Spring sprang early this year. We had decided that Mr. Beefy would go to the butcher when tax returns came back. I am not an April 15th-er. If I get my way, our taxes are filed by the first week of February, and I get antsy as all get out if I can't have them done by the end of February at the latest. This year was no exception. By the end of February we had the money in hand and were ready to go, except for one thing. We heard that bull meat can have a strong flavor*, so it was decided that we would have him castrated, and then wait a month to let him work out all that excess testosterone before we took him to the slaughter-house. I'm not even gonna pretend that I felt bad about it. Frankly, after watching him beat up my van with my 2 precious daughters inside, and go head to head with my equally precious husband, I was perfectly ok doling out some retribution. So we had him emasculated. And I watched with smug satisfaction.
Truthfully, it was pretty fascinating. And I really felt, well, farmy. I mean, we had a large animal vet here at the farm. He talked cattle and told his war stories about old bulls and skittish cows and being gored under the armpit, and wrapped it all up with, " I love it. Never worked a day in my life." YES.
So, Doc managed to get a rope on Beefy, and then, calm as he could be, walked in to the pasture with 1,000+ pounds of angry, snorting cowflesh, and hit him with the sedative. Heart in throat, over here. AND I was holding a stick to wallop him with should the fencepost he was tied to not hold. Fifteen minutes later, Beefy was down, and Doc went to work.
It only took about 10 minutes to do the whole job. Snip and clamp, that's pretty much all there is to it. I texted this picture to Davey when the job was done:
He laughed for a solid 10 minutes when he saw it. Until I started telling him all about how to prepare "mountain oysters" for cooking, anyway. Doc showed me, even though I assured him I had no intention of serving those ....ummm... boys <ahem> up for supper. Still, I like to learn new things, and so if you ever want to know how to fry up a bull's dangly bits, give me a call. I'm told they're quite tasty. I'm going to stop talking about this now.
Beefy woke up an hour or so later. I'm guessing he felt pretty strange. And for a solid 3 weeks he seemed pretty subdued. We thought we had won. We were wrong.
*we found out after the job was done that this step probably wasn't necessary. According to Doc, there can be a stronger flavor, but he's never noticed it personally and most don't. Europeans actually prefer bull meat to steer meat. Next time I think we'll save the vet bill.
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