I bought a cow last weekend
 

I wasn't sure where to put this thread but it pertains to stocking up so it ended up here. I'd been looking for a feeder calf and my daughters boyfriend told me of a guy who had one for sale. He negotiated the sale for me and I went to pick up the 'calf' as I thought it would be. My truck is broken down so I asked Travis to ask the guy if I could haul it in my van ok. He didn't mention it was a minivan. The guy says 'Yeah'. I drive about 40 miles to pick it up. Even though I have worked for a local farmer cutting and bailing, etc., I am ignorant of all things 'cow'. When I think of a calf I think of something small and cute and maybe I can pick him up to load into my van.

I introduce myself and the guy looks dubiously at my van and says, "Well, back it up to the barn." So I do. I pop the hatch while he sends a lad to get the animal. It takes a long time. I hear a commotion and yelling and banging and more yelling. I'm thinking, "How big is this calf?" The thing finally comes running into view and it is pretty big, about 450 lbs. We get it to jump up into the van and it tries to keep going past my front bucket seats and almost goes right through the windshield. The windshield is all cracked up now and the cow must be wrestled back into the back.

I look the situation over and decide that I must have something behind the seats to keep the animal from sitting in my lap on the way home. We rustle up a small piece of plywood that will prevent him from coming between the seats. I find a roll of ductape and put some across between the two doors, up high so he'll feel more 'encased'. As I get ready to take off after paying the guy $300 I see something hanging and I think to myself 'Is this steer a bull?'

It was a scary ride home. I'll never do that again. He was huffing and puffing like a locomotive, shit and pissed everywhere. I was afraid he'd come crashing thru to the front. He's in the barnyard now and looks a lot cuter there than in my van. My lady named him Buddy. Oh boy, how am I ever going to eat a cow named Buddy. I'll feel like a cannibal.

Re: I bought a cow last weekend
 

That was the freakin' funniest thing I have heard in a long time.

Re: I bought a cow last weekend
 

Did anybody get a picture of the calf in the minivan?

:rofl:

Re: I bought a cow last weekend
 

Don't have a cow, Man!

Re: I bought a cow last weekend
 

It's got windows all around. They are tinted but you can still see through them. I don't know if anyone saw but I suppose they did. I was going very slow and it is rural all 40 miles. I was too preoccupied with the drive to notice anyones looks.

He looks lonely out there in the field. I am going to pick up another tommorow. This time I'm borrowing my son's truck and I'll hook up my job trailer. It was quite a job cleaning my van out. Still smells like cow. I told my lady, "It takes a real man to ride in a van with a cow that size." She just gave me one of those 'looks'.

Re: I bought a cow last weekend
 

:clap2:Lol (really) thanks for that buddy, what a funny story.

I know GIM doesn't exactly have the demographic for this show, but Rob & Big on mtv had an episode where they went to pick up their mini horse in their "pimped out" suv.

mini-horse + back seat of car + 400lb black man = seriously funny stuff

check it out at the 2 minute mark

dangit, can't get the video to embed.....here's this direct link

http://www.mtv.com/overdrive/?id=1559950&vid=150469

Re: I bought a cow last weekend
 

Thanks for sharing that!
:haha::haha::haha::haha:

Re: I bought a cow last weekend
 

we bought a calf home once. We lived in the suburbs, close by the river so we had about 1 acre of dirt. Still its not legal having cattle inside city limits. Sheep are ok if a semi rural.

The calf was an orphan from a small farm we had and only a few weeks old. When we took it home it was not much bigger than a dog. We managed to get it into a caged trailer we had for sheep and got it the 50 miles home.

It was after dark by that time and we had to setup where to keep the cow. We decided the cage from the trailer which we moved to the yard. To get the cow around to the yard we had to take it through a side yard past the pool. Remember we were trying to be quiet so we wouldn't get discovered.

Well suffice to say as we walked the cow around the side in the dark, he went too wide and ended up in the pool. So now we had a swimming calf mooing his head off after stepping sideways onto nothing and into the pool. It was quite a shock I think.

No amount of dragging or coaxing could get this cow to move over to the steps and out of the pool... all the while mooing like a fog horn. I had to go into the water and push and shove this poor cow up the steps and out of the water.

Of course by that time all the neighbours had come out to see the commotion.

I can tell you all animals have character and intelligence. I was at highschool at the time and at the end of the day when we got home our calf would go crazy mooing and bouncing around his cage until we came out and petted and fed him. If we let him out he would try and follow us.

