Bulls at gates - when I'm the gate

As there has to be truth in the age old saying ‘to charge like a bull at a gate’ it’s no wonder I get nervous when I’m the ‘gate’ and bulls are involved.

Recently when we were separating some steers and bulls, the farmer shouted, “Just stand there” while indicating the gateway, then he rocketed down a sludgy slope in a manner which showed he hadn’t taken notes at the FarmSafe course we attended.

My job was to stop the bulls from running out of the gate while letting the steers exit to their new paddock. Pretty soon all the steers had bolted except Mr Hereford who played fast and loose until he got the concept.

Then we were off to get a bull out of a neighbour’s heifer paddock. The neighbour had asked the farmer to do the job having deemed the bull “a bit of an insistent sort of fellow”.

Once again I was left standing at the gate to stop the heifers leaving while the farmer separated the bull. If this task was left to me, the bull and the heifers would have lived a long and happy life together. This is, of course, why I’m not a farmer; if insistent bulls were to their own devices there’d be rogue bulls everywhere.

It was pleasant standing in the sun watching a fantail ducking and diving under a cabbage tree until the bull ambled from the paddock followed by the farmer on the quad. He (the farmer not the bull) wore the adrenalin-charged maniacal grin which always indicates a close call. “He nearly got me,” he said, “but I remembered some moves from my rugby days.”

Then I was a gate again. Two bulls had got tangled with about 20 yearlings because the farmer had cleverly left a gate open. Tony, who helps out, and Rex rounded them up while I stood ankle-deep in mud in the gateway. The yearlings circled, making it clear they wanted to go through the gate - they know that’s what gates are for. Only me and my madly flapping arms stopped them.

I couldn’t imagine how the farmer and Tony would separate the bulls from the mob - and said so until I remembered all the good reasons why I was a lowly gate and promptly shut up. What I lacked, I decided, were rugby skills.

Then, like magic, the two bulls stepped towards the gate, I sidestepped at the crucial second (picture a forward dodging the defence while going for the try line) and they were through.