The First Great Cattle Muster

Our small herd of Herefords consists of five cows each with a calf, four heifers and one little bull calf. And now the time has come to turn the little bull into a steer. These days this is done with elastic bands, they're slipped over the bulls balls and a couple of weeks later they drop off and - da dah! you have a steer.  No pain, no blood and best of all no great skill involved.

An early problem was quickly identified- we have no cattle yards, well we have the decaying remains of what we refer to as the rustlers yards, now mostly used by termites to sharpen their teeth and breed their young.  So what do we round the cattle up into.
Problems like this are easily solved in the bush. You talk to a neighbour and not only will the offer of their yards be instantly forthcoming, in our case the offer of their kids to help round up the cattle was also thrown in.

A family muster was organised on our side of the fence and on the appointed day our surfer dude son arrived down our dirt road in his shiny black car. He came fully equipped in thongs, Oakleys,  boardies
and a straw Fedora.

'Don't worry Mum, I've come prepared.' was his response to my raised eyebrows.  With this he kicked off the thongs and changed into a pair of white leather Nikes.  The eyebrows stayed raised.

Sensing that something was up, the cattle had chosen the far corner of the property across two creeks to  check out the possibility of some new grass.  The humans set off like a pack of Blue Heelers to bring the cattle in. They took the scenic route but eventually they were herded toward our open gate out onto the road and hopefully down the road to the neighbour's yards.
There was a slight hesitation at the gate and in a flash the cattle weighed up the situation and took off in a dozen different directions into the bush across the road.  In a Mt Eyjafjallajokull like moment - chaos erupted   -ahead of the cattle was dense bush and a rocky escarpment leading to a 4 metre drop into a creek.

Like lemmings, the humans followed the cattle into the bush.  One human ran with more purpose, the neighbour's 8 year old raced around the left flank yelling instructions to the adults
'I know where they are, go round'  and sure enough the cattle emerged with the pint sized human behind them herding them in the right direction.

To say that they quietly wandered into the yards would be some way from the truth, but to cut a long story short, they did end up in the yards, the bull calf was separated from his mother and secured in the crush.

Then it was time for the elastic bands to be applied.   In  Bull Castration 101 the first job is to locate the testicles. All the human males were down the correct end of the calf but something was missing. Maybe they hadn't descended, perhaps there was a veterinary problem. Maybe with all the excitement they had contracted.  More prodding and gentle encouragement, for city slickers its a wondrous sight to see a group of grown males murmuring soothing words as they gently stroke a bulls nether regions.  The result was exactly nothing, no balls, no result.

The ruckus we had created attracted a curious neighbour who thought we city slickers sounded as if we were out of our depth. Its interesting that he could tell this from over half a kilometer away.  He sauntered up to the cattle yards- took in the calf from the front then the rear and then had a good look at his head.  Wrong end,   we know- it -alls were thinking.

'Doesn't look too bully to me, he's been done, you can tell by the head and neck- oh and he has no balls!'