This poor little orphan calf lived with us until the council made us take him back to the farm. By that time he was big enough to survive on his own, but he never really grew the same size as the other cows. That early formula feeding meant his development was less than the other cows.

Even back on the farm he would hear us arrive (on weekends) and run to say hello and try and follow us into the house. He was pretty good at going up steps by then. Anyway he was called Henry and you are right, once you get to that point its makes it almost impossible to eat them or send them off to market. I think Henry mysteriously missed the truck to market more than once.

Eventually he was sold on with the farm. He gets remembered often just because he was not like all the other animals... he wasn't just an animal any longer.

Re: I bought a cow last weekend
 

The VAN was the problem

Cows like to be transported in cars only:thinkey:

Re: I bought a cow last weekend
 

I worked at a sale barn in college, you should see the things we packed animals into or unloaded them from. Vans were no big deal, but we loaded a 600# Brahman yearling heifeir into the back seat of a Cadilac, 3 200# calves into the back seat of a Delta 88, and unloaded a 400# calf from the front trunk of a VW bug. That was a tight fit!

Perhaps the best was a couple of buddies of mine who caught a 200# wild boar with dogs and tied him up....in the trunk of a Volvo. The hog kicked free and knocked the tail lights out of the car and the guy (who was drunk, of course), got pulled over by a County cop. The Deputy had his gun drawn, thinking he had a person kidnapped. He ordered the Volvo driver to open the trunk, to which he replied 'no way, open it yourself!' He finally recognized the hog grunting and believed the guy's story, and let him off scott free. They had to let the hog out and recatch him. A few years later when he sold the car, the trunk still stunk.

Re: I bought a cow last weekend
 

Re: I bought a cow last weekend
 

another piece of stupid trash from mtv, no better than the other crap

Re: I bought a cow last weekend
 

Thanks for your story I've not laughed that hard for a good while & I'm still chuckling to myself. :haha::hahaha::bulride:

Great description & though scary for you at the time I bet your heart was going like the clappers, I guess you can laugh now. I can imagine the story being passed down to your grandkids, as do your remember mad Grandpa who took a cow for a drive in the van. :D

Re: I bought a cow last weekend
 

I bet the guys who loaded the cow have a story to tell....

Re: I bought a cow last weekend
 

Whatever you do

DONT SELL BUDDY FOR THE MAGIC BEANS!! DO YOU HEAR ME...DONT SELLL JACK!!



T

Re: I bought a cow last weekend
 

Looks like a moo'ving violation to me. :D

Re: I bought a cow last weekend
 

Bullsh*t!:bear_tongue:

Re: I bought a cow last weekend
 

:rolleyes_m: Quite a tale...I'm amazed he didn't go postal and make you wreck the van on the way home.:bear_w00t::D:bear_w00t:

That's funny...:clap2:

My brother wasn't quite so lucky with a two goats.

He decided to get a couple of goats to keep his small pasture clear and only had a Chevy work van to transport them home in.
The guy he bought them from blindfolded the two large goats with some cloth scraps and told him not to take the blindfolds off the goats until he was ready to unload them.
The logic behind it was valid...I've transported some mean horses over the years and blindfolded they are usually not too hard to handle.
They don't panic because they can't see their surroundings.

Well...the two blindfolded goats and my brother were doing just fine out on the interstate until one goat's blindfold dropped off.
The goat went completely insane and attacked him while doing 70 mph,the other goat also went ballistic and you can pretty well guess the rest.
Let's see...

1- Chevy Van a total loss
2-Three other vehicles involved in the ensuing 4 vehicle pileup.
3-Multiple injuries all around in the other vehicles.
4-My brother suffered a major head concussion and so many other injuries inflicted by the psycho goat they are too numerous to mention.
5-A couple traffic tickets
6-Two of the other accident victims sued him.

That pretty well covers it :D

Moral: Don't push your luck transporting large farm animals in a van unless they are sedated or rendered immobile.

You got lucky...I'm glad you only had to clean up the van.

:beer:

Oh yeah...both goats were badly injured in the wreck and one of the officers at the scene had to shoot both of them.
When he found out what had actually caused the accident he wanted to shoot my brother.

:bear_w00t::bear_w00t::bear_w00t:

Re: I bought a cow last weekend
 

I shouldn't laugh :haha: but :laugh_m: you guys are cracking me up. Maybe a compilation of these stories in a book would make a packet or at least create some belly laughs. :bear_w00t:

Re: I bought a cow last weekend
 

OMG, I was tearing up reading that one...thanks. :clap2:

I wasn't sure if you put this in survival prep because you bought the cow for survival or because you survived the encownter.

