More from Oxbow Farms
Don’t think I
added the links to my old stories from Oxbow Farms as I said I would in my last
blog before the update. It took me awhile to find the right pic and to size it
right for the blog and I completely forgot so will include them now:
Anyhow today I
plan on taking you with me as I again take a trip down memory lane and up to
the bull barn as we called it back then. Inside was a huge bull pen made out of 2 inch steel pipe welded at
one and half foot intervals or close enough so a full size bull couldn’t stick
his head through and it was probably 40 by 40 feet inside and the same outside
, yet had a door in between we could close in bad weather. The sides of the pen
went from the ground or a foot above the ground every one and half feet to the
ceiling. Making the walls to where you could see the bull and interact with him
but not so he could get to you.
We were never
supposed to go in the pen unless someone else was there to watch and do
whatever if something went wrong, like he used you for a play toy or something.
He weighed 2400 lbs. find of like one of those jacked up four wheel drives with
mudder tires, only on four legs. He stood over 6 feet tall and I had to look up
to see over his shoulders. He was a mammoth bull with a two and half foot wide
head and I was entrusted to feed him.
He was a big baby
and we soon it came to the point that I actually thought he was glad to see me when
I came to feed him. Some people do as they are told, and I myself look at an
animal and feed an animal the best I can when feeding them, the same as I would
do for myself and better. They wanted some more weight on him and so they
wanted me alone to feed him as I could do a better job understanding quality of
hay and feedstuffs needed. I would throw his hay into the chain rack in the
corner of his pen from outside and the same with his grain. I fed daily for quite
a time, while I worked there on an internship basis, and knew I would miss
feeding him. He loved to have his head scratched, you had to be careful though
as one bump of his head against the steel bars of the pen would break your arm
if you allowed it to be pinched in there. He was so powerful a bull.
His main purpose was
to be used for semen collection and it was kind of sad to hear how they went
about doing this. I could only imagine after never really experiencing, but
only hearing tales of how it was accomplished. They would take a bull much like
this identified by his progeny and statistics to be the ideal of what the
purebred industry is looking for when selecting a bull. Mainly high birth
weights, calves that lived at birth and how many made it to weaning, and then
calving ease. Higher birth weights translate into more money per unit of
weight. Steaks are bigger etc., this all equals more retail beef for sale. If the calf weight is large at birth and if
they, they being the mother cow may have more troubles at birth with
complications involving caesarian and split pelvis operations to remove the
calves resulting higher birth losses, then this isn’t good. You definitely want
a big calf but easy to calve. Hard to find this right ratio, as calves are a
result of two parents. Heredity and statistics plays an important part in
selection of animals in any beef production farm, or dairy and pork as well. The
same principles are applied across the board when it comes to livestock
selection and genetics. It all depends on what you are looking for and that
will be the ideal that most farmers shoot for. This bull also had twinning
aspect to him. Too produce two calves off the same mother in beef production is
like getting an animal for free and lower calf weights. This would be easier on
cows calving, kind of a real win-win situation in selection characteristics,
but twinning is not always heritable or so they say. But regardless, I
delivered three sets of twin calves while I was there and he was a father to
six in his progeny, and it was a statistic although not always used for
selection did influence the top breeding bulls of his purebred status as a
Simmental bull sire.
This was his niche
or corner in the market of semen production. They wanted to store as much as
they could in liquid nitrogen for future use. This is the way you pay for your
bull. As a bull in artificial semen sire production is apt to breed thousands of
cattle from the same bull, yet only about 1000 in his whole lifetime if left to
natural processes. He was hardly used to breed any cattle naturally. Instead they would lead a heifer or cow in heat
up in front of a jumping stall as they name it and which I have seen. It is
carpeted and is like a huge saw horse and the bull and the cow would be
separated but close enough for him to smell her heat. I guess that would be the
equivalent of pheromones causing excitability and an erection in the bull. Well
the reason a bull has a nose ring is to control him while he is in this aroused
state, as two rope leads with a pole attached to this ring with one pole being
held by one guy and another pole being held by the other would control this
bull by holding his head back and if a bull would turn his head any way they
didn’t want him to, they would yank on the rope and pull on his ring forcing
the bull to snort but yield his turn.
Now we need to pause
and reflect on why today’s teenagers want to wear a nose ring or rings as I
have seen on some pretty girls who need nothing, but insist on portraying themselves
in nose rings. Forget the health issue of keeping them clean but look at the
true meaning of nose rings and see it as a form of submission to slave oneself to the tireless effort of being
cool. As well our generation knows, it is an elusive trip only rewarded after
years of endearment to be the one, that you finally realize you don’t have to
conform to be cool. It is all a state of mind based on values of society ever
changing. Oh well they will find out soon enough.
