That's an artificial mount, essentially the four-legged equivalent of a blow-up doll. And no, that man isn't posing for the requisite "wacky" picture on his dating profile -- someone has to be inside to help "facilitate" the sperm bank deposit by ensuring it lands in the appropriate receptacle.

But, in my experience, bulls get injured with metal or wooden mounts more than with real-life cow ladies, both physically (metal is blunter than a still-living flank steak) and emotionally (cold metal can't comfort bulls through those long, sleepless nights in the barn). So we use a real, live animal. Not a cow, though -- hot bull-on-cow action spreads bovine VD and produces unwanted pregnancies, and bulls are generally pretty bad at getting condom wrappers opened before the mood dies. So we use steers -- bulls that have been neutered. If they don't see anything dangling, most bulls don't notice the difference and are happy to mount the steer. Yup, your hamburger is probably the result of some hot all-male bovine action.

Melisa Rouge
This pre-sex position is called the "tease," for reasons that should be obvious.

Before we act out our all-ungulate re-creations of Sodom, one of us will jump in as the bull mounts the steer and sheath his penis in an artificial cow vagina. It's essentially a soft, lubed-up plastic tube. Here's another picture; you've earned it:

Melisa Rouge / Richard Bowen
The top-most tube is for rabbits, or for steers who are all, "Just the tip tonight; I'm tired."

So, yeah, my job was "bovine Fleshlight operator." It sounds gross, but the whole thing takes only like 15 seconds (bulls are not known for their stamina or generous approach to lovemaking). Then we ship the semen out and the bull is none the wiser -- once it's mounted, it doesn't know or care precisely what it's thrusting into.

Only one bull I've ever known was perceptive enough to realize he was being tricked into batting for the other team. He'd get a bovine boner when the steer "teased" him, but as soon as he got in close he'd back off, look down at the "cow" before him, then look at us with an expression that said, "Are you trying to trick moi out of scoring some genuine cow pussy, sir?" We think he either saw the castration scars or knew the smell of the steer barn. So we had to present Casanova with a real cow, but we still got the artificial vagina on him before he penetrated and caused an unwanted pregnancy because, in the end, we can actually still outsmart a bull pretty easily.

So ... if you've ever been coated in a thin glaze of bull semen and weren't totally into the whole experience, you might not want to read further. If you were into the experience, then get your genitals quivering.

Anyone in my line of work is going to wind up splattered in semen eventually. It's just an occupational hazard, like how police officers risk getting shot at and ad agency employees risk regretting all of their life choices. A cowboy cum bath is a rite of passage in the AI community (artificial inseminators, not artificial intelligence. Those people have their own weird sex rituals). Despite their size, bulls ejaculate only around eight to 10 milliliters of semen. That's about a tablespoon, and it's not much more than I or a fellow human male would produce. But that's more than enough when you're getting it all over you.

Ramonespelt/iStock/Getty Images
And more than enough to ruin yogurt for future snack options.

I've had two artificial vaginas burst on me. An AV is surrounded by water so it feels natural, but sometimes it feels too natural and the bull thrusts too vigorously, which damages it. (I imagine a lot of women reading this have encountered a similar scenario.) When an AV bursts, it bursts on me, which showers me in enough watery semen to start filming a bovine bukkake video.

But hey, that's why we wear goggles. It's a common-enough occurrence that, the first time it happened to me, I left the barn and the owner barely looked up when he said, "It burst, didn't it?" I said yes, looking for the sympathy I'd like to think we'd all offer our fellow bull-semen-covered human beings, but his only other comment was, "They'll do that," before he returned to his whittling like he was an old-timey prospector talking about mine cave-ins.

Zoran Zeremski/iStock/Getty Images
"'Til your hair gets stuck There's Something About Mary-style, you got no right to complain, son."

The worst semen shenanigans I've ever witnessed happened to a co-worker, whom we'll call George to hide the fact that his real name is Paul. It's George's job to collect and freeze the semen samples for shipping, which he does by pouring them out of the thermos-like containers we initially store them in. Each holds several ounces (we can get several doses from a bull every day), which is the equivalent of several thousand dollars' worth (that's right, gentlemen, bull jizz is worth more than yours will ever be), and one had a loose cap. So when he shook it up to get the juice flowing, the cap flew off and, well, now we know what it would look like if a man ever gave a bull a blowjob.

George spent an hour in the shower, and the most he's ever said about it since is that it felt like warm Elmer's Glue. And it took us several weeks to make up for the lost semen, which doesn't even count the cost of all the shampoo he went through.

Elmer's Products
Stories about little kids eating paste are now a thousand times more disgusting.

Generally, we ship our semen out and never see it again, like a teenage boy who's suddenly making his family's Kleenex bills skyrocket. But local farmers sometimes bring their cows in to be artificially inseminated on-site, like we're running the world's least-sexy brothel. Doing the deed in person cuts down on shipping fees for them and means one less day of holding a fake vagina for me, but it's not exactly wine and Barry White.

University of Wisconsin
Unless White had some interests we were unaware of.

