Saturday, April 14, 2012

Male vs. Female


So far this year, calving season has been very uneventful. Which is actually kind of nice for a change; it’s been really really nice to have everything go so smoothly. We don’t have any first-time mamas this year, so all of our cows are experienced giving birth & taking care of their babies. And we haven’t had any runaway calves or anything crazy like that happening. We have 25 cute little calves with one more due within the next week or so.  Like I said, it’s been nice to have everything go smoothly, but it’s left me with not as many stories to tell as we would normally have.  But just when I was thinking that nothing interesting or exciting was happening, we had a day like today. Let me tell you all about it . . .

We had been keeping our bull in the same pasture as our horses during the last several months (We keep him away from the cows for a few months when they are giving birth as a way to control when the next year’s calves will be born). One day, about a month or two ago, a gentleman stopped us as we were feeding the horses & the bull. We’ll call this gentleman “Gus”. Gus has two cows of his own, and was interested in leasing our bull for a month to breed his cows. He’d be willing to pay, of course, and would feed the bull and take care of him at his place while the bull serviced his cows. We couldn’t see anything wrong with this; heck, we weren’t using the bull’s services at this time, so why not lend him out to a neighbor in need & get ourselves a bit of cash?

So we did. We hauled the bull to Gus’ place, which was only a mile or so down the road. Gus and his wife are probably in their 50s, maybe 60s, and they’re some real nice folks. He says they always buy a steer or two each year to butcher & share with their kids. Last year they bought two heifers and figured on breeding them and raising a few calves. It was getting to be dark by the time we dropped him off, so we didn’t get a real good look at Gus’ cows or his place, but it looked like a pretty nice facility. We wished the bull luck, and then we were on our way. Didn’t see him for a month.

Enter today. Today was the day that we had scheduled with Gus to pick up the bull. Clayton and I drove down to Gus’ place, back the trailer up, set up some corral panels to make a chute of sorts that we could use to herd the bull into the trailer. The bull and Gus’ two cows were in a smallish pasture, maybe half an acre or so. Gus has recently had some surgery, and so he is unable to help us out, but that’s no problem. We’ve chased cows before. Gus’ cows were pretty flighty, and wouldn’t let us get close to them without sprinting away. Our bull was hanging out with these new friends pretty closely, so we chased all three of them around the pasture a time or two before we decided to change our strategy. See, our bull is pretty big. He can’t run as fast as those other two bovines, because he’s so bulky and muscular. We figure that if we can separate the bull from the other two, then he’ll calm down and we’ll have more success in herding him into the chute. Gus has a small corral by his barn, and we decide to pen the two crazy cattle in that corral, and then separate the bull from them. And so we do. We get all three animals into the corral, and then let the bull out. In the meantime, one of Gus’ crazy cows has jumped over the back fence and is now in the field next door. We let that animal alone, hoping it’ll calm down, and focus on getting our bull safely into our trailer. Which we eventually do, because he’s not terribly wild, and we shut him inside the trailer, safe and sound.

Since we had contributed to the problem of Gus’ cows being crazy & jumping the fence, we opted to help him out and get his animal back into his own field. Some people maybe would have left the old fella to get his cow by himself, after all, it’s not our problem, but that never would have occurred to us. We found a gate that connects the neighbor’s field to Gus’ field, which we opened. Clayton took off on foot, Gus drove off on his four-wheeler, and I stayed by the gate to prevent Gus’ second animal from escaping. Let me just say here that Gus and his wife were both very nice people. They just didn’t have a whole lot of experience with cattle, perhaps. After watching Gus ineffectively trying to herd the cow with the four-wheeler, Clayton diplomatically borrowed the four-wheeler and began herding the cow himself. This cow was pretty wild. It was running all over the neighbor’s field, getting all of the horses in the neighborhood all stirred up. The four-wheeler has an open box built onto the front, which was holding some random tools, gloves, you know, the kind of stuff that you find around a barn or in a garage. Whilst on his wild-cow chase, Clayton does a great job, but in the process, tools, sprinkler heads, gloves and who knows what else, bounces out of the box and is now spread all over the neighbor's field. But the cow eventually gets pretty worn out, Clayton nearly runs it over a few times, and sooner or later, it finds its way back home. Safe and sound.

Now. Ahem. It was pretty clear to both Clayton and I upon our arrival at Gus’ house, but was made certain while we were in close quarters separating the bull from Gus’ two animals, that Gus was unfortunately very much mistaken on the gender of his animals. The two “cows” to which our bull had been employed to breed with, were in fact, not cows, but were also bulls. After a quick whispered discussion, Clayton and I knew that we couldn’t just leave these two nice people expecting to get cute calves in the spring. After some careful questioning of just who had sold these two “cows” to Gus, Clayton gently informed him that they were not cows, but were bulls. There would be no baby cows come spring. We hated to be the bearers of bad news, but figured that we ought to be honest with the poor fella. Gus was surprised and embarrassed, and we pointed out the finer details of the bulls’ anatomy to him. Make no mistake; they were both fully-equipped male bovines. To give Gus some credit, the bulls were fairly young (about 1 ½ years) and their man-parts were not nearly as pronounced as our older bull’s. I can see where someone who didn’t know what they were looking for might not see what they were looking for. And the crazy bull that jumped the fence had never let Gus anywhere near him in all the time that Gus owned him, so it’s not like he was ever able to do a close physical exam. Gus said neither he nor his wife had much experience with cattle, and that the person who sold the pair to him said that they were female. Perhaps the seller of the cattle mistakenly gave him the two bulls, or maybe there were some strange dealings going on; I don’t know. But Gus was glad that we were honest with him, and so grateful to us for not laughing at him and for spending an hour & a half on our Saturday morning for what turned out to be a futile endeavor. We felt pretty bad for Gus, and gave him some good tips and advice before we left.
                                            This is a bull . . .
                                           And this is a cow. Can YOU tell the difference? If not, come on over and we'll give you an anatomy lesson.

8 comments:

Linda Westover said...

What a hoot! Too bad Gus had to pay a fee and feed the critter for a month just to learn that valuable lesson.

Geoffrey said...

I find this HIGHLY amusing... =P

Eric Westover said...

Funny story. Kind of reminds me of when I was single and people tried to set me up. "Hey! You're both single!" Doesn't work that way.

R & S said...

most hilarious story ever! and yes, i can tell the difference. ;)

Anonymous said...
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Anonymous said...

I was there when Gus asked to borrow them. I could tell that he didn't know much. That was a good story that only got better at the end. Poor "Gus"

Anonymous said...

Also...I'm worried about the bull's interest now as far as his love life goes. Will he be like 49 or 20 or whichever one had the hehum, broken anatomy?

Ruth Sagers said...

Yeah, Cameron, we were worried about that too. But we took him to the vet for his checkup, and all was well. Although, the bull did ask us to paint his hooves pink . . . not sure what that means! jk