As I digress and reflect on society , and it’s
correlation to fads without knowing the meaning or true intent, these handlers
hold the bull and actually keep him on this huge sawhorse, while another
artificial inseminator technician grabs ahold of the bulls now throbbing member
unsheathed in his plastic gloved hands and shoves the about 3 foot long and up
to an inch and half wide member into an
artificial vagina that is warmed and lubed to a cows temperature, usually made
out of a rubber tire inner tube that is
folded together and has a semen
collection sack which is basically a clear plastic baggy to collect his semen
taped to the bottom with duct tape, while the bull who is jerking and
contorting on the stand finally deposits his healthy load. Now I need to insert
my joke for the day.
What
is long and round and has seamen inside? A submarine of course. What did you
think? Anyhow after a long day of semen collection an handling several bulls
the artificial inseminator comes home to his wife and she asks.
“How was your day
dear?”
And he looks at
her and says. “Long and hard dear.”
She says. “Oh well , make sure you wash up
for dinner dear, and by the way we are having your favorite , mountain oyster
creamed stew, it will be oh so-oooo good!
That was the part
of artificial insemination that kept me from getting a certification to be an
artificial inseminator technician and part of the requirement of my field of
specialty at ATI and eventually forced me to change or split my majors into
crop production. Call me a homophobe or whatever but there was no way I was grabbing
a bulls whatever, for any amount of money, let alone portioning and freezing
his semen afterward.
It seemed a
shame that here was this great bull and at times I just wanted to turn him
loose in one the pens of cattle and just watch him go to town on the old girls.
But then again even with his prowess could he ever measure up to the arms of an
artificial inseminator as he does his thing. Even this bull may be let down.
Being a herdsman sometimes isn’t always a good thing and is the reason I think
natural is best. You need more bulls but that is ok as it seems to work best
and cows and they seem to enjoy themselves more.
I would sometimes
have to retrieve this big boy’s feed bowls from inside the pen. Usually as I have
said before for safety reasons, we do this only when someone else was around. I
called for other help and no one was going to be available till I left work,
and then the next guy who replaced me would have to do it alone. I couldn’t let
someone else do my job when we were shorthanded, and knew someone would be around
soon, but still I couldn’t tell when that was.
So I went into the pen through the steel gate, always keeping my eye on
the bull. I had to go all the way over to the other side of the pen. The bull
would turn and face me but never offered to advance toward me. I had trouble
reattaching the feed buckets with the new clips we had, as he had torn a ring
out of the feed bucket. This kind of took my attention away from the bull for a
second and I turned my back away from him and looked at what I was doing. This very
act went against all I was ever told about bulls and that was never turn your
back on them. Just that quick I felt something underneath my butt as I started
going up into the air grabbing on to the pipes as I hand over hand was trying
to hang on, all the way up to the ceiling and I was ducking my head as I was
over five foot high off the ground, with my legs a dangling, sitting on this
bulls head. I hooked my feet into the pipes on the wall of the pen and climbed higher
stooping as I did trying to get away from this bull and I was in a corner while
doing this making it easier to thankfully escape his massive head-butt he had
just gave me.
I was relieved I
was safe but still not so much, as I was still in the pen, and what is hard for
the bull to escape through, was also holding me in, so I had to do something
quick and since I had no club to turn him away, and he was just standing there
with his head in the air shaking it playfully. Kinda like common Big Boy it’s
time to play. I did the only thing I could do, I planted a size 13 between his
eyes as hard as I could I shoved my foot in his face and thumped him real hard,
with kind of a hollow thud to it, and he shook his head and snorted but turned
away and sulked outside like I had hurt his feelings. I felt almost sorry for
him for about a second and then I was safely back out the door and gone. Only
taking enough time to catch my breath and be thankful I wasn’t lying in a pile
of BS stacked in the corner. Wadded up like a shitty ragdoll with some blood to
accent it. A fitting tragic end to my early writing career it would be as no one
knew I was in there and it could have been hours before they found me.
I never reentered
the pen but instead made some long poles with hooks on one end to either drag
the feed buckets to the side of the pen or hook them with extra loop I
installed on the buckets to prevent ever having to enter the pen again for that
reason. So many times when you are alone, and in the process of farming you
encounter moments like this when you could just as easily be dead, that you truly
appreciate what some of these old farmers go through daily by themselves.
Whether it is turning on a tractor PTO or power take off to doing whatever, or
it could be something as simple as walking in a pasture and tripping and
hurting your head on a rock to realize how dangerous this job can be. There are
no magic bullets or safety equipment, but instead intuition and experience
plays a role in their being able to make it another day.
Really don’t
know what message I may have left with you in retelling this story or anything
it contains in this blog but sure covered a few areas that should make you
appreciate a few things. Maybe you to would be glad as I am that farming and
especially livestock farming may not be a good career choice for those with
issues in controlled breeding such as me. It takes a special type of person to
do that work and I know it isn’t me. My hats off to the Artificial Inseminator,
and I would shake your hand but?
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