When I was going to graduate school in Logan, Utah, I was always looking for more work so I could have enough money for my small family. After classes each day, I took care of racehorses—feeding, cleaning their barns, and hauling hay. I enjoyed it, and when I wasn’t doing anything that might be dangerous, I would take my little girls with me. They enjoyed the horses and the obnoxious chicken named Fluff.

Because of my work with the horses, a neighbor called and asked if I would also like to feed the bulls at Select Sires on the weekends. The bulls were all used for a sperm bank, and almost every breed was represented. Each bull had a small outdoor pen connected to a stall inside the long barn. All the stalls were lined up on two sides of an aisle that ran down the center of the barn. I jumped at the chance for extra income and started immediately.

The manager taught me the routine. I was to fill a wheelbarrow full of pellets and wheel it along the inside aisle, putting a big scoop of pellets in a little feeder connected to each stall. While the bulls ate the pellets, I started up an old tractor and drove around the outside of the pens, loading hay into each bull’s outside manger. Once the bulls finished their pellets and moved out to the mangers, my job was to go back inside, step into their stalls, and clean them. I always had to keep an eye on the bulls. If they moved toward me, I quickly left the pen and closed the gate.

As I walked in with the manager the first day, the bulls were bellowing so loudly for their pellets that I could barely hear his instruction, even though he stood right next to me. The cement and steel building functioned as a megaphone, making their clamoring for their feed deafening. I found this to be the case every time I came. But the minute they had their pellets, a stillness settled over the barn, broken only by their quiet munching.

I didn’t dare take my girls with me there unless my wife, Donna, came to watch them. I couldn’t have them come into the stalls with me. But sometimes, they all came, and Donna would laugh at how noisy the bulls were at first and how quiet they were once I fed them. More than once, when we were at a gathering that was loud before eating, when it quieted down with everyone enjoying their food, Donna would say, “The bulls are fed.”

One Friday evening, after months of hard work and little time for a break, Donna and I went out for what we hoped would be a quiet dinner. We got a booth back in a corner and were enjoying a restful conversation when a large group of teenage boys came in. The atmosphere quickly changed with their boundless energy, and Donna and I could hardly hear each other.

I thought our peaceful dinner couldn’t get much worse when a similar group of girls came over to visit with the boys. It continued to get louder and louder as people had to increase their volume to hear each other. I was considering asking the waitress to help us find a different place when the boys’ food came. With the food in front of them, the boys were not interested in conversation, and the girls left. Suddenly, it was very quiet, and Donna and I could quietly visit again.

When a smile crossed her face, I knew exactly what she was going to say before she said it. “The bulls are fed.”

I nodded. Not meaning to be disrespectful, but to add to the analogy, I said, “And the heifers have gone home.”