What kind of beer do your cows prefer?

Interviewer: What kind of beer do your cows prefer?

CowboyBenWade: I normally start them on Coors Light at about six months and then move on to something with a more taste, usually Yeungling or craft beer. We buy it buy it by the truckload - it tends to calm the bulls down a lot especially when they get bigger. They are aggressive animals, and they are much less destructive when they have their beer regularly. A big bull can walk right through a fence like it's not even there. He just doesn't know he can do that, and we don't want him to learn. Really nothing we have can hold a bull if he wants to get out, and our bulls are much larger than bulls at other farms. The same goes for the heifers.

Interviewer: How do you know when your cows get tired of drinking Coors Lite?

CowboyBenWade: They start stomping the ground with their hooves and throwing their heads up and down.

Interviewer: How much beer can your bull drink?

CowboyBenWade: Six gallons is about the most you want to give him at one time. Any more than than and he won't want to walk very far. He can still walk even with a lot more, but he just won't want to. They need to be able to walk. If the herd was go to another field, you want them to stay together. You don't want the bull to get left because he can't decide what direction to go anymore. And if they are stumbling too much they can fall and land on their legs, and that's not so good. We had that happen one time.

Interviewer: Did the bull break his leg?

CowboyBenWade: We thought it was broken at first because he was limping pretty bad, but it looked okay. It wasn't bent all different ways, so we thought it might just be sprained. After a while he started walking on it normal again. I think he tripped on a gopher hole.

Interviewer: Do you have lots of gopher holes in your fields?

CowboyBenWade: Yeah those turtles just keep digging, and if one of my cows has had too much to drink, and he's not paying attention, his leg can go in one of those holes and it's all over. You can't save a cow if he breaks his leg. It's the same with a horse. Big animals like that can't survive if they are off their feet for too long. Cows just give up. If they can't walk they don't try anymore. None of our cows have ever broken their legs.

Interviewer: Would your cows get less beer if this became a problem?

CowboyBenWade: It's entirely possible that I would give them less beer if they started falling down gopher holes, but they are responsible when it comes to that. I go around with a shovel and fill in the gopher holes, but I don't find all of them, and sometimes the gopher comes back out of the hole and then you've got a hole again.

Interviewer: Don't rattlesnakes live in gopher holes too?

CowboyBenWade: That's right. Snakes crawl in those holes too and live in there with the turtle. They are both reptiles; neither one will eat the other, so it's good for them. We don't like this arrangement because it just makes more use of gopher holes, and we don't like cows falling in holes. I also don't want to break my leg either.

Interviewer: I want to get back to your livestock's drinking preferences, have you even given your cows hard liquor?

CowboyBenWade: Sometime we will if we are going to operate on one of them or we need them to calm down, like if there has been a stressful event on the farm. Let's say we've lost a member of the herd to coyotes or something and the carcass is out there with its legs sticking up in the air. Some of the cows don't like that. They start getting a little nervous. In such cases we have several shelves of moonshine that we can bring out.

Interviewer: How do you get your cows to drink moonshine?

CowboyBenWade: Just put a little honey in it and it tastes like molasses. They love it. But mostly we stick with beer on a more regular basis. And that's because beer can be had in higher quantities, and it achieves the calming effect.

Interviewer: I've heard that calm cows produce better beef. Is that true?

CowboyBenWade: We've eaten some stressed out cows before, and you have to slow cook them. It's a huge problem at slaughter houses - cows come in there and there's this weird smell, and they don't know where they, and I think they know what's about to happen. I'm not sure how they know, but I think they know.