Whitewash revisited or a lot of bull in the afternoon

Well really it was a steer, but he sure acted like a bull. We whitewashed yesterday so I went over to the barn about four PM to start undoing everything we did to get ready. I was pulling plastic off the bulletin boards when I noticed something amiss. The great big shorthorn/Holstein steer we are raising for beef was not in his stall. Instead he was up in the manger fighting with a yearling heifer, Chicago, who was still tied in her stall.


This guy is a brute, may 13 or 14 hundred pounds of nasty-as-a-bull. (We women have often wondered if the guys missed something of key importance when they castrated him, although they swear they didn't). Anyhow, he doesn't like me and has always lunged at me whenever I walk past his stall.


Still I couldn't just leave him fighting with that poor little heifer.
So I picked up a piece of pipe that had missed being put away and walked over to that side of the barn. I was careful to stay close to things I could hide behind.


Good thing too. The first thing he did when he saw me was charge right at me. I jumped into the baby calf tie up and swung the gate closed in his face. He ran right up to it and threw his head over snorting at me. I gave him a pop on the nose with the pipe, which backed him off a foot or so. A second pop sent him back to fight with poor Chicago some more.


As soon as he was otherwise occupied I slipped through the stalls, where he would have to wind around them to get to me and ducked out of the barn.

I hustled to the house to send Becky after the men, who were baling, and Liz and I went back to the scene of the crime.
There is no stopping that girl.
"I am not afraid of him!" she declared. Chicago is one of her babies and she wasn't about to let her be abused by a big pile of beef.

I took my hickory stick; she took the pipe. She opened the gate to an empty pen; I tiptoed up behind all the fans, which were stored under a canvas for the whitewashing. That gave me something to duck behind if he charged. I hollered and whacked him on the rump with my stick. She stood by the gate and threatened him with the pipe. In less time than it takes to tell it that stinker was locked up in the pen. However we had to let Magma, our red calf, loose to run around the barn because she was tied to the gate. She had a fine time thundering up and down the mangers and walkways and running underneath him and under Chicago while we were working.


The men were as far back on the farm as they could be, about a mile away, and Becky couldn't find them, so we had the barn all cleaned up by the time they came down. It took at least an hour to rope the darned "steer", (which I still think is a bull), get the nose leads and a halter on him and walk him back to his stall. With three people holding the ropes.


I think Lizzie and I ought to get the farm-girls get-it-done award or something. And I think it is time to call the processing plant real soon.