A Cow’s Strength and Hardiness
I am
constantly amazed by how strong and hardy cattle really are. We ranchers take this for granted because
most of the time cattle are very quiet and seem pretty dull. I have always gotten a little too close to
cattle when crowding them to load or sort.
Mom is fond of saying "watch out, they're bigger than you
are." I am aware of this but I
know that most of the time they will not intentionally hurt me. Most accidents are not caused by aggressive
cattle.
"Nathan,
he/she's 5 times bigger than you are!!", she
says. They are actually much stronger
than that. Pound for pound, a man
doesn't stand a chance in a contest of brute strength. A 250 lb man can do virtually nothing to a
250 lb calf. I have tried many, many
times to overpower a calf to treat it or whatever. Many bad accidents result from being slammed
into a rigid corral fence. A calf at a
dead run can knock you into a wall so hard you'd think you got hit by a
professional football player. The
difference though is that the calf will bounce off you AND the wall and scamper
off unscathed. Getting trampled is
always a risk. Most
of the time the animal will NOT step on you -- just run over you. I believe this is because they are prey
animals and are naturally conscious of their footing. They really only want to get away and would
not want to trip up on you. I have been
knocked to the ground many times by animals just trying to get away. I have never been stepped on. Even when I am intentionally forced away by
a cow protecting her calf she never steps on me. You can watch this attention to footing in
any rodeo. The saddlebronc and the
bucking bull usually don't step on the rider even when he's "hung up"
in the rope.
A high
school wrestler can effectively disable another competitor with a dozen moves
and holds. A calf, however, is at a
distinct advantage here also. There is
only ONE move I can execute to disable a calf with my bare hands. And I have to get close enough to its head
to do that. "Mugging" or steer
wrestling is where a cowboy twists the calf's head back around to its own
neck. A man could easily kill another
man doing this, but it very difficult to kill a steer this way. Of course I can use a rope to choke it or
tie its legs up but this is "cheating". If I try to hold a leg or squeeze the calf
around the middle (bear hug) I will not be able to last 10 seconds. I've caught hundreds of calves this way (it
is easier than catching their head) trying to tag or treat them and I assure
you it is not an effective means of control.
They can kick and thrash so violently that it is no contest (with a 250
lb calf). A frail woman can disable a
man 3 times her size with a kick to the crotch. This technique does nothing to a bull,
believe me.
Ranchers
spend a lot of time repairing fences.
The damage I have seen to fences is another indicator of the strength
and hardiness of cattle. Our corral
fences (at the Windmill) used to be made of wood. There were four 2 x 6 boards on the face of
the fence nailed to 6-inch thick posts.
Plus, there was another 2 x 6 nailed flat to the top of the posts (a top
cap). I remember being amazed at how
strong they seemed to me. I saw 2 bulls
shove another bull right through the entire fence. Not only did he break every board, he broke
one of the posts off at ground level. Of
course he was completely unhurt. (About 1980 ??)
We had a
bull named Mr. Clean. He was not fond
of staying in anywhere we wanted him. I
remember sorting him off from the cows at the gate going into the
"sick" pen (southwest corner of the hog barn). This gate used to be one of those "FarmMaster" gates, make of riveted sheetmetal
rails. I have seen stronger gates, but
this is a pretty decent gate. Mr. Clean
did not take this separation well and he put his head under the gate and bent
it into a triangle. (He bent a
rectangular gate diagonally). It's
important to note that he was NOT in a rage.
He wasn't running and hitting it.
He WALKED calmly through it like it was not even there. These sights are
etched in my mind to this day because it is unbelievable that something can be
that strong.
In 1990
we rebuilt the entire west corral (Windmill) and the home corrals. We chose to use 3-inch pipe buried in
concrete as our posts. We put these on
7-foot centers with 5 rows of sucker rods for rails (3/4 inch round bars that
look about as big as a broomstick). On
top of the line posts
we put another 3-inch pipe.
It is the top cap "saddle-jointed" into the line posts. We were so proud of this system that we
thought it would be foolproof. After 13
years of use I'm not so sure. In each
of the last 2 years I've seen a bull ("Fred" and "39") walk
through the same hole through this indestructible fence. Both bulls just put their heads through it,
bent the rods like shoestrings, and stepped through them. These are bars WELDED to pipes like you'd
find in a maximum security prison. "Back to the drawing board." I've often said that if we had a 6 foot brick
wall, they'd find a way through it.
