Moooo. My name’s Hainoa, I’m a highland cow (said holding stuffed highland cow)
Mr Toastmaster, fellow Toastmasters and welcome guests. (make stuffed cow look at toastmaster, then from side to side at the other toastmasters and guests)
As you may know Rhoda lives in France at the weekends, on a farm. She recently rehearsed her speech to me, and it was RUBBISH. So I offered to come over and talk to you instead. I’m going to talk about my early life, meeting the father of my children, and becoming a mother for the first time.
I was born in the mountains at the start of winter on a farm with 40 highland cows and 4 bulls. Did you know that a group of highland cows is not called a herd? It’s a fold. My mum is from Scotland and my dad from France, so I am bilingual.
When I was 9 months old, the farmer, Sebastien, put me in a teeny tiny trailer and took me about 10 miles to my new home. My friend Islay who was moving there too wasn’t old enough to come yet so I went on my own. Sebastien rejected the field Rhoda and Doug had prepared for me because the fence wasn’t going to keep me in. So I moved in with a flock of sheep. Awful creatures who were scared of me and ran off every time I got near. After a couple of days of this I had had enough and jumped over the fence, I am surprisingly athletic you know, and went in search of the neighbours cow herd. Trit trot trit trot. They found me a little bit odd and hairy and they thought that girls don’t have horns before they met me, but they were nice enough. Doug and Rhoda seemed keen that I was happy settled in and eventually Islay arrived and two Jersey cows called Buttercup and Bluebell. At this point it became a slightly acceptable place to live. So I stopped escaping all the time. Rhoda did also give me a serious talking too about how embarrassing it was having to come and get me from one neighbour or the other and be shown up by my complete lack of leading skills when all the neighbours cows just did what they were told.
My friends Buttercup and Bluebell had some really really cute calves and when I was 3 I was finally old enough to have one myself. Highlands are much slower growing than Jerseys, Bluebell had her first calf at 18 months. Rhoda and Doug decided taking me back to the farm I came from to see a bull was the best way. Artificial insemination being the alternative, but I am not keen on strangers and my horns are 2 feet long and when I am scared I like to throw my head high in the air to make myself look bigger and high step around like a nutter. For some reason this puts people off. I wasn’t mad keen on the horse box and when Rhoda decided tennis balls on the end of my horns to protect the walls was a good idea, I objected most strenuously. Eventually I decided they were more persistent than me and I had better submit, plus calves are cute right? Aand this was clearly going to be a good opportunity to show them up once we got there. I did this by firing out of the horse box at high velocity and storming crazily through several fences to get to Capi my new lover and the rest of his fold. Initially I found so many cows a bit intense and went and stood in the middle of a woods on a steep steep slope for several days where Sebastien (the farmer if you remember - or Coo man as Rhoda calls him) couldn’t get me haha. Capi persuaded me out, so it all ended happily and I returned home pregnant.
We gestate for 9 months, but it was hard for anyone to know exactly when I got pregnant, or indeed if I really was. So in the final month Rhoda and Doug spent a lot of time starting at my belly speculating about whether it looked bigger or not. We cows have a lot of gas and the size of our bellies varies a lot according to that. There are other telltale signs with some ligaments shifting so the calf can get out and our udders start to fill up a bit before the calf is born, so they also spent a lot of time staring at my rear end. Udder growth is much more distinct on Jersey cows as they produce a lot more milk. We have been bred to survive the cold and predators of Scotland and they have been bred to produce a lot of milk. Rhoda was convinced up to the last moment that I wasn’t really pregnant, but fortunately I somehow knew what to do when the time came and I found a quiet spot and had the calf while Doug and Rhoda weren’t looking. Because of the Scottish predator thing we highlands are very protective mothers, so though I am very fond of Rhoda and Doug I didn’t want them near my precious baby. They told me that they just wanted to put fly spray on him to protect him from being eaten alive by maggots but I KNEW they wanted to see whether he was a boy so they could consider castrating him. In the event you will be delighted to hear that he is an unusual colour so will hopefully go on to be a stud rather than beef like Buttercups baby Roast Beef. Now a few weeks later I am getting used to the whole thing and even let them milk me a bit. Highland milk is nice and creamy, though we don’t have much to spare from our calves. When they calf Buttercup and Bluebell have to be milked every day for months, it looks boring and no fun at all.
So, now that you have heard a bit about me and my life, I hope that next time you see a cow in a field you will remember cows have personalities too, we may sometimes look a bit boring just standing there in a field chewing cud and farting, but mostly we are cute and funny and clever just like me! Moo!
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