GLOSSARY

Auscultation: the art of listening for things within the body. Usually done with a stethoscope.

Bad (blue) bag: chronic mastitis—an unhealthy udder, as opposed to a defective shopping utensil.

Baler twine: has just about replaced balin’ wire as the means of holding bales of hay together. However, this modernization has led to the deterioration of many small repair jobs on the farm for which only balin’ wire would suffice. For instance, you can’t wire a loose exhaust pipe to the frame with plastic twine.

Black bally calf: commonly a first-generation cross between a Hereford cow and an Angus bull. They are black bodied with a white face.

Banamine: an equine painkiller.

Beef checkoff: every time a bovine is sold in the United States, one dollar is collected by the beef board. The collective money is used for research and advertising to learn about and promote beef as an alternative to whale meat or tofu.

BLM: the Bureau of Land Management is a division of the Department of Interior. Between the BLM and the Forest Service, they control over one-third of the U.S. landmass. Most of it in the twelve western states. To the extent that the federal government owns 83 percent of Nevada.

Blowouts: an inversion of the cloaca in fowl. Unfortunately, rubber cement is useless in its repair.

Blue heeler: a stock dog. Relies on a high pain threshold and bravado to move cattle. Bites at the heels. If the Border collie is the quarterback, the blue heeler is the linebacker.

Border collie: a stock dog. Fairly universally acknowledged as the smartest of the species for the purpose intended. Favorite of North American and European sheepmen.

Bosal: a nose band, not unlike a halter used in the training of horses. More user-friendly than a bit.

Braymer or Bramer: how you pronounce Brahma, a breed of cattle.

Broken mouthed: an old cow or ewe that has lost all or part of its lower incisors. A natural occurrence with age. P.S., they don’t grow upper incisors.

Brucellosis: a disease of cattle and other species that can be transmitted to man. In cows it causes abortion; in humans, undulant fever. A serious problem before pasteurization of milk became universal. Rare today.

Bulldoggin’: a rodeo sport officially known as steer wrestling. A cowboy jumps off a galloping horse onto a galloping steer, catches it behind the horns, and with a twist and a flip throws it to the ground. It is a timed event and has no counterpart in the real cowboy world unless it’s a bar fight.

Cake-feeding-pickup: a method of supplementing protein to cows in winter. It is fed in many forms: 40-pound blocks, pellets, loose, or in molasses.

Cancer eye: a disease that occurs primarily in cows with no dark pigment on the skin surrounding the eye. The predilection is heritable. Operable if caught early enough.

Capacho: although not defined this way in The Oxford Spanish Dictionary, I know it to mean “good friend.”

Carhartt: canvas outerwear, particularly good for brushpopper cowboys. Thorns won’t tear it.

Chew: chewing tobacco or snuff (i.e., Redman or Copenhagen).

Chinks: shortened knee-length chaps popularized in California and the Northwest.

Cow pucky: one of many expressions used to define bovine alimentary effluent; as in cow pie.

Cow punching: doing cowboy work.

D-4 Cat: bulldozer. Smaller than a D-8.

Drag to the fire: at branding the 2- to 3-month-old calves are worked. The ground crew waits near the fire (which may be a steel branding pot heated with a propane burner) to administer the appropriate procedures. The cowboy a’horseback ropes the 200- to 300-pound calf around the hind legs and “drags him to the fire.” Simultaneously they are branded, ear tagged, vaccinated, castrated, and kissed. It usually takes a minute or two, literally.

Feeder: a feedlot animal weighing 500 to 700 pounds, or a person who owns cattle in a feedyard, or owns the feedyard, or one who works on the feed crew.

Feedlot: the less romantic side of the cowboy world. It is where steers (and heifers) spend their last few months eating grain before they become filet mignon.

Fence stay: a four-foot piece of twisted wire that keeps barbwire from saggin’ between posts. You may also see stays made from Ocotillo skeletons, straight sticks, pieces of bed-spring, or the occasional car axle.

