I’ve owned about every kind of farm animal there is at one time or another. When I was really little dad bought me two bottle calves. I learned about bloat in calves at a very young age when one of those little calves bloated one day. I also learned that some calves are really smart and easy to get along with, but others, well they don’t have any common sense at all…. I learned that at a young age as well. It’s true in every animal I’ve ever owned. I’ve had smart dogs and dumb ones, same’s true for horses, goats and pigs.
One of my first bottle calves became my first cow. We bred her to a Brahma bull that first time. Her calf turned out to be a blooming idiot. We liked to never got it caught in the lot and when we did we immediately took it to the salebarn. On the way it jumped over the back gate of the trailer. I can still remember looking back and seeing it sliding down the highway. Miraculously it only skinned up one knee.
Over the years we’ve laughed guessing about which cow would produce this year’s blooming idiot. I cull wild cows quick, I hate mean or wild cows that take the calves to the back of the pasture. They don’t stay around long at my house. Over the years though it seems no matter how good and gentle the cows are, there’s always a calf or two that grow up to be stupid.
I’ve got a good set of yearlings right now. They are broke to feed and easy to move around. However there’s one, that’s just flat stupid. He gets stuck in the corner of the lot and gets excited. He’s even earned himself a nickname, and it ain’t the type of name you’d say when the preacher is around.
This danged calf tore two gates off the hinges the other day. If he’d just learn to follow the others his life would be easy. Oh no, he’s got to look under the feed trough, in the corners and try to go under the gates. He’s also just big enough that I don’t step in front of him, he’s about six hundred pounds of excited, confused, and scared black hooves and hide. It’s not that he’s mean and comes a hunting me, he’s just stupid enough to knock the soup out of me on his way under or over or through the lot.
The bull that this calf is out of is a big old pet. Out in the pasture I can dump cubes on the ground and then rub the bull on his shoulders and side. The crazy calf’s momma is an old roping calf that doesn’t walk fast enough to get to the lot before the other cows. She is the one I have to wait on before opening the gate.
I can’t help but wonder if the bull and cow talk about their stupid calf. I can hear them now, “All of our other children turned out fine, but well, G.D., he’s always been different. He just can’t help it.”
I bet the other cows say something like, “We’ll keep him in our prayers.” Then when the parents aren’t around they say, “There’s no helping that kid.”
The other day I’d been putting out hay and mineral. That evening I turned on the TV and there was an ad for a pill that makes you smarter. I thought about contacting them and asking if it came in fifty pound sacks.
James Lockhart lives near the Kiamichi mountains in southeast Oklahoma. He writes cowboy stories and fools with cows and horses.
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