A few years back, my wife and I stayed at a working dairy farm up in Vermont that had a couple of hundred cows and was open as a bed and breakfast.
It poured rain for a couple of days, and there was nothing to do, nothing nearby, no television, nothing.
I asked if I could explore the property, and the farmer said sure, go anywhere you want...he suggested if I was interested, to take a look at their prize bull.
It was pouring rain and all mud, so I put on rain gear and boots and walked down to where there was a structure with hundreds of cows milling about. They stopped and regarded me, gazing with their uninterested look as they chewed, but sure enough, there was the bull, his head sticking FAR up above the backs of the cows.
And he had is eyes on me.
It wasn’t the dull, bored, disinterested look of the cows, it was a laser-focus, hostile look that made me feel distinctly uncomfortable.
And it’s hostile gaze didn’t waver during the fifteen minutes I was poking around. I haven’t spent much time around livestock, but I would wager that bull was somewhere between 1000-1500 lbs. And it was all muscle.
As I walked around, I could FEEL the thing looking at me, and when I turned around...it sure was. At one point, it put its front legs on top of some structure in the pen, and with an immediate feeling of danger, I thought “Jesus Christ. That thing can get out of there!” Then it went over to the gate and began pounding its head against the gate, and I thought “If that thing were to get out, I would be a grease spot.”
I decided I had enough sightseeing and left.
That was extremely intimidating.
I have a few stories of my own.
But I would rather tell you about a friend who was born on a farm and always has all kinds of livestock.
A number of years ago he bought several Texas Longhorns. The real deal shipped in from Texas.
One day when I visited his farm, I noticed the old truck he used to patrol pasture fence and other rough jobs had a terrible crushed front fender as well as part of the driver’s door.
So I said something like “Looks like you hit a tree or had a wreck”.
His reply was that he drove the truck out in the pasture for some reason and one of his dogs followed the truck. The Longhorns tried to kill the dog, who took refuge under the truck and the Longhorns ruined the truck trying to get to the dog.
I guess conditioned to guard calves from coyotes.
I promise you that if you saw the condition of that truck, you would never cross that fence.
By chance were the cows Jerseys?
The Jersey heifers are the friendliest.
The Jersey bulls are the meanest.