# Self Sufficiency/Living off the Land or Off the Grid > Livestock and Animal Husbandry >  One of us is bluffing!

## COWBOYSURVIVAL

Working with my bull. "Slippery Hollow's Thunderstorm", He is in his teenager phase. I am trying to desensitize him to the point where I can ride him like a horse. I have more pics if there is interest.

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## Rick

So...how long did the doc say it would be before your headaches go away?

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## welderguy

So who won?

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## COWBOYSURVIVAL

I train him usin' honeybunns for treats, we are makin' headway so to speak!

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## welderguy

Honeybuns huh? Keep us updated !

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## greatgoogamooga

You meant to post this on Monday, didn't you?

Goog

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## greatgoogamooga

> You meant to post this on Monday, didn't you?
> 
> Goog


This past Monday, the first of April, that is.

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## COWBOYSURVIVAL

He tears up fences and gates on a weekly basis right now! Here you go.... this is the part ya'll wanna see! He is still a little ornery! Thing is a beef steer might get ya $800+, a rodeo bull can get ya 250k for a ride, a movie star bull that can be ridden will bring 180K. I don't think I will ever sell him, too much fun to have around!

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## welderguy

Its amazing how fast one can climb a gate isnt it ! LOL

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## COWBOYSURVIVAL

> This past Monday, the first of April, that is.


I did try to post it the website kept crashin'...how did you know that?

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## COWBOYSURVIVAL

> Its amazing how fast one can climb a gate isnt it ! LOL


I could play with him all day in an open field...Yeah you gotta slow up to get over the gate!

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## hunter63

SIL was in the dairy business, and a bull rider........he still limps...
Thought that was him in the first pic.....LOL

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## COWBOYSURVIVAL

> SIL was in the dairy business, and a bull rider........he still limps...
> Thought that was him in the first pic.....LOL


Livin' my dream, gotta do it while I still can! If it means I limp then, so be it! I wouldn't trade what I am doing for nothing!

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## 1stimestar

Heeheee, giddy up!

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## Winnie

He sure has grown.

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## kyratshooter

> Livin' my dream, gotta do it while I still can! If it means I limp then, so be it! I wouldn't trade what I am doing for nothing!


But with the limp comes the cronic pain, the surgeries for the nerve damage, the crushed vertebrae, the bills!

But you wil have all those happy memories as your daughter pushes your wheelchair down to the mailbox to get your disability check. 

I am right now paying the price of dreams I had in my 20s.

Every year I read about some farmer that was killed by his "pet bull".  Last year I read about an 18 year old girl here in KY, home from college, that looked out the kitchen window to see her dad's pet angus bull stomping her mother to death.  Mother had gone out to get the bull off the dead body of the father.  The daughter was the smart one.  she grabbed a rifle before stepping out the door and dropped the bull dead beside the bodies of her parents.

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## hunter63

SIL always orders his steak "extra well done".....and I asked him why.....he said "I want to make sure the SOB is really dead......"
So I said "Who?..
"318"....
"What is 318?"
"Ear tag....I want to make sure the SOB is dead"

With the shirt out and the hat....thought the first pic was him.....LOL
Shirt out...around the house...shirt in, formal doin's

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## woodsman86

When I was around 12, I remember wrestling with the young bulls at the farm my brother worked on. It was a lot of fun and no one got hurt, but looking back I don't know if I would let my kids do that. 

Cool pictures staring down each other.