Re: I bought a cow last weekend
 

Yup. I drove real slow on backroads all the way. Didn't want my troubles to become someone elses troubles.


Excellent advice.

By the way, I am getting another cow this week. This one is bigger and I'll be using the trailor.

Some years back I had raised a couple of pigs. Came time to take 'em to slaughter and they wouldn't herd into the trailor. My brother in Florida says, "I hear you can pick 'em up by the back legs and wheel 'em around like a wheel barrow." I tried it and I'd not advise it. It was like having a wild rototiller stuck on full bore. These were 'very' large and pig is only a term used for an animal up to a hundred pounds. They were far bigger, 'hogs' I suppose and let me tell the one went hog wild when I tried to manhandle him by the back legs. Boy were they ever tasty though. They were fed on stale beers and table scraps and all manner of things. Escape artists though. You must have a good pen to keep hogs. I came home from work a couple times to find what looked like a rototiller had been run across my yard. That's just what they do, stick their head in and go.

Re: I bought a cow last weekend
 

:haha::haha: STOP STOP I'm going to pee my pants!

Re: I bought a cow last weekend
 

Wow, that was crazy
:haha::haha::haha::haha::haha::haha:

Re: I bought a cow last weekend
 

Hmmmm...maybe the name "Buddy" answers the question, but....

Did you get a cow or a bull? If it is not a cow, don't try to milk it. I hope that advice is not too late. :rolleyes_m:

Re: I bought a cow last weekend
 

:haha:

Great story! Definitely one for the generations.



I didn't realize livestock was transported in cars so often. They should be getting used to it by now.

Re: I bought a cow last weekend
 

What are you going to be feeding Buddy and your new acquisition?

Re: I bought a cow last weekend
 

They will be grazing my fields and I've bought some grain mix in 90 pound sacks. The mix is corn, oats, molasses etc. I've been giving him a coffe can full every day. He really likes it. Any suggestions on how much grain mix to feed him? The guy I bought him from said about a pint a day but that seems so little. I wish I had machinery for bailing hay. My neighbor has a lot of land that I think I could hay. I only have about 15 acres total and probably 6 are woods.

One thing I am looking forward to is picking pink bottom mushrooms, also known as meadow mushrooms, Agaricus Campestris if memory serves. They grow in cow pastures in July. Very tasty and easy to identify. Not magic though, Damn!

Re: I bought a cow last weekend
 

You should feed him garlic, rosemary, some worchestershire sauce, maybe some pepper.

You know that you have to season them from the inside out.

:tongue_ma:

Re: I bought a cow last weekend
 

Re: I bought a cow last weekend
 

That's good. I did not know you had a fields of grass and hay. Personally, I wouldn't overfeed your mix at this stage. Your 450 lb beef needs to put on weight and grow, and the grass and hay is great for that. The trick is in the "finish". I like my beef to go to the butcher at about 1,100 pounds, give or take 50 pounds or so. I am not a better judge of weight than that. At about 800 pounds, my beef get a high corn ration of show calf feed. Your local feed store can help you with the brands they carry. But, a show calf feed will be high in corn and will marble up you beef much like a commercial feedyard. If you like leaner cuts, just leave your beef on grass. Some folks like a completely grass fed beef. But, be aware the taste will be different. I don't have the words to describe the difference in taste between a grass fed beef and a corn fed beef. One of your local butchers may have some completely grass fed beef. Ask around and buy a steak or two if you can find it. You may like it, and this may guide your plans with regard to your own calves.

Still again, some prefer a completely grain fed beef, one that has never been on pasture. But, this is expensive, and seems to depart from the planned use of your fields. I would suggest you buy "Raising a Calf for Beef" by Phyllis Hobson. It is a very good "How To" book on raising your own beef for the butcher.

Re: I bought a cow last weekend
 

We had a few cows growing up.

One in particular "butch" (short for where he would end up) I remember well.

We bought the calf when he was only a week or two old, VERY small. We started feeding it with powdered feed milk and a large bottle. This was where the trouble started.. He was really CUTE.

During a particularly bad round of colic, an old time farmer gave us some advice:

Just give the cow a bottle of pepto. It will seal him up.

It did, and then the cow LOVED pepto. We got in so much trouble sneaking the pepto out of the house and putting the bottle on the fencepost so we could watch the cow grab it and chug the whole bottle.

Butcher time came for the cow, and the everyone realized how much they LIKED the cow. No one could eat the beef for thinking about poor 'Butch'. This was the last cow my family owned.

