The old man and the cow

ANDREW GORRIE/The Dominion Post

CLOSE FRIENDS: Ken Simmons and his pet cow "Silverside".

Relevant offers

Features

Tui's Nick Rogers: The 'Yeah, right' stuff National Library: Bookworm heaven vs wow factor Shattering the glass ceiling Class of 2006 If Wellington was a dish Helen Clark's challenge: filling the begging bowl New York: Helen Clark's kind of town Busy times at Wellington Night Shelter Peter Jackson trivia quiz Halo gives rise to District 9

Ken Simmons starts cycling around 8am, a homemade rucksack made of twine and sacking lying limp upon his back. He pops in to a couple of properties on the way, collecting scraps of straw to fill his bag. About 30 minutes and three kilometres later, he stops at a lifestyle block, and looks out across the paddocks. There she is.

The 38-year-old cow has two gnarled horns, pale-grey shoulders and a wattled neck, a leaking teat and milk running down her ankle. Her hooves come to blunt ends where Mr Simmons recently clipped them with a hacksaw.

He was pressured into naming her by "different women, and that". He christened her Silverside, but he only ever calls her Girl.

"She was the first cow I ever bought when I retired."

That was 15 years ago. After that, he gradually downscaled his small herd of cows till it numbered just one. And around her he has built a devoted routine; daily rituals that reveal an elderly man's enjoyment in the simplest of tasks.

This is the story of an extraordinary friendship between man and beast, both nearing the end of their long lives.

Every morning, Mr Simmons – "just cracking a young 85" –leans his bike on a railing and stalks across the paddocks to reach his girl. "Hello, my darling. Hey Bub. Where's my Girl, eh? Where’s my Girl?"

He produces a small red apple and she sniffs it out, swallowing it with her furry lips and biting with her last remaining teeth. She has no front teeth. He has just one.

He places straw in her trough, rinses out her bucket of molasses, and lets her out the gate.

"C'mon, Bub." She shuffles off ahead, as he talks about her diet. Every morning, he fills the bucket with two capfuls of trace minerals, a splash of fish oil and a generous slurp of molasses. Her tail lifts and a stream of steaming brown liquid trails to the ground. "Perhaps a little too much molasses," he says, wryly.

He wears blue overalls, a woolly jersey, gumboots, a black beanie and a reflector jacket that a friend's wife bought for him. At the roadside, he leans over to hand-feed her little nuts of meal. He suspects the pampering may be the secret to her longevity.

It's seven years since Girl had a calf, but one day three years ago she started lactating and hasn't stopped since.

Mr Simmons sits on an upturned bucket and drags his fingers over her teats. He checks for signs of mastitis then directs the flow into a jar. He uses the milk to make custard and scones. "That gives her a purpose in life. She thinks she's doing something for me."

When she's finished eating, she wanders over to the gate that leads on to the road. He watches out as she crosses the tar seal. She can’t run anymore and cars tear along the back roads at lethal speeds. "She’s not so steady on her feet. Neither am I."

Girl enjoys her walk, grazing on the roadside grass. He watches her every move, taking delight in the changes in her mood. "Oh look, she’s puckering her lips." When they get tired, they stop and collapse into the grass.

When bitter winds howl down from the Tararua Ranges, she shelters behind some trees. In the icy heart of winter, when the grass is some days fat with frost and other days sodden by rain, he dons wet-weather gear and appears at the gate, on cue, to feed her, milk her, walk her. On searingly hot spring days like this, she seeks out cosy hollowed pits on the roadside. "She'll maybe meditate, do a bit of grazing . . . I sit down."

Some days he brings a radio, but today, the only sounds are lambs crying and calves blowing hot breath out their noses. After a while, she starts to call out for a cuddle and he duly wanders over and scratches her scrawny, sun-bleached back. "She loves this." Her head tips slightly to the side in obvious pleasure as he rakes his swollen fingers up and down her spine. Often, she'll lick his face in appreciation. "She likes to get into my hair but she just about tears ya scalp off."

