Boorowa farmer injured as bull fight turns on him

A Boorowa-district farmer says turning his back on two fighting bulls for just a moment led to a frightening attack that has left him warning others in the region about complacency around cattle. Roger Corcoran, 80, of Mara Plains and Hughstonia, was moving cattle through the yards with his wife, Amelia, on Tuesday 8 September when two of the couple's eight Angus bulls began fighting in a holding pen. "I thought I'd better get out of the yard, but I turned my back on the bull, that was a major error," Roger said. He was knocked down in the corner of the yard, partly shielded by a large water trough. One of the bulls then turned its aggression on him as he lay on the ground, kicking and butting him repeatedly over what felt, to the couple, like several long minutes. "They knocked me over into the corner of the yard, and then one of the bulls came back and kept coming at me," Roger said. Amelia said she never considered climbing into the yard herself. "There's no way I was going to get in that yard, we'd both have been killed," she said. Instead, she went to the rail from outside and repeatedly struck the bull, trying to drive it away from her husband. "I went outside the rail and started hitting him, trying to find a soft spot," she said. The bull eventually broke off and charged into a neighbouring pen, giving Amelia the chance to run in and slam the gate shut, moments before the bull turned and charged back at it. Roger was taken to Boorowa Hospital before being sent on to Canberra Hospital for a CT scan and sutures to a deep gash to his head. He has since returned home. The couple said the bulls' calm temperament had bred a false sense of security. "We pride ourselves on paying extra for docility, it's our number one requirement in a bull," Amelia said. "They'd never given us any trouble before, so we'd become a bit complacent." But she said the incident was a reminder that no amount of breeding changes what an animal fundamentally is. "Bulls are still bulls," she said. "It's like trying to tame a lion at the zoo, it's still a lion." Roger said the couple's yards needed updating to reduce the risk of a repeat. Among the changes they are now considering are more pedestrian "man gates" for older workers who can no longer climb yard fences, and self-closing, spring-loaded gate latches that hold firm under the weight of a charging animal rather than being forced open. "We need more man gates, because the older workers in the yard can't climb over the fences," Roger said. The couple visited the Henty Field Days to look at upgraded yard designs and equipment, and are also looking into automated cattle yard systems, which use remote-controlled hydraulic gates to let a single operator open and close pens from outside, without needing to enter a yard with the animals at all. Amelia said the message for other farming families is simple. "This just highlights that you can't be complacent about safety, always have two people in the yards," she said.