Long story short: If you have a cow, dont let the family treat it as a pet.

Oh, and cows love pepto.

Re: I bought a cow last weekend
 

AWH FOR CHRISS SAKES !!.....In this and your first post you had me laughing so hard while reading out loud to my wife that I was in tears and had to stop to wipe tears and compose myself before attempting to further read.....sum funny shite dude !!

I could tell goat stories for an hour.....we had a massive goat orgy in our house while in Vegas for 5 days ........piss and shit everywhere, when I walked into the bedroom there were 3 goats ,1 billy and 2 nannys gettin it on goat style OH YEAH and doggie style too !, 2 were cookin up a mess in the kitchen, there were a total of 5 goats in the house for at least three days I threw everything away..... and built another house ......shortly after moving into our NEW house we took off to Vegas again (I never learn LOL) ths time 5 dogs got stuck in the house quite by accident...... at the time , 3 years ago,we had twelve dogs ,eleven catahoolas and one American bulldog the bulldog was like our child and stayed in the house ,our baby girl wasn't born yet, the catahoolas were hog dogs and great pets but stayed outside where they ran free, no fences here, no neighbors ......we had a doggy door for the bulldog that the other dogs never used. Well for some reason this time a few of the catahoolas decided to come in through the doggy door , there was another door 8' away that was left half open so the bulldog could get to the doggy door , some how while trying to go back out I figure one of the
catahoolas closed the door ....once again my house took a beating , we got home at 10 O'Clock night time drop dead tired, all we wanted to do was hit the sack NOPE the house was thrashed !! piss and shit everywhere more piss than anything they pissed on all the walls and must have got pretty hungry cuz they ate a 12 beaver hat that I had just purchased ,the damn thing was spensive, I found little shards of it in the dog turds in the house.

We cleaned the house till 3 in the morning, made easier by the fact that the floors were stained concrete, then we had a professional cleaning team of 3come in and they spent 8 hours detailing the place.....wasn't as bad as the goats but perty damn bad aaaand it was our new house !
Well that's country living I guess

BTW the goats got into our old house because our old dog (Fat Man was his name) was good at opening the front door.....he just wasn't real good at closing it.

Re: I bought a cow last weekend
 

Good advice .....I had a similar experience growing up.....later on because of it I was a vegetarian for 2 years, I'm not anymore.

Re: I bought a cow last weekend
 

Great thread

We are gonna sell our horses and buy a milk cow

I don't think I could eat a animal that I raised.....

We had a pet pig when I was bout 10 My dad caught it in a Greased pig contest, they said "the Pig is your prize" so My dad said "ok" and brought it home.

It completely tore up the backyard.

I used to ride it. it was alot like a dog....would come running to you with its tail wagging....

My parents finally had it butchered....and that meat sat in our freezer for years...None of us could eat any of it.

Gonna stick to animals that I don't have to kill that still feed me

Eggs and milk(cream , Cheese, Butter). are enough for me thanks

Re: I bought a cow last weekend
 

Buddy, my first cow and the one that rode home in the van with me, has been in the freezer for a couple of months now. Truly excellent beef. Some of the best I've had. Raised him mostly on grass but gave him a pint of grain every day and cut the corn out of the garden for him and the other cows to eat. He wasn't but a year old probably but he was being a problem, getting out of the fence and quite aggresive so I was happy to get him butchered.

I bought 3 other cows. One of them, quite small, died of a protozoan infection. I had to force pills and electrolytes on the other baby calf and he survived. So now I have 2 calves. One is about 800 lbs and the other is about 200 lbs. The 'Big Guy' as I call him is very friendly and easy to handle. He is a hog though. Sugar beets have been for sale around here, mostly for hunters to bait with, and I decided the cows might like to have a truckload to munch on. I brought the beets home and it took a couple of days but they finally found they were tasty to eat. Well the big guy went hog wild and ate too many. I'm not sure but I think they may have fermented in his stomach/s somehow. He got sick as hell, staggering around the field for a couple of days, wouldn't even moo. Shit like liquid everywhere. I took the beets away and he is back to normal now. The deer can have them.

Now, if I could just train the dogs not to eat cow crap. They eat it like it was Old Roy dog food. It is really bad.

Re: I bought a cow last weekend
 

These really are great stories, thanks for sharing!

Re: I bought a cow last weekend
 

Are the packages in the freezer marked with Buddy's name, as mtnman suggested?

