There are several things that just completely mesmerize us as humans. One is the way the campfire dances on a starry night as it licks the wood and dances all around it. Another is the way we can watch a hoof trimmer slice away trimmings on a hoof to reveal either a clean hoof or something more exciting.
There are popular channels on YouTube of hoof trimmers who film themselves trimming cows’ feet. The two I’ve seen are The Hoof GP and Nate The Hoof Guy. They each have roughly 2 million followers on YouTube and film themselves digging into the more interesting cow hooves. Cows that have some form of hardware stuck in their feet to abscesses and hairy warts. It’s always fun for me to read through the comments and find some guy living in Pittsburgh who never saw a cow in his life commenting that he knew that particular cow had white-line disease as soon as it limped into the chute.
Channels like these are incredible at showing farmers do care about their cows' health, and it also bridges the gap between rural and urban.
I have distinct memories as a young boy of helping fetch cows for the grizzled old cowboy who we had trimming our cows’ feet. Through him, I learned many ways to view the world and several new words to add to my vocabulary that Mom and Dad weren’t exceptionally proud of.
He was also the one who loved to tell the story of how his boys wanted to chew tobacco just like all the other cool cowboys. He gave each of them their first big mouthful and instructed them that real cowboys would never spit their chewing tobacco; they would swallow it all. He would laugh hysterically as he painted a picture of the boys turning three shades of white and throwing up every last ounce of fluid in their bodies.
Over the years, we have had several hoof trimmers and all of them have possessed something similar, and that is the ability to put in hard work. Trimming cows is hard on the body. Being bent over as you work on an 1,800-pound animal that isn’t particularly excited to have a pedicure is not for the faint of heart.
After working through some 40-odd cows waiting to get trimmed, it always seemed like the smartest and wildest ones were the last ones left. They had seen all the others go orderly through the chute and have decided that gravity, gates and the general rules of physics will not contain them like the others. These phenoms of cow insanity grew up on the tales of the cow jumping over the moon and have been inspired to do the same – choosing this exact moment to launch themselves through any perceived blue sky to avoid the perceived certain death of getting their feet trimmed.
Somehow these little gifts of the bovine community don’t ever seem to make it onto the mainstream YouTube channels, but live in the stories and tales of farmers and hoof trimmers. We can all show a little more appreciation for those who trim our cows’ feet. Maybe lay out a little more sawdust, add a few more gates, but never ever trust them on chewing tobacco advice.
