Down on the farm

This is in response to the Vol. 14, No. 1 UC Davis Magazine. I submit a couple of anecdotes of life on campus in 1936-38.

The first of my memories goes back to the beef barn. That wonderful understanding man Alex MacDonald was the herdsman and Dr. Gilbert was the head of the beef department. I lived at the beef barn with Jim Moore and Bob Bown. The wall beside my bunk had a sliding panel. This panel opened into the birthing stall. By using this ingenious device and a flashlight, I could keep track of the expectant mothers without getting out of a warm bed and wandering around the barn on a cold night. Many a newborn calf was saved by this method.

Breakfast was an easy item; while two of us were busy hooking up old "Chub" to the wagon (the Percheron horse we used) to go for a load of hay, the third went for milk--fresh from the cow. The hardest part was rainy mornings in the winter. The corrals were a slop of gooey, sticky mud. Many is the time I lost my boots in the suction from the mud and ended up herding cattle in stockings or bare feet.

Walter H. Doty '38
Laguna Hills