Less than an hour’s drive from the county’s famous safari park is another domestic savannah. Both Woburn and Woodbury are Bedfordshire out of Africa, stag‑headed oaks serving as acacia scattered over an English country estate, horned herbivores grazing on grassland beneath. Woburn has its antelopes; here at Woodbury are red cattle. And there is something profoundly wild taking place here today.
Far from the clustered herd, one animal has walked herself into solitude. She has chosen to shun company, as females of so many species do by instinct when their time is come. At first, we see only a rusty mound way over the other side of the drive. The shape resolves into a cow struggling to her feet. She walks but a few steps with a slow, stiff gait, before lying down.
Prone but not rested, she is shifting and rearing, constantly jerking her head and shoulders off the ground so that she can stare down towards her rear end, peering down the length of a body with a great barrel of a belly. Her whole abdomen convulses. When she stands again, she shows what is imminent – a long string like a dribble of snot hanging down, a water sac burst and emptied.
She plods back over the meadow and across the drive to rejoin the herd. Not quite ready, it seems. Another cow begins nuzzling her rump, and with good reason. Two dainty calf hooves protrude, and with each heave they seem to nudge themselves closer to first‑footing the world.
The herd bull, roused into slow curiosity, lumbers over to sniff his offspring. The cow leans over and begins to graze. Then she is off – lie down, stand up, go down, rise. And walking away, away from the herd, away from intrusive eyes, including ours. Seeking the privacy that a wild animal desires so badly in these most vulnerable moments to give birth.
We tip off the farmer, and two days later we are back. A calf is curled up half-asleep at the foot of a tree, a cow nibbling the turf close to. Mother and baby are doing well.