As morning turns to afternoon, Mr Simmons reveals a thirst for knowledge. He is an avid viewer of the documentary and national geographic channels on Sky TV. He has bundles of reference material on train journeys, and laments the passing of the rail age.

He spends about five hours a day with his Girl, the rest of it feeding his mind and soul. He has old-time radio plays on record; classics like Dad and Dave, Eb and Zed, The Japanese House Boy. "They were great tales."

MR SIMMONS was born in Hamilton in 1922, one of four children. His father was a motor engineer. He has fond memories of the King Country settlement of Manunui where he travelled to school by horseback or bush tramway. "They were good days, y'know. Really good days.” He worked in a dairy factory in Waharoa, in the Waikato, before leaving for World War II. He was a radio operator with the New Zealand Division from 1943 to 1945. He served in Monte Cassino. "I wouldn't say everything we did was right, y'know. Wars . . . never solved a damn thing. What a blinkin' mess-up this Iraq thing has been. The sooner they throw that Bush joker out, the better."

He and his wife separated about 30 years ago and his four children live around New Zealand. He doesn't see much of them, but talks about family camping trips and walking the Milford Track with them.” I haven't always been old, y'know."

Mr Simmons worked as an auto- electrician in Petone till his retirement, aged 70. "I had a caravan. I was gonna do this and do that." But he got bored. "You can't play golf every day." He moved to the Wairarapa and hasn't been back over the Rimutakas for 10 years. "I've got no desire to ever go back over that bloody hill."

He bought 12 hand-reared Jersey cows and leased them out as surrogate mothers to Wairarapa lifestylers. He leased a lifestyle block himself and grew his herd to 36, but when it came time to sell, no one wanted an old girl like Silverside. He decided to keep her and a Friesian called Sandra. He was perhaps even closer to Sandra, but she died about five years ago from cancer in the eye.

Girl is so loved around the Wairarapa town near where they live, she gets more boxes of chocolates for Christmas than he does. "She’s an icon."

He spends $120 of his $500 fortnightly pension payment on rent at a pensioners' village, surrounded by elderly ladies who invite him to join them for a gin on a Friday evening. But he can't afford grog. "She costs me around about $200 a month, so I gotta watch every penny I get."

He pays $10 a week rent on the quarter- acre where Girl sleeps. She is tested for tuberculosis every year. He has bought her a thermal cover for winter and she has all the best supplements on the bovine market.

JENNY WESTON, senior lecturer in cattle health at Massey University's Equine and Farm Services, has never heard of a cow making it into its 30s. The average cow lives to seven years. A good milking cow might live to 13 before being culled for failing to get in calf. McGillie, the bull that enjoyed stardom as the Taranaki rugby team's mascot, died in September aged 22. The oldest recorded cow, according to a cow factoid website, was Big Bertha. She died in 1993, aged48, having produced 39 calves.

Dr Weston says that a largely toothless cow like Girl would not survive without Mr Simmons. She would starve without hand- feeding as her gums could not rip enough grass. Dr Weston says cows are sociable and, in the absence of other cows, Mr Simmons's companionship is undoubtedly keeping Girl alive.

And maybe vice versa.

He tries not to think about arriving at the farm one day to find his old friend passed away. And if he goes first, she'll be put down. "There wouldn't be anyone who would look after her like I do."

Mr Simmons says she is a good pal, who has never kicked him or used her considerable 350-kilogram bulk to nudge him out of the way. Occasionally, accidentally, she'll stand on his foot, but she would never willingly hurt him.

Girl lets him know when it's time to go home, usually around 1pm.He walks behind, occasionally lifting her tail and giving it a light tug. "That's the accelerator pedal."

He walks her to her paddock, and sidles up for a cuddle. "Come to Dad." He gives her a hug, slaps her rump and tells her he'll be back tomorrow.

He packs away her feed, secures his rucksack on his back, climbs on his bike and turns to cycle home . . . . back to his pensioner flat and the documentary channel.

Mr Simmons looks back on 85 years of memories and says life goes by very quickly. "You blink your bloody eyes and it's gone."

His advice is to start praying that you'll come back as a cow; the centre of the world for "some old codger like me".