I receive a lot of cowy periodicals from publishers who run my column, and I try to read every one of them. I even read the farm magazines that don’t concern cows because I’ve always found every facet of agriculture interesting. My interest dates all the way back to high school where we had a library in the ag building. I spent a lot of lunch hours reading all the farm and ranch publications like the Western Livestock Journal and the Livestock Market Digest. Little did I know that one day I’d actually own one of those papers (the Digest). I even read Hoards Dairyman and always tried to place the judging class they had in every issue but after a while I began to feel like a pervert checking out all the cow udders.

I loved looking at bull photos and tried to memorize all the important herd sires. My bedroom at home, which was actually a sunporch which doubled as my mom’s sewing room, was covered in bull pictures and I often wondered what her customers who came for fittings thought of all the bulls leering at them as they tried on their new clothes.

Back when we didn’t have EPD’s beef cattle were evaluated mostly on their phenotype and as a junior member of the Angus Association I sent away for three free posters that depicted what an ideal Angus bull, cow and steer should look like. These became the centerpiece of my art collection. As a sophomore in high school, I could rattle off all the names of the best sires but then the continental breed explosion hit and with 35 breeds I became more confused than Joe Biden.

Today I can’t even keep up with all the purebred ranch names. There’s Man Herefords, Halfmann Red Angus and Assman Land and Cattle (I bet they like cattle with big butts.) There’s a King Ranch in Texas, California and New Mexico. There’s a Bear Creek, Wolf Creek and Oak Creek, not to be confused with Town Creek. The famed R.A. Brown Ranch in Texas breeds some of the best red and black bulls but no BROWN ones, while Redd Ranches in Paradox, Colo., is known for their Red Angus, Red Gelbvieh and red Simmental. There’s both a Funk and Fink who have among the finest purebred herds in America. The Funk family owns Express Ranches and the Fink Family owns Fink Family Genetics. As I slowly lose my memory you can see how I could get Dudley Brothers and Nunley Brothers confused as well as 12 Star and 5 Star. Don’t even get me started on Black Herefords, miniature Angus or genetically enhanced EPD’s. How is anyone supposed to remember all these EPD’s for every breed? You can’t compare the numbers across breeds unless you know calculus and every time I finally figure out what are good numbers for the Angus breed they come up with a bunch of new numbers, not to mention new categories.

What really blows my mind is that all these purebred outfits have to come up with hundreds of thousands of new names for the cattle they register. I don’t know how the biggest outfits come up with 2,000 or more names for their registered cattle EVERY YEAR. I know one ranch that named their cattle after U.S. presidents one year and football players another year. Baxter Black even had a bull named after him and Baxter told me he considered it his highest honor.

Another publication I studied in our ag library was the Quarter Horse Journal because one local horseman donated all his past copies. I love horse names the best and often find them funny, like Peptoboonsmal. Over the years I’ve kept a list of names I’d use if I ever became a big time Quarter Horse breeder and here’s just a sampling: Who Flung Dung, Bedpan, Neutered, Abadapple, Better Than Terrible, Gesundheit, Pie Biter, The Flatulator, Horse Remorse, It’s Only Money, Jorge Palomino, Hubba Hubba, Stew Meat, 4DBirdz, Back Seat Driver, Lucky Sperm and Crow Bait.

If you ever see a racehorse at the track with any of these names you’ll know it’s me so if you want to double your money, just take the cash you were going to bet, fold it in half and put it back in your pocket.