How to get bitten by a cow in one easy lesson...

Although this sounds like it may be a common thing for people associated with cattle, cows actually bite very rarely - you see it takes unique specific technique to be truely bitten by a cow ( or in my case a steer - which is a bull without it's...well you know). Because cattle are in general timid creatures, it's quite difficult to get them to come near you, besides actually manage to get bitten by one of them. Another complication in the attempt to get bitten is that cows actually don't have any top teeth until right at the back of their mouth where they have some big .. I mean BIG molars. So to try this you either need a cow in a cattle crush (so he cannot move) or a poddy calf - hand raised by yourself, so he feels comfortable with coming up to you. For my experience I used the latter.

Step one: Leave a gate open - ours was left open to our houseyard, consequently when we looked out the window Saturday evening there were about 7 sheep happily chewing through our garden, & one cow grazing on the wild oats masquerading as lawn in our backyard.

Step two: Move animals back to paddock - this requires two people to move the sheep as hand raised animals are notoriously difficult to move. Now to move the cow - this is more complicated - you see at 7 months the cow is now much too large to man-handle as you would a sheep (ie. pick them us & half drag them back to paddock). Being handraised he is also not scared of you, so no amount of "ya, ya, yaing" is going to move the silly thing. So you have a stubborn bovine eating away & you have to use your imagination to try to find a way to move him. Hmmmm..

Step three: Come up with an idea ... AH HA - honey on bread. One good thing with a handraised animal is you do know their specific likes ( & dislikes mind you). In our case Whitey has a sweet tooth, so I put some honey on the bread & walked him back into the paddock. Easy hey!

Step four: This is not for the faint at heart. It takes extreeme amounts of stupidity & carelessness to complete this next feit! Allow the cow to lick your hands (because he is handraised, he loves to suck on your fingers - this is a comfort to him when he is young & missing his mother). Due to honey residue being on your hand allow him to really suck on them. Get distracted by talking to hubby. Don't notice how far into the back of his mouth your hand has strayed until you feel your finger being crushed between two molars. Congratulations, you have completed the task. You have now been successfully bitten by a cow!

Step five: Scream at the top of your lungs. This makes the cow run away....& later you wonder why you didn't just try this when you first attempted to move him back to the paddock. Depending where you were bitten, depends on the first aid required. In my case no bones were broken, so a trip to the hospital wasn't required. Stem the blood flow & take a couple of panadiene forte before the numbness wears off. This is a very effective way to get out of bathing the children for the night & cleaning up the dishes. It does however impede your typing skills for a few days.

NOTE: This is not recommended as part of the total country experience. There are many true country folk who have never been bitten by a cow.