Wyoming is so cold, the ground can freeze a bull’s testicles, a Sheridan rancher warns.
“If these bulls were to lay in the snow tonight, 25-below-zero weather, their nuts would get so badly frostbitten they’d fail their fertility exam next spring,” Peter Burgess, a Sheridan rancher and creator at video blog Wyorancher307, warned in a short post to Instagram.
“I’m not kidding, I’ve seen it happen,” he says in the clip. “Then they wouldn’t be able to breed cows next summer; they’d be no use to me.”
That’s why it’s important to lay down straw for the bulls, Burgess said. The video shows Burgess on his own hilly ranch east of Sheridan with 20 snow-spattered bulls grazing complacently on a scraggy hillside. The temperature reading for that moment was minus 8 degrees, the video shows.
“Take care of your nuts, boys!” Burgess calls out to the bulls.
This Is Real Life
Burgess, a rancher all his life and a video blogger for about two months, said he knew the video theme was a little “gritty,” but it’s not meant to be crude. It’s real life on a working ranch in Wyoming.
“I’ll be honest, I had a little bit of fun with it,” he said of the short. “But it really is a 100% true thing. It’s a consideration we often have to take into account, that kind of extreme cold weather and its effect on cattle.”
Extreme cold can ruin a bull’s breeding potential, and that’s a huge loss.
Burgess said he’s seen bulls in the spring with white, frostbite damage to their genital flesh, a telltale sign they’ve lost stud potential.
But to clarify, a rest on the uninsulated earth Friday night probably wouldn’t have sterilized all 20 bulls in his video, the rancher said.
Watch Out For Wyoming
Letting the known world know Wyoming is cold enough to sterilize a bull also is a public service announcement, said Burgess.
“It definitely is a wake-up call to some that are planning to move here,” he said. “Because I have a lot of friends in California, and they would not stand for this.”
Wyoming has seen an influx of residents in recent years. And the state sometimes has milder winters with 50-degree days even in January.
But anyone considering the move to the Cowboy State should know just how cold it can get on a whim.
“If you’re gonna move here, that’s fine. But I just want you to be aware,” said Burgess. “From a Wyomingite – from me to you, and I care about you — It gets so cold here you can literally freeze your nuts off. I just want people to know that.”
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