Re: I bought a cow last weekend
 

Re: I bought a cow last weekend
 

Here's how a scooterist handles this situation:
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgu...%3Den%26sa%3DGhttp://www.sidecar-cz.com/sajdkary/g...nstein-cow.jpg

:s9:

Re: I bought a cow last weekend
 

Too funny! That scooterist seems to be handling it just fine. And the guy doing the driving looks like he's managing to keep it together, too.

Re: I bought a cow last weekend
 

That was funny as hell! Ha Ha Ha!!!

I've spent my whole life tending cattle and horses. The cattle and horse stories are always good entertainment. When cowboys get to gether and start drinking beer and talking it's about the wrecks they've had with them and it's always good fun.

There's a fellow from arizona who has a house and twenty acres that is fenced in to a pasture where I run cattle in the summer. The cattle keep the grass and weeds down and that lowers the fire danger.

They have a well manicured poodle they call "Muttley". He loves cowshit and he eats and rolls in it every chance he gets! Ha Ha Ha!!!

After he rollls in it he likes to go to the house and jump up in their laps or on the couch. The misses doesn't like it a damn bit and gives me evil looks when she tells me about it but I think it's funny as hell. Ha Ha Ha!!!

Re: I bought a cow last weekend
 

I thought it was a good idea but since it was all vacuum packed at the butcher it would have taken too long to label. It is a lot of meat! He was only about a year old too. I had to buy another chest freezer to handle it all. The butcher ended up charging about $150 bucks all total. I would like to try butchering one myself but for $150 what the hey. 30 some cents a pound hanging weight.

Re: I bought a cow last weekend
 

Ok, I could do sheep stories but let's stick with the cow theme. A few years back, we got a cow to raise for meat. It was a Jersey-Angus cross. We put it with the sheep in pasture. I didn't realize it at the time but I didn't have quite enough pasture. He kept pushing down the fence. I added an electric wire, still not realizing he was short of food. I started finding big tracks all over the lawn and then one day, I got home early and found the steer grazing my garden. When he noticed me, he calmly walked over to the fence and jumped back in from a standing start. Then he looked at me as if to say " Sorry, Old Man, but you did come home early.". We had him butched a week later. He was a little lean but very tasty. Cows can jump 8 feet when they want to.

Re: I bought a cow last weekend
 

They sure can jump. It is amazing to see something that big leap from a standing position and entirely clear a barricade. Sometimes I think the only reason they stay in the fence is they feel it is just the polite thing to do.

Re: I bought a cow last weekend
 

I can't kill an animal that trusts me either. With our first batch of chickens I solved it by splitting the meat with a family willing to kill and pluck. If we go more rural and I keep milk cows that will likely be the fate of any boys not needed as draft animals. I will probably grain feed them the last month.

When they are young sweet feed interferes with them developing big stomachs so they will hold enough to make it on nothing but grass and hay.

brosil, jersey and angus in blind taste tests are the 2 best tasting breeds, I have read.

I had a milk heifer I was raising and she was a jumper and everyone said the only cure for jumping was the freezer, but I tied her so just her nose could reach the fence and put a maxxed out electric wire there and it cured her.

Really funny stories. Thanks!

Re: I bought a cow last weekend
 

Did you load him back into the van for one last ride? :rofl:

Re: I bought a cow last weekend
 

as long as they aren't lickin your face later..............

Re: I bought a cow last weekend
 

Oh thank you, that was so good, I'm still wiping the tears from my eyes!

Re: I bought a cow last weekend
 

That was funny....I thought you were going to say you got married.

We moved a shetland pony in the back seat of 1956 dodge once. He wasn't happy about going back in the second time.

Re: I bought a cow last weekend
 

Probably wanted to ride 'shotgun'.

Re: I bought a cow last weekend
 

Noticeably absent from this thread is Drill and Fill. :36_1_28:

Next time just use the duct tape to tape three of the beasts legs together.

Re: I bought a cow last weekend
 

I've heard cows won't stay in a pasture by themselves. If you leave one by their self, they'll break through the fence or jump.
I was raising pigs one time, and came into a supply of raw lentil peas in two 55 gal drums. I fed them raw peas, which gave them the squirts. I was told, I should have soaked them, and let them ferment a few weeks first, before feeding them.

Re: I bought a cow last weekend
 

It's not worth trying. It is kinda gross, but it sure won't hurt them. My Abby drives me nuts eating it... she really loves her poopsicles in the winter months!


I have really enjoyed reading these stories again. Good for a bunch of belly laughs. By the way, at our farm, if the kids name it, it doesn't go in our freezer. There are enough other ones to choose from.