As I’ve told you, my younger daughter is minoring in animal science at college. Today in the livestock and dairy judging class, they did a unit on breeding-cattle. I asked her what she learned.
Lulu: I didn’t really learn anything new. Just changing priorities for what we want in our cows.
Ginna: How can I change my priorities for my cows if I don’t have any priorities or cows?
L: You don’t need to, because I changed my own priorities. For you.
G: What HAD your priorities been?
L: Muscle and finish (fat). That’s for market steers — the ones you wanna EAT.
G: And now?
L: With the female cattle, you want decent balance and structure and depth.
G: Why do I want a deep cow? I guess I’d want a balanced cow because I hate when they fall over. And structure is good, else they’re all floppy. Do we eat cows and bulls, both?
L: Presumably. The market steers were all guy cows though.
G: You’re, uh, studying animal science, you say?
L: I’m not using technical terms because I don’t WANNA. I would say bull, except the edible cattle we’d been looking at were fixed, so they weren’t too manly anymore.
G: Wusses.
L: Yeah.