Monday, April 3, 2017

Who's Your Daddy?


Who's your Daddy?

That phrase popped into my head when I saw one of the final members of the County Line Class of 2017 because she sure didn't look like her Mommy!

According to Wikipedia (the authority on all things), "Who's your Daddy?" is "a slang expression that takes the form of a rhetorical question. It is commonly used as a boastful claim of dominance over the intended listener."

But this is no rhetorical question: Really, No. 795? Who's your Daddy?

It's not any of the three Angus bulls we own. It's not the Hereford bull who shared pasture space with our females nine-plus months ago. Its daddy is a Charolais bull from a pasture neighboring ours on the Rattlesnake Creek.

I could call the Charolais bull Casanova. But I think it was really one of our cows who had a wandering eye. She was a regular Lolita who spent part of the summer gallivanting in the neighbor's pasture.
We have only a couple of stragglers left to calve, so we aren't checking the cattle as frequently. By the time Randy saw the little Charolais calf, it was plenty frisky. Randy had to use a calf catcher to hook a hoof so he could give the little girl an "earring" (also known as an ear tag).
It was the star of its own rodeo!
Randy caught it, and I handed him the ear tagger (after pausing momentarily for a Kodak moment, of course). 
Once it had its eartag and a shot of vaccine, she was up and away!
Her mama made sure she was OK after the encounter with the human.
It was then I remembered the tune from the kids' Sesame Street days:

One of these things is not like the others,
One of these things just doesn't belong,
Can you tell which thing is not like the others
By the time I finish my song?

Even though Little No. 795 has her own built-in camouflage on a cloudy day, she does stand out in a crowd ... at least, the crowd on the County Line!

6 comments:

  1. I wonder if she feels ostracised at all. Her Mum will love her, whatever!

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    1. I wouldn't think so. She runs and plays with the rest of them!

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  2. Yea that you are close to the end of calving and got rain!

    Two years ago we had a heifer with a stub horn. Why we kept her I don't know. "Horny Pecorny" was a chronic fence crawler; we could not keep her in. She was out every time we checked cattle, but always jumped back in. She got a one way ticket to town last winter.

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    1. This was only her second calf. We'll see how she does this summer. Hopefully, she'll be more content to stay "home."

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  3. Ha ha, very nicely done! Your calf catcher implement looks pretty tricky. Does it have a hook on the end just to trip the calf or a lasso to actually grab it?

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    1. It has a small hook on it. He didn't get it with the first try. :-)

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