I was in over my head

To make the cows (and probably me) happy, we borrowed one of our rancher-friend's bulls. He was happy as hell to have 20 ladies to himself. Actually, it was also about the money. Might as well take advantage of the ladies, the exemption, the hay, the whole 'experience', right?

The ladies seemed to be uninterested in him and his 'business', but they let him do what he wanted to do, continuing to eat or lick the salt blocks.

I'm not sure how long it takes for a cow to become pregnant, but jeez, I'm pretty sure he got it taken care of the first 5000 times.

This bull, which we took to calling Betty, was huge. He was about 1800 lbs. of raw, dark muscle. He was gorgeous. He was also too friendly for me. One day he rubbed up against my husband's huge-ass truck, just to scratch an itch in between his shoulder blades. The whole truck was rocking, and my husband ended up thumping him in the head with a shovel to get him away from the truck. Betty just looked at my husband and walked away.

I would go out to the pasture (and I only did this one time alone, and then I made my husband do it while I watched from the other side of the fence) to put out some feed, and he walked right up to me. I mean right.up.in.my.face. All nosey, pushing on the bag of feed on my shoulder. He flipped me out. I dumped the feed and ran to the gate.

After they ate, I was walking the pasture (side note: I walked my 23 acres and not the county road I lived on because the fucking small town drivers were NUTS! Also? The town had no park or walking trails) and Betty spotted me as he was walking up the dam. I had a plastic bag with me, picking up all the trash that the dirty people throw along the road and into my pasture as they drive 75 mph.

He started running towards me. Running. 1800 lbs. of muscle, running towards little me. I took off running for the house, just as my husband came home from work, and he laughed as I jumped the gate.

***********************

The next day I came home from work, and there were only 3 or 4 cows in our pasture. I kept re-counting, like 3 or 4 can actually look like 20. I took out the binoculars (I wasn't walking out there after Betty's Running of the Bull yesterday!) and noticed that about 80-100 foot of our barbed wire fence was down. In shambles. And imagine that?-On the other side of that fence was several-thousand acres of ranch, cattle, and BULLS.



Apparently Betty wanted what was on the other side of the fence, and he just decided to knock it down like it was a kiddie gate??, not freakin' barbed wire. He was off checking out the ladies of the other ranch. And guess who kept coming to visit my remaining ladies? The bulls from the other ranch, who were not quite as friendly as Betty.



Our friend/rancher fixed the fence, got the cattle and Betty back, and then had to do it again the next day.

And the day after that. And........ the day after that.

It got to the point where I didn't even call the other rancher anymore. I just went out into his pasture, yelled at my ladies, and then called our rancher friend. We fixed that fence over and over, until Betty was done with his baby-makin' business, and then we shipped him off to some new ladies.