This ain't no bull . . .

One of the most important aspects of a cattle ranch is your bull, or bulls, if you have more than one. The daddy of the herd, your bull breeds with the cows which creates calves in 9 months. There's your birds & bees lesson for the day.

Probably you've heard stories about mean bulls that chase people or anything red. There's the "Running of the Bulls" in Spain where a large group of bulls are run through the streets of the town, running over any of the idiots who happen to get in the way. A lot of people get this idea that all bulls are mean and scary and dangerous. This is like saying that all cats are lazy, or all babies are cute. The truth is, some bulls can be mean and scary and dangerous. And some are docile, non-aggressive bovines, such as Ferdinand. Every bull is different, and they can be mean or nice, it just depends on their temperament.

On a side note, I have heard that there are a few breeds of dairy bulls that are notoriously aggressive and seriously scary. My sister-in-law's family has a dairy, and I asked her if they kept bulls or did A.I. (not artificial intelligence, we're talking about artificial insemination here). She said that they haven't kept a bull since she was very little. Apparently one time, their bull got loose, chased a bunch of kids and some workers into a horse trailer, and then kept ramming the trailer with his head trying to get to the people inside. Her sister has never gone back to their milking barn since this incident.

We've got a couple of stories about bulls which I will share with you over the next few days. First of all, here's some ranching info for you to help you understand how things work. Most ranchers either, A) keep their bull for breeding for several years, selling all of their calves each year, OR B) get a new bull every 2-3 years. The reasoning behind this is: A) If you are selling all of your calves every year, the you can keep your bull for breeding for as long as you want, or as long as he does his job, or until you want some new blood lines in your herd. However, B) if you want to keep your female calves (heifers) to use for breeding when they are old enough, then you don't want them to breed with their father. In which case, you'd get a new bull every 2-3 years to prevent inbreeding. Does that make sense?

Our first bull buying experience took place a few years ago. Clayton's grandfather, who owned the ranch, had had a stroke and was unable to take care of the cows. So a handful of us young-uns went to a bull sale in Ogden to buy us a new bull. We were pretty inexperienced, but we got the job done. We bought two fine-looking Black Angus bulls. Why two? Well, these bulls were only 18 months old, and we had about, oh 30 or 40 cows to service, so we wanted to make sure that there was enough bull to go around.

We quickly learned that our new bulls had two pretty different personalities. We trucked these two bulls from Ogden home to Tooele, and proceeded to unload them into the corrals in back of Grandma & Grandpa Sagers' house. Bull #20 (that was the number on his tag when we bought him, so that became his name) was out first, and Clayton calmly led him to the corrals with a rope halter and easily shut him into the bull pen. Bull #49, in the meantime, started thrashing around inside the trailer. He wouldn't let Clayton or Joseph near him. We figured that we could probably back the trailer right up to the corral gate, let the bull out, and then easily herd him into the bull pen. 49 had a different idea. We let him out of the trailer and he started running around, probably sick and tired of being cooped up in the rickety old rusty blue trailer. He would have none of our herding him around. He went after Joseph, Clayton's youngest brother, who was about 16 or 17 years old at the time. Joseph, determined to stand his ground, tried whacking 49 on the nose with a piece of PVC pipe to get the bull to turn around and leave him alone. Unfortunately, this made the bull even more angry, and Joseph was forced to retreat. He backed up until he bumped into the tailgate of an old truck that was in the corral. His knees buckled and he fell, rear-end first, into the bed of the truck. The bull was still coming after him, so there sat Joseph, rear-end in the bed of the truck, long skinny legs up in the air, whacking this mean angry bull in the nose with his pipe. Looking back at the situation, I am laughing just thinking about it. He looked so ridiculous. But Joseph wasn't laughing at the time and I'm not sure I would be laughing if it had been me. Anyway, 49 eventually left poor Joseph alone and we eventually got him into the bull pen.

Then there's the time that Bull #20 somehow escaped from the corrals and was wandering around the neighborhood, grazing on people's front lawns. Grandma Sagers' house is just down the street from a large park. When Joel got the call from the sheriff's dispatch telling us that the bull was loose, they told him that they had been informed that there was a wild bull running around crazy in the park. When Joel got to Grandma's house, the bull was in fact, not running around crazy in the park, but was calmly chewing on some tasty plants in an empty garden lot just two houses down from Grandma's house. By this time, a few police cars had gathered to make sure that this wild and crazy bull wasn't going to cause any trouble. Boy, were they sure surprised when Joel confidently walked right up to 20, slipped his belt off his pants and looped it around 20's neck, and then calmly led the bull back to the corrals.

That just goes to show how different in temperament two bulls can be. We sold #49 for slaughter after a few years of breeding, because after his yearly check-up, the vet informed us that one of 49's manly parts wasn't functioning correctly. And we sold #20 a year or two after that, since we had a half dozen of his daughters that we wanted to keep for breeding. We were sad to see him go, since he had been such a calm and gentle bull. But, ya gotta do what ya gotta do. More bull stories to come!