Is there anyone else out there married to a man who values his cattle as much as my husband? I ask that rhetorically, because I know there is.

While visiting on the phone with another farm wife last evening, I realized maybe my husband isn’t as abnormal as I thought. We compared notes on the behavior of our dairy farming husbands and found them to have a similar passion for their four-legged girlfriends.

Rising every morning before dawn, the first thing he does when he walks in the barn is say, “Good Morning Children!” Odd? Not for a passionate dairyman. While he likes to milk his cows, he loves to feed his cows and he revels in feeding every mouthful, and then waits expectantly for the results in the tank. When the outcome isn’t what he expects he’s consumed with figuring out why, constantly on his calculator, crunching weights and figuring rations.
While others find going around the barn and pushing the straw up under the cows a mundane task, he takes pleasure in this activity, several times a day, as he inspects each girl, making sure there is nothing out of the ordinary.  I swear he knows how long each cow chews her cud and if she’s the slightest bit uncomfortable.  His biggest frustration is not with the cows, but with his family as he wonders why we don’t all enjoy pushing the straw up under the cows as much as he does. (Who’s the odd one?)

In the evening, when the chores are done, he is the last one in the house.  He spends 15-20 minutes to make sure everyone is taken care of properly and literally tucks his herd into bed. And if they are out on pasture, he stands at the fence and looks them all over or if we are away at a ball game, he drives the truck down the lane to the pasture to count noses and tails making sure all are accounted for before he turns in for the night.

I guess this isn’t as weird as one might think considering he is charged with providing for a family of six and has 75 other mouths to feed. Maybe his seemingly ‘odd’ behavior isn’t so odd after all.

Readers with questions or comments for Melissa Hart may write to her in care of this publication.