Cattleman job

By: Ernesto Pantaleón Medina / Television Camagüey

Camagüey contributes around 30% of all the cow milk that wastes away in the country, and more than 25% of the head meat, numbers that say a lot without doubts.

And it is that the Cuban county of more territorial extension, possesses plains that were designed for the cattle raising, for the type of floors, for the sources of water and for the grasses that here sprout with easiness.

But anything falls of the sky, as sent by the gods; a lot of effort, constant dedication to the attention of the flocks, a war without barracks (although not always victorious) against a thorny plant called marabout, characterize the chore of thousands of children of this earth .

Doesn't have the cattleman weekend rest, neither festival or traded days, the luxury cannot be given of remaining in the channel up to the six or seven in the morning on Sundays, neither to be preserved of the rain or the cold when the time is inclement.

In no way: the animals should be picked up at the same hour every day, to milk the cows each day with chronometric accuracy, because their biological clock dictates inviolable rules; it is necessary to loose the bovine ones in the precise moment so that they pasture freely in the herdsman, a time that is not for the rest, but to repair fences, to cut the weeds or to look for forage to feed them in the night.

It without counting the care with which is necessary to treat the calves, to watch over the zeal of the females in reproduction so that they are gestated, to assist the births and some that another imponderable.

If the cowboy makes sick, he should overcome at the uneasiness and both or the three of the dawn to begin the milk; otherwise, to look for a substitute, because the cows cannot remain with the full udders, what would almost surely cause them dysfunctions of graveness.

And still in the case of the substitute, the results are not the same ones, because the animals stress¨ and they hide a part of the milk, they unfriendly become aggressive.

If it rains, it is necessary to be soaked until the bones, if there is cold, the man go to shiver; if the mire arrives to half leg, what setback, but it is necessary to continue.

It is for that reason that this work is seen in a simplistic way as an occupation, hard but necessary; however, the commitment with the flock is born from beyond the action of every day, of the to press the hands and to tighten the muscles… it springs from a place more penetrate, of that deep and inexplicable place that welcomes the vocation and the art.

To that call many cattleman pride.