Our neighbors that we visited often had sheep and goats. I must have been around 6 years old when we visited one time and I saw all these soft walnut sized "balls" on the ground. Being a kid, I was kicking them all around, then curiosity got the better of me so I picked one up and was mooshing it, squeezing it, and really eyeing it, trying to figure out what it was. Their sons, probably 14 and 16 at the time were laughing their asses off.
I finally asked what they were laughing at, and asked what "these" were.
They told me to follow them into the barn, so I did.
They picked up what looked like a pair of pliers, a tiny but thick rubber band, then put the band onto the pliers, squeezed them and 4 prongs spread the band quite wide.
They walked upto a male goat and placed the band around the testicles and let go. The goat reacted exactly as one would imagine, and it was at that point I dropped the sac. They said the goat would drop his sack in a day or two.
There is a lot involved in farming (especially concerning animals) that is best left undiscovered by outsiders.
My mom's best friend lived a couple miles down the road from us. They "gifted" a calf to their kids once. They had a huge area for it to graze and grow.
One day after about a year, there were "Missing Cow" posters taped to poles on our road. The parents told the kids that the cow escaped.
A day or two later, a butcher's truck backed up to the garage and they filled their freezer with beef.
I am unsure when the kids realized that they were eating, or had eaten the missing cow.
When I was a kid (50 years ago) I helped my neighbor, a farmer, slaughter his hogs. My first experience with this, and nearly made me puke. Even one correctly, I couldn't take that "why me?" look they'd give me, or their screams when they figured it out.
Dumb animals?
Never again.
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u/MuskyChop 7h ago
Either that or a Rocky Mountain Oyster, still in its’… marble bag?