all, indeed I could have wished her more so earlier, but she was plainly out of danger by now.