Cultivating an Ecological Conscience: Essays from a Farmer Philosopher

Theological Reflections while Castrating Calves

15 Theological Reflections while Castrating Calves I am indebted to Gene Logsdon, who reviewed this volume of essays, for suggesting that I write one additional paper on the subject of “Theological Reflections while Castrating Calves.” He was suggesting, I think, that he would like to know more about what transcendent thoughts go through my mind while I am doing mundane things like castrating calves on my farm. Needless to say, that was an invitation too intriguing for a farmer/philosopher to ignore. Simultaneously it occurred to me that a brief introductory essay of this kind might prepare the reader for the diverse writings that follow, which were written over a span of more than thirty years. In our industrial culture it might seem weird to suggest that anyone would be engaged in “theological reflections” while castrating calves. Ever since the seventeenth century, our industrial culture has taught us to specialize , separate facts from values, and simplify our management tasks in the interest of efficiency. Reductionist thinking, which separates thoughts and actions into silos, never seemed to work well for me as a farmer. Multitasking comes with farming, even though it may be distracting and decrease efficiency and effectiveness. I don’t just concentrate on the levers to be manipulated as I operate the combine. I also pay attention to the sounds of the machine as clues to whether things are operating properly. I have to anticipate changes in the flow of grain into the combine so as not to overload the machine as I move down the field. While I am working out in my head what the yield of a particular wheat field might be as I amble down the field, I also try to avoid jumping frogs whose lives I’d rather not end by running them through the combine. The multitasking involved in operating farm equipment reminds me of Michael Polanyi’s description of the ways in which we know. Our industrial 16 Cultivating an Ecological Conscience culture has taught us to detach ourselves from what we want to know, in order to be objective. On the farm, I know things best by immersing myself in the things I wish to know. As Polanyi put it, “It brings home to us that it is not by looking at things, but by dwelling in them, that we understand their joint meaning.”1 Thus, contemplating a host of ethical and values issues while castrating a calf is the only way to “know” about it; it is a way of “dwelling” in the fullness of the act. In fact, values are to be contemplated in almost everything done on the farm. I could never castrate a calf without thinking about the values issues involved—the pain to the calf versus the demands in the marketplace for a particular quality of meat that cannot be achieved without castration. The choice is either to turn bull calves into steers so they can hang out together in the same pasture, or to leave the male calves as bulls and segregate them from female calves so they don’t breed prematurely or inbreed. Nor could I ever castrate a calf without agonizing over the most “humane” way to do it. I remember a mid-1990s meeting in Washington, D.C., called by Michael Fox, who was the director of the farm animal division of the Humane Society of the United States. Michael had arranged for a group of us to gather for the better part of two days at the Humane Society and work with him to develop a set of humane animal standards that he hoped could be incorporated into the organic standards of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Michael had invited farmers, ranchers, animal scientists, and activists to review the draft standards he had created. When we got to the section dealing with castration, his proposed standard called for ranchers to use local anesthesia before initiating castration. I remember sitting across the table from Mel Coleman Sr., a well-known cattle rancher from Colorado, and we smiled at each other as we contemplated this seemingly rational requirement. I told Michael that I fully supported his intent to reduce the calf’s pain, but in my humble opinion, the greatest discomfort to the calf (provided the procedure was done professionally) was not the quick incision necessary to perform the castration but being confined in a squeeze chute to perform the procedure. I reminded him that using a local anesthesia meant that...