Yeah…what Little Nemo said.
:smack:
I thought of the car comparison first, then after seeing your post, I realized another interpretation.
The cool cattle do get tattoos. They’re just more subtle about it than humans.
(Scroll down to Tattoos)
A couple of practical questions:
At what age does the ring go in?
Does it ever need changing (when the bull gets bigger or wear and tear)?
If you’re using a rope, doesn’t the ring do NOTHING to prevent it from charging or pinning you to a fence?
Rings In Bulls’ Noses,
Bells on their toes!
It depends. In the UK, the recommendation is to have bulls ringed by ten months of age. I’ve ringed bulls at full maturity, but most farmers who decide to keep a stock bull will have it ringed before it becomes to strong to handle.
Bulls that are ringed very young will often need a bigger ring when they’re fully grown. The rings are hinged. Make a hole in the septum (or use the existing hole if the bull has been ringed before), thread the ring through, close it, screw it together. They’re pretty sturdy, you need decent bolt cutters to cut through them. I’ve occasionally re-ringed bulls that have lost their rings. I suppose the screw can loosen over time, but that certainly isn’t common.
A single rope gives you a lot less control than a bull pole. It’s also pretty common to have a handler on either side of the bull and a rope each side.
Rings in bulls’ noses,
and whiskers on kittens,
bright copper kettles
and warm woolen mittens. . . .
Well, you may use Bell boots on their toes, to protect the bulls hooves when transporting them. But those are much more commonly used on horses. (And you’re a lot safer putting them on a horse!)
A ring makes a bull easier to lead. It’s been less necessary since the invention of the controller halter, which has the same effect.
Zoe, you have revived this zombie thread with information that was already posted much earlier in the thread.
Welcome to the dope, but it’s considered sort of tacky to bring up old threads without really adding new information. The people that contributed to this thread earlier may not even be around to receive your retreaded info.
As I believe I have noted elsewhere in these SD chronicles, you can have sex in a cow’s roomy interior (or maybe a bull, so even more on point): someone I knew told me when he, a British soldier in WWII, was taking cover under intense shelling under a carcass of a cow in a ditch, he had a sexual encounter with another soldier who randomly crawled in. It was an intense memory for him, as he thought he was surely going to die by the end of the night.
Since all of the actual information has already been delivered - I once had someone tell me that bulls had an acupuncture point inside their noses, and that have the ring stimulate it made them calmer. I was young at the time and put it in the ‘maybe - wait for more information’ column.
What about zombie bulls?
I don’t know about bulls, but there’s a device for leading horses called a “twitch” that works on a similar principle. Whoever told about that might be conflating the idea of a bull ring and a twitch since they are both similar in a “attaches to an animal’s face” way.
I recall reading how for ages it was thought that it worked by being uncomfortable for the horse, but it was only realized what was actually happening when someone measured the heart rate & blood pressure of the horse and saw that they were lowered rather than raised.
That’s good to know. Thanks.
I always thought you pulled the ring, counted to three and threw…never mind.
Whoever told you that was, indeed, throwing the bull.