I was working for the family up the road one summer when the strangest visitor they'd ever had showed up.
Now this family was always helpful, endlessly knowledgeable, HARD working, and ran a spotless cattle ranch. The father (let’s call him Tim) was also an "ABS Breeder Service" provider. His preferred breed of cattle was called "Limousin".
Remember the Breeder service and the Limosuin breed. They are important to the story later.
Tim and my Dad would take turns bidding on each others' kids' steers every year at auction (after the county fair), just to run the prices up. Hell, we never ate those steers. Tim and Dad did what was called "turning", which is an uptown, classy way of saying that after paying a LOT for your neighbor's kid's steer you sell it to Armor Hot Dogs for market price. This wasn't a strange practice in the pre-Reagan years since it was tax-deductible, lots of folks did it. I think Tim and Dad(both hyper-competitors) enjoyed the one-upmanship, but the people who enjoyed it the most were the kids doin' the sellin'.
Of course, Tim's kids steers always sold for WAY more per pound than mine or Kurt's (I can't remember them NOT having some sort of "Champion" ribbon attached to the halter of their steers in the auction ring... and the county fair judges probably let our skinny-assed steers into the fair out of pity, or blackmail). But our steers weighed more, coming from a larger breed. You sell beef by the pound... So it was probably pretty even-steven.
Anyway, I worked for Tim one summer (that's how I started this chapter, huh?). One day the whole family was laughing their butts off when I came up to the ranch house. The son (call him Jess) just HAD to let me in on the joke.
Jess told me that a visiting business student had paid them a call that afternoon. Here's the way he told the story (already in progress):
".... So Mom answers the phone and this guy says 'Hi, I'm a business-major from dear old PU and I'm doing a study of rural Oregon businesses. I've interviewed business owners in Enterprise for several days and I'd like to come talk to you about your business, and take a look at your books. I saw your ad in the local Yellow Pages.'
"So Mom said ‘Sure, come on out this afternoon. We'd be happy to help."
"This guy comes out... Typical city-boy business student. Balding, little granny-glasses, tweed. You know the type.
"Mom and Dad sat him down and waited for questions."
His first question was "How many Limousines do you own?"
"About 300."
He was really surprised. "Really! So many? I had no idea. Where do you keep all those Limousines?
'Mom said "Oh, well they are all out in the fields right now."
"You just leave your Limousines in the fields?"
"They finally figured out what was going on-- Mom said "You thought we run a Limo service?"
"The student says "Well your Yellow Pages ad says Highview Ranch Limousine Service."
Mom answered "No, it says Highview Ranch Limosuins, and that we're an American Breeders Service provider."
‘Oh...' says the student. 'I wondered how a small community like this could support a Limo service... That's why I was so interested in interviewing you about your business. Well, since I'm here can I just interview you about your actual business?’
"Mom agreed.... By now the whole family is sitting around the kitchen table with all of the family's financial records in front of the guy.
"So this guy looks at several years-worth of our records and says "Now, I see that during each of the last three years you've sold around 250 cattle. But nowhere do I see you BUYING any number of cattle to speak of. If you're selling all of these cattle... Where are they coming from?"
"Well, hell.... We didn't know what to say. I mean, how stupid IS this guy?"
"Finally, Dad pushed his hat back and said 'Well, when a daddy bull, and momma cow love each other very much...."
Jess couldn't continue his story after that. He actually had to take a knee, then he laid on his side on the front lawn and laughed for what seemed like an awfully long time. He laughed so hard I thought he'd have a stroke and die in the front yard.
'Course, I was too busy laughing at the city-dude to care much about Jess’ health right then.
The big joke between Jess and me for the rest of the summer was "Hey! Where the hell did all these cows come from?" We never failed to get a laugh.
The Highview Ranch also offered American Breeder's Service as a adjunct to their cattle-ranching operations.
For those of you who've never heard of "A.I." here's how that works.
You go to the local ABS guy (like Jess’ dad) and sit down with a catalog (in the interest of not wasting a breeder's time, you should probably already own some cows by this point). The ABS catalog is full of bull....quite literally. There is quite an assortment of pictures of bulls broken down by breed.
You select which bulls you like. Now, ABS is not the Dating Game. You don't get to ask them stupid questions like "If I were a cow, where would you take me for our first cow date?"
You judge the bulls based on their statistics and their progeny's stats, ie: 205 day adjusted weaning weight,average birth weight, etc. Also you can look at the bulls personal stats: weight, age, astrological sign (hey baby, I'm a taurus...What's YOUR sign). These bulls are the worldwide cream of the crop.
Then the ABS guy gives you a price per ampule. That's right, ampule.
'Cause what you're buying is semen. Yup, grade-A bull spooge. Choad. Pecker snot. Spunk. Like I said, you're buying the cream, and that's the crop.
Then the semen is shipped to the ABS provider in great big aluminum coolers filled with liquid nitrogen.
Now, I'm sure that a cow would MUCH rather team-up with the real bull than get AI’ed (that's Artificially Inseminated) because one part of the actual insemination procedure calls for the breeder to put a shoulder-length plastic glove on, smear KY jelly (from a tube that would make you laugh and a cow cringe.... KY sells a package that's about a foot long and as big around as a softball) all over his glove and push his whole arm into the cow's rectum.
This isn't just good ol' redneck fun (Hey, Clem! Watch me pull a rabbit outta this cow's ass! Nuthin' up my sleeve....).
A cow's cervix is oddly shaped so you have to straighten it out by manipulating it through the rectal wall... then you guide a long soda-straw-lookin'-tube with a syringe on the end of it through the cervix and squirt the semen into the cow's uterus directly.
The breeder's do this "sphincter stretchin'" all day (talk abut a crappy job...."Hey! You're just gonna have to handle it yourself... I'm up to my armpits right now). They say that the hardest part is shoving your arm up a butt while the cow on the other end of that butt doesn't want you to. I've seen these guys have to straighten their arms, lean forward and WALK toward the cow. It's like a whole day of bench-press. I think maybe women make better A.I. breeders. Smaller biceps.
So, sometimes a daddy-bull and a momma-cow don't REALLY have to know much about each other after all.
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