Frozen calves find warmth in Sask. woman's tuque creations

Calving season in the harsh prairie weather can be trying, but Betty Wyatt found a way to channel her desperation into ingenuity.

It started on a very cold winter's day — is there any other kind? — when her son came in from the barn after tending to a set of twin calves.

"He was in frustration to no end," recalled Wyatt, who has since retired and lives in Wawota, Sask. "He said, 'Mom, I can't keep these calves warm. As I'm warming one up, the other's freezing its ears. What can we do?'"

It's a problem other producers have grappled with, and Wyatt noted if the calves don't get up, get moving or get warm, their ears can freeze and get nipped, or even fall off. This ends up hurting their later show and sale value.

Back at that time, around 1999, she had the idea to make a specially-crafted tuque made of stretch polar fleece, which not only kept the calves' ears dry, but drew moisture away from the ears as well.

Her act of "desperation," as she described it, ended up paying off. After sewing calf tuques for her own animals, she started doing it for her neighbours as well. When her son suggested taking it to Agribition with her, she waved off the suggestion.  

"I thought that's just being ridiculous. Nobody's going to pay attention to that," she said.

But she followed through on his suggestion, and a magazine happened to see and write about the "Cozy Caps," as she's dubbed them.

"It just went crazy after that," she said, noting she's now sent Cozy Caps across Canada, across 24 U.S. states, and to European countries like Scotland, Ireland and Lithuania.

The demand still stuns her, with Wyatt saying she sold her highest sales in 2015 saw more than 2,000 tuques sewed in her home.  

Right now, with the snow and wind of the past March, the caps are in demand.

But when the tuques come off, the calves behave in a way that other Canadians may find familiar in their own reaction at the onset of spring.

"The reaction that's the most fun, or the most gratifying to see, is when you pull it off, and they give their head a shake and they just start bouncing around like little rabbits," Wyatt said with a chuckle.