DAPNET Forums Archive › Forums › Draft Animal Power › Oxen › Love
- This topic has 3 replies, 4 voices, and was last updated 13 years, 8 months ago by sanhestar.
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- March 25, 2011 at 9:15 am #42559Nat(wasIxy)Participant
Angus was acting very bull-like last year – there is a heifer named Elspeth and when she came on heat he was almost mating her, even to the point of producing fluid so I was wondering if he’d not been castrated properly! But he was cut by a vet at 2wks so there was no possible way…
When we had to take this heifer away, he was as upset as the bull was! (Luckily for the little dexter heifer, he is so tall he was taking his own weight on his front legs or she’d have been squashed! I guess this explains how they get themselves in calf to limousins without any ill effects!)
Then we put him in with one of our jersey cows who was due to be AI’d and they pretty much had a party in there when she came on heat, Angus had to be fenced away while I was milking her!
Since then? Nothing. He’s been with other heifers all winter who were cycling and the other steers were interested, but not him. So I wondered if the appeal had worn off? But it seems that he simply only has eyes for Bella and Elspeth – Elspeth is his little red girlfriend and Bella is his older woman on the side! I found him happily reunited with Elspeth this morning:
Strange that they are the only two with scottish names in the herd! And Elspeth is the only dexter I have named…strange coincidence!
March 25, 2011 at 9:10 pm #66454bivolParticipantit could well be love!:D
or at least a good friendship! cattle are known of having friends, either with other cattle or with other species
friendship is a relationship in which tho animalas (or people) are together for reasons other than calculation (mutual benefit), in other words, they hang around because they like each other.
and i don’t see it couldn’t be – teamsters KNOW when their animals like or dislike them, so why wouldn0t it be possible for animals to like other animals?
and it’s very possible t is love! i don’t see why the concept of love would be endemic to people!
March 26, 2011 at 4:23 am #66455sanhestarParticipantHello,
I remember back when I had Iceland horses that our stallion and one mare where a couple. Both met first time on a breeding pasture and the moment the mare laid eyes on the stallion she came in heat and stood. They produced a foal out of that mating, too.
Both kept close over the next years but, as life sometimes is, I had to sell the mare. I kept the stallion, cut by that time for 1,5 years longer and then sold him, too, to the same place. He wasn’t out of the trailer when I heard a loud whinny – the mare had recognised him.
March 28, 2011 at 11:18 pm #66453VickiParticipantI have read that cattle do form friendships and i have observed it in my 13 years of keeping cattle. They form bonds with other cattle and with people, and they do remember and recognize them for years, perhaps for life. Sometimes it makes it sentimentally difficult to sell or send one for slaughter.
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