A blog about bovine...

My friend has been feeling under the weather lately. Because of this, I have been helping her around the place. Imagine my surprise one morning when I walked out to the chicken yard and found this making a salad bar of the fruit trees in the backyard:

His name is Sammy. He is our neighbor's young long-horn. As it turns out, those horns are great for thrusting into the branches of fruit trees and thrashing branches down.

He had also made an extensive visit to our meager pile of alfalfa hay, making it quite a bit scarcer than it had been the day before. Sammy is no fiend, however, because where ever he went, he left a pie in gratitude for his samplings.

Now, I'm no stranger to farm animals, but I have to admit, my experience has not been in handling meat animals. Horses, dairy animals, chickens, they are all familiar with some sort of working relationship with the person who feeds them. The larger animals learn to be handled, to be led, the smaller ones learn not to be stepped on. I have found that I like this relationship style.

Now, this is where the real problem appeared: getting the large fellow back to his proper pasture.


I decided to try the most obvious approach. I grabbed one of the nearby horse leads, looped it around his head, and cinched it at his neck, and with all the confidence I could feign, I turned and marched towards the pasture...for two feet, where I was stopped by the unbudging steer behind me.

I looked at him. His big moist eyes looked back at me, cast a glance towards the apricot tree, and then slowly returned to me. The meaning was unmistakable, "You're kidding me, right? Leave this dessert bar to return to weeds? Hmm... No."

 

Clearly, this boy had developed a sweet tooth, so the next thing that occurred to me was to take advantage of it. I grabbed a scoop of molasses mash from the horse shed and attempted to coax him back through the gate. After the first nibble he follow a few, painstakingly slow steps. I had made the mistake all the greats make though: Never underestimate your adversary. Apparently, bovine possess the basic mathematical abilities necessary to estimate proportions and understand basic size comparisons. He took a meditative gaze at the two fruit trees, and then a calculating hesitation on my small bowl of mash. 2 trees > 1 handful of grain, and off he went to return to his new found love.

So, I took my own meditative moment and recalled how my friends at the fairgrounds managed their meat animals, and then, remembering multiple techniques, I proceeded to commit consecutive failures. I got behind him (outside of leg length) and made forceful sounding "HetHaHup!" shouts, clapping my hands, stomping my feet and making big, herding motions. He responded with a pitying glance over his shoulder and continued his plans. I slapped his rump. He flicked his tail. I tugged on his ear and tried several different commands. He shook my hand off like a fly that tickled him. I took a hold of his horn and attempted to lead him back to his pen. He sighed, and I could almost swear I caught him rolling his eyes at me.  I made horse noises at him, I called him mean names, I called him nice names, but nothing I did even earned his focused attention. Finally, as I leaned against the fence, exasperated and pondering, my eyes fell on the hose.

And then I tried a little experiment. As it turns out, while Sammy will tolerate a slap on the rump, a tug on the ear, insults to his personal existence as well as to the cow that bore him, Sammy absolutely cannot tolerate cold showers.

There is something guiltily funny in seeing a longhorn skip hastily back to his pasture with all the scurry of a startled rabbit. Especially if said longhorn just spent the last 30 minutes unbudgingly outside of his pen.

And this was one of those random things that happen in my unusually boring life.

I have now learned that grabbing a bull by the horns is not always as effective as ambling after him with a hose full spray ahead.

Thanks for reading.