And Why Don’t Cows Have Them? You give cartoonists far too much credit for imagination, David and Valerie. Long before there were punk rockers, bulls sported genuine brass rings. The expression “bull-headed” wasn’t pulled out of thin air. Bulls are among the most stubborn and least accommodating of farm animals. When a human wants a bull to move and a bull wants to sit for a spell, verbal commands are unlikely to work. Neither will a friendly little shove on the rear. Bulls’ hooves have been known to crush the feet of owners who made them “see red,” and they love to kick, too. Those rings are inserted to allow owners to “lead them around by the nose.” As Richard Landesman, a University of Vermont zoologist, puts it, “Any tension on the ring will produce pain, and this can be used as a means either to train or restrain the bull.” Most bulls are “ringed” before they are a year old, in a procedure that isn’t as delicate as a human ear piercing. For some reason, bulls don’t welcome a veterinarian driving a steel rod through their septum, so they are given a local anesthetic and placed in a “head bail”
