Well, it’s dog days in the feedlot now that summer’s nearly doneI been loafin’ through the cattle but the steers don’t suffer none

Betty said her dad had a bull that kept jumpin’ the fence. She wondered if I knew any surefire cures for fence-jumpin’ bulls. I asked her what they’d tried already.

I was the veterinarian for a livestock company in the Northwest. We had 10,000 cows on six ranches in five states with a progressive, well-managed cow-calf operation. The year was 1976.

In the sandhills of Nebraskastands a monument of willsWhere man has staked his claimto them blowin’, rollin’ hills

The following excerpts are from the Oklahoma Livestock Committee meeting on Species Relations. Voting members include beef cows, feedlot steers and dairy cows.

The newspaper photo showed them leaning into the harmony like four caroling coyotes. The caption named the pickers and said they were members of a new country singing group. It announced that they would be playing at the Dairy Queen on Thursday.

“By gosh, that’s a new twist,” thought Terry as he tightened his collar against the biting wind and stared at the heifer. She was trying to calve standing up. He eased up on her and dropped a loop over the horns.

I like a pickup that looks like a truckAnd not like a tropical fish.Or a two-ton poodle with running lightsOr a mutant frog on a leash.

I stood with George, ears perked, eyes alert, like border collies waiting for the signal. John (we’ll call him John) finally made his momentous decision known: “We’ll do a C-section. But I want pictures for my scrapbook!”

The little kid sat on his kneeAnd looked up with stars in his eyesHe said, “Granddaddy, tell me againHow it was when you were my size.”