When you see a "guiding arm" deep in a cow's asshole, you might assume that your guide is lost, but finding out if a cow is into butt stuff is an essential part of our job. It turns out that shoving a thin metal tube deep into a cow's vagina can cause said cow's cervix to clamp up, unless it's a really kinky beast. And a cervix putting up its "No entry" sign can block a lot of semen and reduce the odds of a successful insemination. The best way to keep this from happening is to go in through a parallel route, as you can see in the diagram above. So the specialist at my company has to get elbow deep in cow bowels and fiddle around with the cervix until the rod can shoot straight on through. That's love, kids.

Artificial inseminations usually go off without a hitch (and doesn't hurt the cow, which is another big part of the job), although occasionally the rod prematurely ejaculates -- remember, men, no one suffers this problem alone. Oh, and every once in a while, the specialist gets their arm stuck. Most cows are surprisingly chill about having a fist up their ass (if I ever make a nature documentary, that's the title), but some freak out and clench. And if our man is further than elbow-deep, that elbow essentially becomes a plug. And since cows don't feel the need to find a private place to answer nature's call, our specialist is essentially thrust into a race against time to impregnate the cow before she blasts four pounds of shit all over him.

N_u_T/iStock/Getty Images
At that point, your only hope for not having dirty hands at dinner is amputating them.

We keep extensive records, and we have to -- the customers are picky. One of our regulars is an organic dairy farmer and, much like that hippie you briefly dated, "organic" extended to semen, in his mind. If a bull had been vaccinated within six months he wouldn't take it, presumably because a D-list celebrity warned him that would make his calves autistic. He even brings an accountant with him so he can use math to find the best pairings. I've heard him say things like, "With Black Bart you would have 4 percent more milk, but with Karma Chameleon you would have an extra week or two of milk." It's the cattle-fucking equivalent of sabermetrics.

And, much like the British Royal Family, we often match cousins together. Some owners deem the risk of turning their stockyard into a re-creation of the Habsburg family tree worthwhile if the potential genetic payout is good enough. For example, one farmer had some really good beef cows and we had a really good beef bull. That meant serious potential for low-fat, high-muscle volume calves, like a herd of edible Dwayne Johnsons. The only problem is that my bull was technically the nephew of the cow he'd be matched to. But the farmer figured that the potential for pounds of beef was worth a few nightmare babies.

Otografias/iStock/Getty Images
Creepy bull uncles are awesome if their actions result in some absolutely bangin' cheeseburgers.

And indeed, some of the resulting cows were developmentally disabled, and there's nothing sadder than a mentally handicapped calf, except for how some of them promptly get chopped up and turned into veal. So just think -- the next time you order veal, you might possibly be eating a delicious handicapped product of incest.

Eising/DigitalVision/Getty Images
The calf sat around all day drooling, and now that it's slathered in cream sauce, so will you.

So by now you're probably wondering why we don't just let cattle make adorable little hunks of walking meat and milk the old-fashioned way. It comes down to cost and volume -- natural sex sessions can cost 5 grand, because you have to move the bull from farm to farm, make sure both he and the cow are in the mood, pay for grass-scented candles ... all these expenses and hassles quickly add up. Meanwhile, frozen semen can cost as little as 15 bucks a pop, and a bull can have kids across the country without ever having to leave his barn (some bulls have had over 100,000 offspring from the comfort of their own homes, kind of like a movie star who lives in L.A. and has groupies visit from around the world). So that's how about three-quarters of America's cows are created. And when I say 15 bucks a pop, I do mean pop. Frozen semen comes in thin straws:

Brain Tumor Resource Laboratory
Definitely don't use these for spitballs.

But in genetic terms, 15 bucks for a baby bump gets you the equivalent of a bull who dropped out of Bovine University to start an all-milk-jug country band. Most of our bulls start at $100 per straw, while semen from the genetic elite of bull society can cost $3,000. And whenever you have a valuable product, you're going to have a black market.

In 2010, a spate of semen robberies worth 22 to 35 grand rocked Wisconsin. In January of 2016, nearly $50,000 in frozen semen was stolen from a truck in Sacramento. And in 2015, thieves in Minnesota walked away with $70,000 worth of bull jizz. It's easy to giggle at the image of rural thieves scheming to get their hands on cattle semen, but those are big numbers that can put a gaping hole in our bottom line.

Uwemuell / Wiki Commons
The gaping holes we need to be seeing are on ovulating cows.

And so we're constantly worried about a rag-tag group of thieves coming together on one last job, filthy pun not intended. Last year we invested in more security cameras, a new alarm system, and a fancy new semen fridge that needs the owner or manager's magnetic keycard to reveal its white gold. It's not Bull Semen Fort Knox, but it's pretty damn secure. The security consultant who put it all together was bewildered as to why my boss would want all of this, and so we told him, "It's his semen. It's worth a lot."

Evan V. Symon is a writer and interview finder guy for the Personal Experience team at Cracked. Have an awesome job/experience you would like the internet world to know about? Hit us up at tips@cracked.com!

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