It
doesn't really even take a bull to break this system. MANY times a large group of calves has
"spooked" and bent all 5 sucker rods like a pretzel. How do they do this?? I've taken the same material (a 3 foot
length of rod) and used it as a "cheater" bar (lever) to lift objects
weighing hundreds of pounds. I have a
hard enough time bending this stuff by heating it with a cutting torch. At weaning time we leave, say 150 calves, penned up overnight
in these corrals. In the morning we find
the pens "pretzeled" and a few calves are out. Obviously, they got shoved through the fence
in a tremendous stampede. (Feed bunks
with 200 lbs of feed in them are tossed around like coffee cans.) I do not understand how, on many occasions, not ONE calf is
even hurt.
Barbed-wire
fence is a complete joke. It is only
used because it is a bluff 99 % of the time and therefore pretty
effective. Most of our fence damage is
done by deer jumping over fences. They
frequently trip over the top wire and break it. 2 bulls, on opposite sides of a fence, are a
fence-builder's dream. In a second they
can give you an hour's work. I remember
going to Ted Alexander's to look at one of his fence-wrecking stampedes. About 1/2 mile east of his house 400
yearlings had spooked (lightning?).
They had torn out at least 50 yards of 5-wire fence. Every T-post was bent over or broken and
every wire was broken and tangled. The
ground was churned up and brush and trees were scraped up. I told Ted that I didn't think a person
could do more damage with a bulldozer.
No cattle were even scratched.
I
remember hearing of a local boy who ran into a barbed-wire fence with an
ATV. Although he had winter clothes on
he still had over 200 stitches in his legs.
I can't fix fence for very many hours without getting several nicks and
cuts on my hands/arms. I understand
that cattle have thick skin. The things
I have seen really make me wonder though.
I have given shots (vaccinations) to cattle my entire life. I know that a calf has MUCH thinner skin than a tough old
cow. A shot goes in with very little
effort. I want someone to explain to me
how a day-old baby calf can run right through a fence and not have a single
scratch. And I mean they can run
THROUGH it as fast as I can run in an open field. They do it all the time. I cannot count the number of times I have
seen cattle plow over, under, or through barbed-wire. Every rancher has. The MOST damage I have ever seen is a
scraped nose that I would hardly bother to put a Band-Aid on if it were my
child's. The mystery
deepens............
More
evidence of the hardiness of cattle -----
Several
years ago ABS (semen company) had advertised a bull
they called "Stubby the Survivor."
Maybe they thought they could sell more semen if ranchers could make
their cattle tougher with Survivor genetics.
Supposedly, Stubby was born in the worst blizzard in
Sometimes
we go out in the morning after a "big blow" (blizzard) and find
calves that have not gone with the cows to find protection. There they sit on top of a barren hill with
only packed snow or ice under them.
Many actually seem quite content.
Cows can have calves in 2 feet of snow in unspeakable wind-chill. As long as they get those calves dried off
(licked off) quickly, and nursed with colostrum, many
will do pretty well. By the way, how
does a wobbly calf stand to nurse when it's blowing 60 mph?? Of course we lose many calves to exposure. It is not a bed of roses. BUT, it is incredible that ANY of them survive
at all. Mike Chinn told me he once saw
a load of heavy-springer heifers come into the Pratt salebarn. One of
them had calved on the truck, down in about 8 inches of slurry manure. The cow and calf both claimed each other
despite being covered in manure (smell interference). The calf was unharmed.
In about
97 or 98 we had a blizzard. The mature
bulls were locked up in the WindMill corral on top of
the hill at the time. It was about as
bad as it ever gets here. Terrible
wind, low temps, 8 inches of snow. Dad
and I decided that we should drive out (?) and get those bulls off the
hill. (You begin to feel really
fortunate that you are inside and worry alot about
the cattle outside) It was a virtual
"whiteout". We crept out
there (2 miles) and I tied the gate open and hurried back to the pickup to
avoid the wind. (Your nose and ears
would really hurt after about 10 seconds).
About half of the bulls found the open gate and headed south to the
hills. The other bulls (5 or 6 head)
were right there watching those bulls leave.
This means they KNEW it was open.
2 of the bulls (Scotchy and LeePierre) despised each other and had to fight rather than
go through the gate together. Those
bulls fought like there was no tomorrow.
The remaining bulls, who were younger, thought this was quite
amusing. They were bellowing and
bucking and playing, watching these big bulls fight. It looked like a tornado of bull flesh
whipping up snow. Still convinced they
were "suffering" I yelled and chased them around to get them to
leave. They just continued to fight,
ignoring the weather. I know these bulls
did not like the foul conditions. But
they chose to play and fight rather than get out of the wind. The weather was obviously more serious to me
than it was to them.
A mature
animal can survive almost any cold.
When the big blizzards hit the big feedlots in