Tagged Calves and Castrated Bull-Calves, and nobody got hurt!

Yesterday was a five hour adrenaline rush!  After a week of fencing containment paddocks and wiring new electric lines on those fences, as well as setting up gates and panels---we were ready for pushing the entire herd through the squeeze shoot and dispersing them into the winter paddocks.  It was a grueling process.
Dear Farmer's job is to look over every bovine that comes in the shoot.  Are they healthy? Do they need a tag in the ear? Male or female? Castrate if needed. Dear Farmer shouts out the number of the animal and color tag to the Wife, who writes down everything Dear Farmer observed on that animal and the tag.  The tags are color organized.  Yellow tags mean: organic female, Blue tags mean: organic male, and White tags mean: non-organic breeding stock.
The Wife's other job is to pray for safety for Dear Farmer as he stands behind a bull and castrates.  It can get hairy(no pun intended).  Here we don't use knives for castration, so there's no shots, no knock-out drugs, and no second chances.  We use a Calbrate Bander, the most amazing device known to farmers and well worth the money spent!!!  It's a thousand times more humane as well!
And we castrate while the animals are on green grass, so there's no fear of infection because there's no messes!
The Farmer's Daughter runs the herd through the containment in into the shoot.  She had quite a time getting those little calves to do what she wanted.  But she was patient and used her knowledge of "energy" well. "Energy" isn't a new-age concept.  It's the force of your emotions and the positioning of your body that drives and animal to do what you want.  Sheep herders use "energy" when training their dogs.
Along with the Housefrau Farmer's Daughter keeping all the little people out of the way, and the Whiz Bang!Farmer's Daughter running back and forth from the Wife to the house for miscellaneous supplies-we had four other farmhands helping out.  Including the VeggieMan, the ChickenGuys, our Model Friend and the HerbGuru. They aren't usually working the cattle with us, but they did a great job filling the gaps.
In the past we have had Dear Farmer run over and stepped on, Dear Farmer kicked, Dear Farmer's Daughter kicked, people thrown, panels and gates beaten by angry cows, people fleeing over fences, and paperwork pooped on.  This year we had none of it! God heard the prayers of the Wife!!!
There's quite an adrenaline rush when working with cattle. It's such a big animal, and we are such little people!  There's people "whooping" and "whistling"!  The occasional yelling to a body to move one direction or another.  It's easy to see why cowboys do what they do, it's fun!  But at the end of the day...when the count was in...112 head of cattle...there's the largest sense of accomplishment.  It's like, no matter how bad Dear Farmer's body hurt, it was all worth it.  Everyone was safe, no one got hurt.  112 Head of cattle grazing contently in a field is a beautiful sight.
 

Feeding the Bulls

How do you make friends with a 1,600 lb. bull???  Remember the old saying, "The way to a man's heart is through his stomach."  It's true about bulls too.  Here's the story:
Dear Farmer and the Wife took the middle-five out to the pear tree and apple trees to see if there was anything to be picked.  We knew that if there was anything, it would be really high in the tree, so Dear Farmer strapped onto the front loader our "cage" for lifting people into the air via tractor.  And after we were all loaded into the "cage" he informed us that the trees that we were about to go picking on...that's where the bulls and steers have been hanging out.  Well, there were a few of us that were really glad we were in the "cage" and a couple that were a little leery about being there at all, and one that didn't care as long as he could ride in the "cage" and sing, "Higher!Higher!"
So Dear Farmer drove us all out to the fruit trees. And about as soon as we rounded the corner where we could smell the trees, there were six very large Beltie males. The males looked at us, in a "cage" on a tractor, and did not give the impression they were willing to have us join them in the pasture. They bellowed and snorted. Children who were leery about the bovine before, became nearly terrified. But Dear Farmer was anything but dissuaded from his mission. He continued on, raised the "cage" into the trees, and called out "Toss me some apples!" The Wife did, and Dear Farmer called the bulls by name, like a mother calls to a well-behaved child.  Up lumbered a combined total of 3,000 pounds of bulls, and Dear Farmer held out an apple to each. Lapping his hands like puppies the bulls ate the apples as fast as we could toss them to Dear Farmer.  It became quite comical. The joke was that the bulls were no longer swatting flies with their tails, the tails were wagging. Picking fruit became the secondary activity, feeding the bulls and steers the primary activity. We had to leave. The children were singing "good-bye"s to the bulls and steers, and we went home...Dear Farmer feeling very good about being friends with the biggest bulls on the block.