My philosophy has always been to have gentle cattle, it was one of the most important traits to most people including myself. I started out working with a herd of registered Charolais, in keeping several bulls both herd and weaned - yearling, around about all times, I’ve had to deal with a lot of bulls, since I was young and I will tolerate them being bulls up to a point, I found a lot young bulls will try to test you, but then after they are turned out with cows they are generally not a problem at all. I would cull any bull though if they seemed often and was verily aggressive as I did not want to sell a bull to someone else that I didn’t particularly have a decent level of confidence in.
After I ended my run with registered cattle, I’ve kept the same thought process with selecting and handling bulls. They are individuals and no matter how much we think we know them they can turn, but even though I know that I do tend to get too relaxed a lot of times around them sometimes.
Once bought an 18 month old Hereford bull that was pretty feisty he would come running and slinging his head. Backed him up a time or two with I stick and after being out with cows he was fine. He and several others would put on quite a show though when playing with a roll of hay.
Simmental bull I bought a couple years ago, fooled me. When we went to look at him he seemed fine but the owner was new to cattle and visibly afraid. A few days after getting that bull home he was very aggressive and I don’t take anything for granted around him. He got hurt and it was probably a blessing in disguise to get him off the place before he hurt somebody. He was dangerous to load.
The history of the bull in my original post was that he seemed like he was calm and no red flags as a weaned calf, until some of the tenants kids that lived in the house on that property where we had our bulls told us that they had been throwing rocks and other thing at the bulls. The other bulls didn’t show any change but that one became high headed and flighty, over a long time he seemed to calm back down but had a bit of an edge to him. The don’t know if that’s what started him or not but seemed like he changed at that time. I wasn’t overly concerned with him but didn’t want to get him hemmed up or to be out in the middle of the field with nowhere to go either. I’d kind of had an encounter with him the first year he was with heifers, in the field where he ran towards me bellering but stopped well before me.
Then he did a similar thing last summer when I got off the tractor to check on something here he come but again he stopped and went on by.
Then with that the other day, I thought I’d get some thoughts from y’all. I had been thinking he needed to go, but then sometimes I second guess my self and think I might be too particular, but at my age and health I dont want to take too many chances and sure don’t want my wife to get hurt as she works with them too.
We’ve had a neighbor get seriously injured by a cow, and know of someone else that was killed by one.
With an option to buy him if you like him!