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## Dachsiemama

Having raised goats and been around cattle for a good chunk of the 32 years we were in Colorado, I learned one primary lesson about male animals. YOU NEVER PUSH THE HEAD OF A BULL OR A BUCK, AND YOU NEVER MESS WITH THEIR HORNS. That's the surest way in the world to get someone killed, because that is the way those animals fight - head to head. You, the puny human, are no match for an irritated bull, and when he gets REALLY angry, he will kill you and not regret it once. If he doesn't kill you, he'll kill anyone else (man, woman or child) he can, whether they had purposely aggravated him or not - like the story kyratshooter told about the girl watching the 'pet' bull kill her mother after he'd stomped her father into the ground. My in-laws had a big ol' Hereford bull named Gentle Ben in with their little herd of cows and calves, and he was so gentle that Mom would take a half-dozen little grand-kids out in the pasture to sit on him while he chewed his cud. Then we 'adopted' an 18-year old lad who, despite being warned not to, thought he could "handle" bulls and billy-goats any way he wanted to. He pulled and pushed on Gentle Ben's horns until he wasn't gentle anymore, and messed with Tuffy, a young goat, until he was lethal. Mom & Dad wound up having to sell both of them because they couldn't be trusted around humans, and especially the little kids, who roamed all over the ranch on foot. The bull was a great loss, but the goat wasn't. He was sold one week, and when the folks went back to the livestock auction the next week, he was there again - covered with blood! They never did find out if it was his or someone else's.

So, please be warned! You do NOT "desensitize" a bull by pushing on his head! He puts you over the fence when he's upset with you, and you may be fast enough *now* to make it safely, but you won't always be. You also may not be handy when someone else decides to go pet your 'tame' bull and gets trampled or gored to death. A horse may be extra careful with a small child, but a bull is a totally different beast, and he'll kill that child just as soon as look at it. There are just some things you NEVER DO with certain animals! It's probably too late to tell you now, but you should have haltered and trained him to lead and carry a weight on his back when he was just a baby, then you could train him to be ridden at this point in his life. As it is, I'll be very surprised if you manage to do it, now that you've showed him HE is YOUR master.

Keep everyone else OUT of his enclosure!!!

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## Dachsiemama

By the way, I used to see a woman riding a Holstein COW around the streets of Canon City, Colorado, back in the 1990s. She had her saddled and bridled, and that cow plodded along just as pretty as you please. It was quite a sight.

Our neighbors up on the mountain bought a couple of Texas longhorn _steers_ when they were just yearlings, about the size of yours, Lone Wolf. After about five years, they were each about the size of a pickup truck, with horns almost as wide as the truck. I'm pretty certain that what you've been seeing ridden in the movies are STEERS, not bulls. You can do about anything with a steer (they used to be called oxen, you know, and were the standard, placid draft animal of a bygone age), but a bull, as I said in my previous post, is a whole different animal. His attitude is that HE is the Master of the Universe, and he'll be happy to show anyone how and why. If blood has to be spilled to prove his point, he'll be quite willing to oblige, but it won't be his blood.

And don't put any faith in that puny barb-wire fence being enough to stop him when he's angry! Once he and his horns get big enough, he'll rip that fence out of the ground with them, and if he's charging someone or something, he'll just keep a-comin', right through that barb-wire - I don't care if you have TWENTY strands of it on railroad-tie posts set three feet deep and in concrete! He may top out at over 2,000 lbs. someday, if you don't shoot or sell him first. Don't EVER take your eyes off him while you're anywhere around him, even if you're in the pasture and he's clear on the other side of it - he can sneak up on you before you ever know he's there, and run a whole lot faster than you can!

If you aren't planning on using him to sire calves, why don't you do yourself, your family and friends and the rest of society a HUGE favor, save lives and ease minds, and castrate ol' Thunderstorm this week, while you can still knock him over and do it!!! Keep a baby bull calf, castrate it, and start over AT THE BEGINNING, where it's a whole lot safer and easier, until you have your "riding bovine." I feel safe in saying, you've already ruined this one.

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## Cast-Iron

I'd have to concur with much of post #19.  Tame bulls and billies can be quite unpredictable.  Even an animal you've worked with for years.  Might be something as simple as a scent in the air could have them in an unusually aggressive demeanor.  One minute their no problem at all, the next they could have you pinned down or on a fence.  Personally, I wouldn't want the liability of having one around the public.  

$0.02

I've heard horror stories about bottle raised white-tailed deer bucks too.

