Vodka, Red Bull, and Incest on the Oregon Cattle Drive

Nowadays, everyone moves cattle by truck. Even the old-timers who sat in front of the gas station all day couldn't remember anyone using horses to herd livestock in Oregon's Coast Range. We aimed to change that.

The farm was at the end of a dirt road, nine miles from a town that consists of only a gas station/general store and a post office. The landowners arrived in the area 40 years ago with nothing but a shotgun and a backpack, and in ensuing decades they jerry-rigged a functional subsistence farm, complete with livestock and a large vegetable garden.

The cows, sheep, and goats were for meat, the chickens provided eggs, and the horses were strictly ornamental. They had barely been ridden in their lives, but two young geldings, Chico and Zeppo, proved up to the job, with a little persuasion.

In the Coast Range, Douglas fir and Western hemlock forests blanket the hills, while the ground is thick with moss, ferns, and banana slugs. Open space for cattle means small fields and pastures cleared of trees—an acre here, an acre there, a few more up the road.

The herd, made up of about a dozen cows and calves, plus a big bull named Slim, was running short on grass in the south pasture. To prevent over-grazing, we moved them every few weeks, sometimes more often. This time, we saddled up and pushed them north, along the old wagon road next to the creek. They initially proved elusive when half the herd ran across the creek and the other half took off into the woods. I attempted to give chase with Zeppo, but he tried to buck me off instead. We regrouped and were on our way.

Halfway through, we stopped at another pasture to separate the bull from the cows and reintegrate some young heifers, including Rita, who suffered from some bovine form of developmental disability. She was born the year before but this year's calves were already bigger than her, and her behind was constantly coated in chunks of diarrhea. She couldn't be in the same pasture with Slim because he would crush her to death if he tried to cover her.

The transfer went smoothly, except for one unlucky interaction between a cow's head and a farmer's metal hip. Then it was off again, down the dirt road to the promised land, where the calves danced with joy and we galloped out across the four acres of knee-high grass to welcome the herd to their new home.

Considering the cost of fencing, medicine, water systems, and hay for winter feeding, maintaining a cattle herd—even a small one—is expensive. Fortunately, negative profit is OK here because the herd exists to feed the landowners, not to make money. To that end, the owners keep a butcher block and saws for processing the beef on site, plus a cooling room to dry-age the meat and a grinder to make hamburger. Every year they fill a freezer with steaks, roasts, and ground beef.

In recent years, however, the price of beef has been rising consistently, and the operation actually became economically viable. Cattle futures hit an all-time high this November, thanks to persistent droughts that led ranchers to reduce their herds—not to mention an early blizzard in South Dakota last year that killed up to 30,000 head. Beef production is projected by the USDA to fall 5.3 percent this year, the fourth annual reduction in a row, which is bad news for your backyard barbecue but great for the bottom line of small-time ranchers. Consumer prices are projected to rise by 11.5 percent by the end of the year, with increased domestic demand and a growing export market. Ranchers, meanwhile, are left with the quandary of selling their heifers to feed the beef market or keeping them to build up their herds, hoping that the high prices will continue.

Vodka, an ornery Black Angus, wanted very badly to fuck his mother, his sisters, and his aunts, and let the whole farm know about it with frequent bellows that were audible across field and canyon.

On the farm in Oregon, excess bulls and unproductive cows get driven to the auction in Eugene (in a trailer, not by horseback). A cow that fails to calf in a given year is a drain on the farm's resources, because she eats grass all summer and hay all winter without producing any value in return. Sometimes we would stare with hope at the vaginas of those that didn't give birth that spring, looking for signs that they experienced a late pregnancy—but if not, it's off to the highest bidder. Even Rita, the poor, disabled yearling, fetched a decent price after we lovingly washed the dingleberries from her bottom and took her into town.

As for the bulls, the farm follows kosher practices, and therefore doesn't castrate the animals. Non-breeding bulls who are destined for the auction or the butcher's block live in a leased pasture up the road until it's time to die, banished from the property following an incestuous incident several years previously.

At the time, the patriarch of the herd was a proud Red Angus nicknamed Red Bull. He had a son we aptly named Vodka, an ornery Black Angus kept apart from the rest of the herd because all the cows were related to him. Vodka wanted very badly to fuck his mother, his sisters, and his aunts, and let the whole farm know about it with frequent bellows that were audible across field and canyon.

The flimsy barbed wire penning him in would barely slow him if he tried to charge through it, but he lacked the critical thinking skills to realize he could just lean on a post and be free. Instead, after weeks of complaint, he jumped the gate instead.

We rushed off after him, and soon found him in the woods mingling with his family. Fortunately for the genetic integrity of the herd, he had abstained from mating with his female relatives and was instead squaring off with his dad, butting heads and attempting to mount him from both the front and the back. Witnesses still dispute whether he achieved insertion. I did notice a white, syrupy substance spread across Red Bull's back, confirming that the young bull had in fact relieved his sexual frustrations, at least for the moment.

Eventually, we managed to separate them and herded Vodka back to his pen (by foot this time). Later that year, he was introduced to the grinder and provided the farm's hamburgers for the winter. The next year Red Bull met the same fate. Whether we move the cattle by truck, horse, or foot, they're all headed to the same destination in the end.