Bulletin 17

We lost one of our Bulls

A tragic loss

We had a bad experience this week while bringing the main herd in for a bit of a checkup.

We were out mustering and getting close to the laneway when I came upon one of the bulls, Investigator. He was down on the ground. He didn’t look very well. His eyes were bulging a little and his tongue was hanging out. His legs stuck out in front of him like four pins. They looked stiff and awkward. Our other bull, Injector, was circling him, nudging his back and trying to push him to his feet. It was distressing to watch. It made me feel quite upset.

I called Chris on the two way radio. We decided to push the herd into the laneway and then go back to see what we could do. It was probably about 10 minutes before we returned. When we got there, he was stone cold dead. Just like that, gone.

Injector was still circling and nudging his mate. We had to wait for him to move away before we could get a closer look at the dead bull. He hadn’t put up much of a fight. We’ve had cows go down before and they usually thrash about. Investigator hadn’t really moved.

We invest a lot of money in our bulls. You need to put a good bull over your cows if you want to breed prime beef. They are quite majestic beasts weighing in around 600 kilos. They have a presence of their own. I can only really muster them because they want to follow the cows. If they are on their own they’ll just stand and look at me, not moving no matter how much I beep the horn.

Investigator wasn’t looking very majestic today. It was a sad day and a substantial loss. We needed to consider the possibilities.

Why did he die?

Had he starved? No, he wasn’t looking poorly with his huge girth still protruding from his side as he lay dead. That couldn’t be it.

Had he been overworked? We are short one bull. You normally have about 1 bull to 30-40 cows. We had two bulls with about 130 cows. But if he had been overworked you would think he would have been looking poorly. That couldn’t be it.

Had he eaten something poisonous? We don’t know of any poisonous feed on our property and he didn’t seem to have gone through a struggle. He had basically just dropped dead. But I guess it’s possible.

Had he been bitten by a snake? The snakes are mean this time of year. This thought freaked me out a bit. If a snake bite can drop a beast this size, what could it do to me? (I’ve been looking out so carefully since then.) I guess a snake bite is possible. But why did it have to bite our bull!

Well I guess we will never know for sure.

An Aside

While Investigator was down on the ground I was able to inspect him closely – more closely than you ever could if he was on his feet. I was intrigued to notice that he had a couple of nipples at the top of his scrotum. Apparently this is normal. I guess guys have nipples that don’t serve any specific purpose, but I hadn’t considered bulls had them as well. They were funny looking things. They didn’t really look like they belonged.

Well, I have to say, you do seem to learn something new everyday on the farm!