A COW CALLED PIXIE, part the second

Giles and Phil, two of the foot trimmers from Delaware vets, were at Milton Farm to trim the feet of 27 cows. As she is nearing the end of her lactation, our new bovine hero, Pixie, was one of those cows requiring a routine pedicure. Here she is, looking indignant in one of Delaware's special foot trimming crushes.

To say Pixie felt put-out by being held back from the green, green fields of Somerset is to couch her rage in the mildest terms. As she swaggered her capacious rump down the Milton Farm cow handling race and into the crush, the trimmers wondered aloud at her breeding: "Dad's an Angus is he?" All I know is that Pixie's dad wasn't a beef breed - such as an Angus - but instead a tall, good-footed Holstein called ALTAEsquire; his daughters noted for their high cheesemaking milk value.

Well, either him or a breeding record-keeping error.

But why trim at this time of the year? Well, it fits in with cow production levels. Trimming at drying-off finds the cow not quite at the very heavily pregnant stage and also finds her low in milk, so her body is just about at the lowest level of production it can be. Although routine foot trimming is generally pain free - much like clipping one's finger nails - it is undeniably still a stressful, confusing process: having feet winched-up, the noise of the angle grinders buzzing away, combined with the change to the routine.

And so, the indignant Pixie bustled off on her newly sculpted feet into 'Tank' field to join her friends, with their heads down, hard at work, turning grass into milk so that it may be turned into cheese.