thank you to everyone who has offered to help on the nineteenth

I will

I'll never say I told you so.

well....i will try to be careful and you guys will try not to worry and if by some freak chance the little bugger does hurt me, i give you permission to say " i told you so"

I would be much happier if you at least had a cattle prod with you. You may never need to use it but it would be invaluable if you ever did need it. Just my two cents.

Which is why I said I totally trust your instincts.

I know everything that could have been done has been done to lessen the damage Percy could cause, and I certainly know you take the barn animals seriously, especially when it comes to standing your ground. I guess it might be just my own nervousness about an 800 lb wrecking ball on legs against you, especially when you are alone in the barn early in the morning and late at night a lot of the time.A line in the sand won't help you if things go south.

I absolutely don't believe Percy would hurt you intentionally, nor do I think you take stupid risks. It's just that he's a big, hard-headed boy, and you are vulnerable.

Life is a risk, and shit happens, you are right. And as I said before, I trust your instincts, your abilities and your intuition. However, you can't blame fault me for worrying about the wellbeing of a person I consider a good friend. :)

i know percy could be dangerous in terms of his size and utter stupidness....but A... he was castrated well before sexual maturity.
B...he actually does know he is a cow now due to jeanette's excellent foster mothering.
C...i have learned alot about managing him by watching edith beat him off when she wants him to bugger off.

he does back down from me now because i get as mad and determined to make him go away as edith does.

AND i don't turn my back on him either when he is in either a playful mood or when he wants something now.

any thousand pound animal can serious injure or kill a human, even unintentionally...i know this and i am careful but i am not letting that spoiled, greedy, impatient, little beast win an argument. if i do, then i really am in trouble.

if percy or any other animal ever causes me grave injury...it is a risk that goes along with animal rescue...i have been hurt occasionally before and i am sure i will be hurt occasionally again, it goes with the territory...i do uses caution, but even walking across the street can be dangerous sometimes, life is a risk...it just is.

Carol, you know that you have my total respect as a human being and as a rescuer. I am not inclined to question your ability, your judgment or your intuition with animals of any and all species without a great deal of thought. You know what you are doing, and have been doing it, well, for a long time. You "know" animals and their various behaviours.

That being said, your recent battles with Percy scare the shit out of me.

This is a quote from the National Bestseller "Animals in Translation" by Temple Grandin. She is an interesting character, an Autistic female scientist with a PhD and a unique perspective.

About animal aggression, specifically orphans or other young animals who were denied the opportunity to grow up with their own kind, Grandin writes:

"An animal who hasn't been properly socialized to his peers isn't dangerous only to other animals. He can be dangerous to humans, too. In social grazing animals such as horses, deer and cattle, the hand-raised pet bull often becomes the most dangerous. The problem is mistaken identity. A hand-raised bull calf thinks he's a person instead of a calf.

That's fine until he becomes sexually mature at age two, and instead of going out and fighting another bull to establish his dominance, he attacks the person who raised him. Bulls establish dominance by butting each other with their heads, and no human can survive being head-butted by a thousand-pound animal.It's essential that bull calves not get confused about their identity. They are cattle, not people."

Dr. Grandin goes on to say:

"When I visited Australia I heard a tragic story about a person who hand raised a deer fawn to adulthood. One day when the owner knelt down to photograph him, the deer interpreted the man's kneeling down posture as the head-bowing behaviour of another bull challenging him. He charged and gored the owner to death with his antlers."

Castration will greatly reduce aggression in grazing animals, but they still need to know they are not humans.

I worry, a lot about Percy causing you serious injury. It doesn't matter how pissed off and angry he knows you are. He weighs over 800 lbs, and if he decides not to play nicely in the sandbox, you are going to get hurt, maybe hurt very badly.

I don't know what the answer is. I'm not a person with any background in the raising of livestock. There are lots of experts around, though. Maybe you can get some advice as to how to keep yourself safe when you are dealing with an adolescent calf with big attitude.

Just stay safe.

i am more worried about about Percy than Pete.

pete is not going to hurt me, he is not big enough...but he is a tricky little bugger and pretty damn quick too.
i am more likely to kill myself tripping over edith...she slips under my line of vision and i don't always see her under my feet while i am focusing on getting rid of the giant eye level pests....pete and percy.

You seriously need to get a cattle prod before you are hurt by either Percy or Pete.