You should see how we treat our ducks. Most spoiled ducks ever. They resent when we pull toads out of their mouths because the toads are too big. What brats.
Yeah, they’re kind of expensive eggs, but we get a lot of entertainment watching the ducks, too.
We had a bull one year when I was young. Cows are pleasant placid and friendly. Bulls are monsters and a lot bigger than you’d expect.
We were loading the bull on a truck and they were reluctant to go up the ramp. The truck drive hits him with an electric prod. The bulls response was to back up into the prod, turn around and walk through the side of the shed. Took the whole wall down.
Probably why they don’t keep bulls anymore😀.
Some farm animals are a lot more difficult to deal with than you’d think. Like sheep. They’re ornery bastards.
I have it in good authority that pigs are wiley sobs. Source: chased pig around the house for an hour trying to catch it.
Hogs are nasty. They will eat/chomp on people when possible.
Pigs are smart and remember the people that mistreat them then wait for an opportunity to strike back.
That’s why you make bacon. Eliminates the possibility of revenge.
Our bull was like that for a while, until we started studding him out. Then we didn’t even have to go round him up. As soon as he saw the truck back up to the loading chute he would come running. It was a little sad when he came running the day we took him to the slaughter house. But he still tasted just a good as the others.
Yeah, bulls are a lot of work. Especially in tact adult ones. There’s a reason they castrate most male beef cattle.
One of my dairy farming relatives decided to try his hand at keeping a bull when the bull farm raised the price of semen to an amount this relative considered unacceptably high.
Like your family, this experiment lasted about a year, and ended with a LOT of damage followed by the bull being sold at auction.
BTW, I’ve visited the bull farm with the too-expensive semen. By far the most immaculate barn I’ve ever seen. You’d think they were keeping elite racehorses except the stalls were massive. And a lot stronger than what’s used for the cows, which is obviously necessary.
Pretty sure to be called a bull it has to be intact, otherwise it is called a steer.
Check out this video of a bull entering the stands at an Idaho Rodeo last week.
The town I grew up in has a rodeo every year with bull riding. One year a on night 2 of 3, a bull did that, jumped the fence (which is probably 7’+) luckily it jumped right between two sets of stands and went out the entrance and everyone was able to get out of it’s way and no one was hurt. The next night the cowboys were ready and when that bull headed for that area, both cowboys lassoed it and as it jumped they were able to stop it from leaving the arena. Two weeks later the rodeo company was at city to the south of ours and on the first night this bull tried to do the same thing there. The next day it was sent to the slaughter house.
I couldn’t believe how that thing cleared that 7’+ high fence with such ease. Didn’t even touch the top wire. Extremely graceful and beautifully terrifying.
Fosbury-style?
Asking for a friend.
A steer certainly means a castrated male.
I did consider the fact that saying “in tact bull” is somewhat redundant, but seeing as how not everyone in this thread is necessarily a cattle expert (I don’t know how many times I hear people talk about “boy cows” or “male cows”) I figured I’d spell it out for clarity’s sake.
I also defined heifer as most people use that term incorrectly… assuming them to be larger than other cows. I think this incorrect belief stems from the fact that the word has become a slang term for a fat female person. 
An intact adult male is a bull.
A heifer is a young cow who hasn’t had a calf (or approximately that)
A neutered male is a steer, or an ox, depending on whether you plan to eat him or use him for labor.
Both “cow” and “ox” are sometimes used in gender-neutral ways, as a common word for the animal.
I took a college class about pastural nomads, and one of the questions on the final exam was about cattle herders. To amuse myself, i used as many different words for the animals as I could think of. There are a lot of words in English for cattle.
Cow, calf, heifer, steer, ox, bull, kine, cattle, bovine, beeves, bos Taurus, bullock, I’m sure I’m missing some.
Shame they killed it. They could have used it as an extra drawcard for future events - “The Jumping Of The Bulls”. Certainly would have guaranteed the spectators’ undivided attention.
My dad’s family doesn’t keep any of their male sheep - mostly to avoid inbreeding, but probably also because they just don’t need that many of them.
Saw that in “Clarkson’s Farm” on Amazon. Though they castrated the males at birth or shortly after. He had 75 ewes and 2 rams.
Oh yeah - definitely castrated.
I remember one year a couple male lambs were born late and didn’t get castrated. They had to be cut out of the herd to avoid problems (I’m not sure exactly why - they were probably at least a couple month shy of sexual maturity). For some reason they were just slaughtered instead of being castrated and put back in the herd.
The tails and boy parts are removed at the same time. We used* rubber bands for the boy parts and a knife for the tails. Some people use rubber bands for both.
*it’s been many years since I’ve helped out in any of this. They may have adjusted the process.
Are you disputing something I said or just repeating it?