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## COWBOYSURVIVAL

> By the way, I used to see a woman riding a Holstein COW around the streets of Canon City, Colorado, back in the 1990s. She had her saddled and bridled, and that cow plodded along just as pretty as you please. It was quite a sight.
> 
> Our neighbors up on the mountain bought a couple of Texas longhorn _steers_ when they were just yearlings, about the size of yours, Lone Wolf. After about five years, they were each about the size of a pickup truck, with horns almost as wide as the truck. I'm pretty certain that what you've been seeing ridden in the movies are STEERS, not bulls. You can do about anything with a steer (they used to be called oxen, you know, and were the standard, placid draft animal of a bygone age), but a bull, as I said in my previous post, is a whole different animal. His attitude is that HE is the Master of the Universe, and he'll be happy to show anyone how and why. If blood has to be spilled to prove his point, he'll be quite willing to oblige, but it won't be his blood.
> 
> And don't put any faith in that puny barb-wire fence being enough to stop him when he's angry! Once he and his horns get big enough, he'll rip that fence out of the ground with them, and if he's charging someone or something, he'll just keep a-comin', right through that barb-wire - I don't care if you have TWENTY strands of it on railroad-tie posts set three feet deep and in concrete! He may top out at over 2,000 lbs. someday, if you don't shoot or sell him first. Don't EVER take your eyes off him while you're anywhere around him, even if you're in the pasture and he's clear on the other side of it - he can sneak up on you before you ever know he's there, and run a whole lot faster than you can!
> 
> If you aren't planning on using him to sire calves, why don't you do yourself, your family and friends and the rest of society a HUGE favor, save lives and ease minds, and castrate ol' Thunderstorm this week, while you can still knock him over and do it!!! Keep a baby bull calf, castrate it, and start over AT THE BEGINNING, where it's a whole lot safer and easier, until you have your "riding bovine." I feel safe in saying, you've already ruined this one.


Ya'll sure do things different in NY. Down here we learn young not to make assumptions of things we know nothing about. Bad accident in front of the pasture last night. Notice the halter and lead rope on the little guy. I considered it parade training. Thanks for your assumptions!~

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## Rick

Most animals use eye contact as a way of displaying dominance and submissive behavior. If you don't believe me try to stare at your dog. It will keep looking away because direct eye contact with you is a challenge for dominance. Unless, of course, your dog owns you. Cat's won't do that. They will just get up and move then suck the breath out of while you sleep.

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## COWBOYSURVIVAL

> Most animals use eye contact as a way of displaying dominance and submissive behavior. If you don't believe me try to stare at your dog. It will keep looking away because direct eye contact with you is a challenge for dominance. Unless, of course, your dog owns you. Cat's won't do that. They will just get up and move then suck the breath out of while you sleep.


The post was meant to be humorous. None of the pictures are of actual training I have done. With the exception of the parade training he supervised EMS for 2 hours walking around with me on the lead rope in the flashing lights. The other pictures were just meant to be humorous. But, I do believe I could stare him down, but only if I lived in NY..... Can't do it here.

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## Rick

Well, mine was serious. Cats will really do that!

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## COWBOYSURVIVAL

> Well, mine was serious. Cats will really do that!


See now there is animal that is just not right! I don't like 'em around me at all. People should worry more about cats and less about bulls in my experience!

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## Rick

Amen. The only good cat is one cooked at 450 for 1 hour. Oh, that does NOT apply to Gotham Cat and Survival Kitty. But they aren't REAL cats.

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## COWBOYSURVIVAL

> Amen. The only good cat is one cooked at 450 for 1 hour. Oh, that does NOT apply to Gotham Cat and Survival Kitty. But they aren't REAL cats.


Cat ladies creep me out, they have like 49 cats. How do you feed 49 cats? You'd be there for hours at the can opener. One of them things I never could comprehend.

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## MaveRick

Everything I can find online says that trying to keep a bull as a pet is a bad idea. They can be real easy going and one day without warning they turn into killers. My grandfather raised beef and dairy cows but would never allow a bull on his property. Even with polled angus steers there were times when it just seemed like a good idea to stay on the opposite side of the fence from them. One of the reasons my grandparents would leave me to take care of the farm when they went on vacation is that they knew I had good instincts around animals. My instincts are telling me that he will not tolerate these "games" for very much longer.

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## Rick

> They can be real easy going and one day without warning they turn into killers.




There's a member warning in the forum rules that says the same thing about moderators. Almost verbatim. Minus the easy going part.

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