FFA: a high school vocational tech club that represents young people who are interested in agricultural pursuits from landscaping to genetics. It used to be the Future Farmers of America.

Five-buckle overshoes: standard footwear for cowboys in mud or snow. Fits over boots and rises to mid-calf (human). Thus, “five-buckle deep” is a useful unit of measure.

Gaited horse: one that has a natural tendency to travel in something other than a simple walk. Tennessee walking horses, Paso Finos, trotters, Lepizans, and Andalusians, are examples.

Gelding: a castrated stallion.

Gentile: someone from outside my real world . . . an urban person.

Grulla: a color best described as a cross between sausage gravy and a thundercloud.

Halter chain: a short piece of light chain connecting the head stall itself to the lead rope. A picture’s worth a thousand words.

Heifer: a young cow, one that has not had a calf.

Hog-ring: a C-shaped metal clip used to attach tags to pigs’ ears.

Hog wire: or sheep wire, depending on your part of the country. It is woven fencing with a vertical and horizontal wire crossing at intervals like a tic-tac-toe board. Prevents smaller domestic farm animals from escaping. Will keep a dog outta the garden but not a coon or squirrel.

Horn: in my context, not the kind you honk.

Javelina: a peccary—a wild beast native to the Southwest, often confused with wild pigs. Tough little beasts, not very tasty.

Keds: a wingless fly that is an ectoparasite of sheep.

King Ranch: a 150-year-old ranch in south Texas that developed the Santa Gertrudis breed of cattle and is famous for its horse-breeding program.

Log chain: essential equipment around the farm. Used to pull dead livestock or recalcitrant machinery, heavy feed troughs, or occasionally the wandering tourist vehicle from the ditch.

Owly: a horse that is easily provoked.

Piedmontese: an Italian breed of cattle.

Polled: genetically hornless.

Power takeoff: PTO: a spinning shaft that protrudes from a tractor. It connects to a variety of farm implements and furnishes them power. Like the shaft on an electric motor.

Preg check: to manually palpate the uterus for pregnancy via the rectum. A routine procedure in the fall on cattle operations across the country. Why veterinarians have asymmetrical shoulders.

Producer: refers to farmers and ranchers.

Punkin roller: a small-town rodeo.

Red Man: chewing tobacco.

Red Wings: lace-up work boots.

Roach: a verb—to roach a horse’s mane; clipping the mane down to the hide, leaving the forelock and the witherslock.

Romal: one- to two-foot leathers on the end of a set of reins. An attached quirt. Mostly used to slap a chap leg as a noisemaker to move cattle or pacify cowboys.

Rumen: that vast stomach compartment in a cow where fermentation takes place. Can hold up to 400 pounds in a big bovine.

Saddle fork: the front part of the saddle that straddles the withers.

Scour: (v) to have diarrhea. Scours: (n) as in “he’s got the . . .”

Settle: get pregnant.

Sheep pellet: as opposed to a cow pie, road apple, dog poop, or tiger scat.

Showin’ a little ear: a bovine who shows Bramer traits. In this case, big ears. Like saying Baywatch is a little racy.

Slurry pit: a big (up to swimming pool size) pit where runoff, manure, factory effluvia, or potato waste is held.

Snotty nose: a critter with a cold or signs of pneumonia.

Stock trailer: usually a barred trailer from 16 to 24 feet, pulled by a pickup and used to move livestock.

Tapaderas: stirrup covers—worn where the brush is thick.

Tarentaise: a breed of cattle, French in origin.

Team roping: a rodeo event where the header ropes the steer’s head and the heeler ropes the hind legs. Imitates real-life method of catching and restraining cattle on the open range.

Tune-up: usually a “training session” to get a horse thinkin’ right.

U.P.: up north it’s the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, farther south it stands for the Union Pacific Railroad.

Vaquero: Mexican cowboy.