Our bulls? Bad boys? Kruger and Romeo, who will follow Bill anywhere with a bucket of range cubes?
Our two bulls are usually mild-mannered unless they are near each other or another bull, or don’t have plenty of female companionship to keep them occupied at their life’s purpose. Actually, they’re just normal bulls.
Romeo
Our two bulls are usually mild-mannered unless they are near each other or another bull, or don’t have plenty of female companionship to keep them occupied at their life’s purpose. Actually, they’re just normal bulls.
Romeo
Kruger
Side Note: Naming a bull Romeo may seem self-explanatory, but he actually is descended from a line of bulls that have Romeo as part of their name. Kruger was not named after former K-State basketball star and coach, Lon Kruger, or any of the long line of athletes to come out of Silver Lake, KS. He is a descendant of Mr. Krugerrand, one of the top-rated Angus bulls. This line is known for siring low birth weight calves, also known as a calving-ease bull.
Since we do fall calving, the bulls breed our cows at the ranch where they all spend the winter. The boys are occupied and deliriously happy for a couple of months. Then, the breeding slows down but not the testosterone production, and boredom sets in. They realize, “Hey! There’s competition here! I’m gonna kick his butt and let him know who rules!”
In my book, I called this “Bored Bull Syndrome.” To keep these expensive, egotistical, beefy hunks from seriously injuring each other, when Bill is certain all the cows have been bred, he loans out the bulls to a couple of neighbors to breed their cows.
After we finished working and hauling cattle a few weeks ago, Bill rearranged and reinforced the corral pens in preparation for bringing the bulls home from neighbors. They would need a “getting reacquainted” period after not seeing each other since early last spring. Bill put them in adjacent corral pens, one with a cow and the other with a replacement heifer to hopefully provide feminine calming influence, i.e., to keep them from getting bored and going at each other. The cow hadn’t yet calved and the replacement heifer had already come into heat a few days prior, so they were provided as company, not for breeding.
It didn’t take long for the boys to figure out their female companions were decoys, not provided for their breeding pleasure. We heard them bellowing bull smack at each other. When I went to the corral to take photos of the bulls in their pens, I found fence panels scattered on the ground and the boys engaged in head-to-head combat, pushing each other back and forth.
Since we do fall calving, the bulls breed our cows at the ranch where they all spend the winter. The boys are occupied and deliriously happy for a couple of months. Then, the breeding slows down but not the testosterone production, and boredom sets in. They realize, “Hey! There’s competition here! I’m gonna kick his butt and let him know who rules!”
In my book, I called this “Bored Bull Syndrome.” To keep these expensive, egotistical, beefy hunks from seriously injuring each other, when Bill is certain all the cows have been bred, he loans out the bulls to a couple of neighbors to breed their cows.
After we finished working and hauling cattle a few weeks ago, Bill rearranged and reinforced the corral pens in preparation for bringing the bulls home from neighbors. They would need a “getting reacquainted” period after not seeing each other since early last spring. Bill put them in adjacent corral pens, one with a cow and the other with a replacement heifer to hopefully provide feminine calming influence, i.e., to keep them from getting bored and going at each other. The cow hadn’t yet calved and the replacement heifer had already come into heat a few days prior, so they were provided as company, not for breeding.
It didn’t take long for the boys to figure out their female companions were decoys, not provided for their breeding pleasure. We heard them bellowing bull smack at each other. When I went to the corral to take photos of the bulls in their pens, I found fence panels scattered on the ground and the boys engaged in head-to-head combat, pushing each other back and forth.
Bill was gone and I wasn’t about to interfere and risk getting maimed. Neither were the cow and replacement heifer; they stood back out of the way. Within a couple of minutes, Romeo backed down, allowing Kruger to claim bull supremacy. Fortunately, no blood was shed and there were no apparent injuries, although Romeo was breathing heavily. When Bill returned, he rebuilt and refortified the pens.
A few days later, Bill hauled the bad boys to the ranch.
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