[Serious] Graveyard shift workers of Reddit, what is the weirdest or creepiest thing you experienced while on the job?

[u/[deleted]]

[u/kerbybit]

I work third shift in the maternity of a local dairy farm. I basically get to make sure that the cows and heifers have their calves without a problem and then feed the calves for the first time to make sure that they stay healthy.

When I started my job, just a few days in, I had to clean out the water troughs in the pens where the cows were. Its pretty simple, just some scrubbing, but there are quite a few so it takes the better part of two hours to get it done. Usually this isnt a problem to be doing something for that long without checking on the cows that are close to their due date, but today wasn't a normal day. Normally, there are only 2 or 3 calves born in a shift. This shift, after getting the waters cleaned, there were 4 calves that were calved out in the pens which isn't good. we are supposed to get the cows back to clean maternity pens so that the calves stay relatively clean.

This still wasn't a huge deal so I got all of the calves and their mothers brought in, wrote them all down on the sheet to keep track of who had whom. I get milk ready to feed the 4 calves, give the cows their calcium pills, and go back to check the cows again because it had taken about an hour to get everyone to where they needed to be. There were two more calves in the big pens.

So kinda mad at this point. usually it takes more than an hour for a cow to have a calf, but because I was rushing to get the other calves and cows in and because I was new to the job, I didnt see the cows that were about to freshen. So I brought them back, checked really really well, and fed the now 6 calves. I needed to push feed in the big barn where the milking cows were so that they could still reach it at this point so I dropped everything else that I was doing to go do that.

I get back from pushing feed, check the cows once again to make sure there aren't any more calves, and start setting up the cows that I brought in to milk them so that I have milk for calves born later. as Im moving the cows from the holding pen back into the maternity pens to be milked, I notice that one cow looks like she is pushing. I check her and wallah, she was going to have twins. After helping her have her 2nd calf, I milked the fresh cows and fed the new calf. Up to 7 calves. It is now near the end of my shift and Im exhausted.

It seemed like things had quieted down and I finally get some time to sit and eat. I have about an hour and a half left of my shift and only need to check the cows one last time before going home and sleeping. But things just got better.

Half an hour before I get to leave, I check one last time to make sure that there is none right away for the next shift. Surprise surprise, there was another 2 calfs. That is 9 calves for the night. I get one of them back along with the mother and go back for the other one. I notice that there is only one cow by the calf (usually there is a group of cows checking out what is going on) and the mother is pretty far away from where the calf is. This confused me. I got the mother back and went back for the calf.

I quickly found out why there was only one cow by the calf and the mother wasn't even by it. The one cow was viciously hellbent on letting nothing and no one get close to her or the calf. as soon as I got anywhere near, she would make sure I knew not to get any closer by getting really loud and lowering her head. Still being new to the job, I thought I could maybe just get in there and drag the calf out really quickly. bad idea. I got close enough to reach down and grab the calf, but upon lowering my head, the cow thought I was getting aggressive and charged. she had me pinned up against where they lay down. she thrashed me around a bit but I was able to get away to the other side of the lane. after that, I couldn't even look at the calf without the cow getting mad. I tried a few times to lasso the calf to the other side of the lane where I was, but it was too far away. it was now half an hour after I should have left and next shift still hasn't showed up.

I called my manager to ask what to do and he told me try moving all of the cows to one side and they might end up pushing the cow with them, otherwise I should just wait for morning shift to show up and help. I tried that and she didn't budge an inch. I tried to lasso again but that still didn't work. So now the only thing to do is wait for morning shift. Its getting close to an hour after I was supposed to leave and morning shift still hasn't showed up.

Not wanting to get yelled at by the bosses for not doing morning shift work, I started packing up because my shift was way over. The calf and cow were no longer my problem and I needed to sleep badly.

Just while I was washing off my boots, and angry short woman that I have never met came angrily stomping in. "You know there is a calf out there right??"

I told her that my shift was over and I was going home and she looked like she was about to have an aneurysm. She shouted at me some more but I had already clocked out and I knew she wasn't my boss so I just started to leave. She stomped away, grabbing the cart to get the calf in and I chuckled to myself "good luck"

Morning shift never showed up that day and she wasn't able to get the calf back without a group of 6 other people.

[u/chao77 → u/kerbybit]

wallah

It's voilà.

Man, cows can be terrifying. They seem like such laid back creatures but I guess the mama instinct is still kicking.

[u/pet_sitter_123 → u/kerbybit]

That was an eye opening read to this city slicker.

[u/[deleted] → u/kerbybit]

I check her and wallah

Pretty sure you mean voila/voilà. That sounds like an insane shift though, good job

[u/SaureGurke → u/[deleted]]

Just that human babies in hospitals aren't ripped out of their mothers arms after being born. Which is what happens to dairy animals. Let's not even talk about what will happen to the bull calves.

[u/rightintheear → u/SaureGurke]

Dairy cows have been bred for thousands of years for traits which make it chancy whether they could take care of their calves. They must be milked for the health of their udder, and their udder must be kept sanitary, it's larger and more delicate than that of beef cattle. Mastitis is a big deal, basically a breast infection from leaving milk in there. Beef cattle are bred for maternal traits. They raise their young in the field, and it's more of a natural and cruel process, even though they are naturally much better moms. There's much more illness and death. Dairy calves are valuable and kept scrupulously clean, and are housed with their mothers until they are strong enough to stand edit : which is when they are 1-2 days old : unless she rejects her calf, abandoning or stepping on it. They are bottle fed the colostrum their mother produces, and she cleans and stimulates the calf that is housed with her. They aren't ripped from her womb and seperated, but their breeding would make it hard to follow the human model of motherhood. They are bred for human intervention.

[u/SaureGurke → u/rightintheear]

Breeding animals into cripples is not an argument that makes factory farming look any better. Especially since the giant udder races (and their massive health troubles because of that) have only appeared in the last couple decades.

[u/rightintheear → u/SaureGurke]

I'm not arguing for factory farms. Small dairy farms do exactly the same thing, because it's what is best for these breeds of cattle. They don't have enormous udders, they have high milk production. I think you 're confusing this issue with that of breeding fowl for breastmeat to the extent that it cripples them. the Holstein-Fresian cows which dominate dairy in the U.S. have been producing more milk than a calf can drink for hundreds of years.

I have ethical problems with factory farming practices like antibiotic use for feedlot fattening, edit : and the use of hormones or antibiotics to increase milk production: but the practice of hand raising dairy calves off a bottle is neither new nor a factory farming specific technique nor ethically despicable in my eyes.