I was talking with my brother Duane (Osborn) on the phone Tuesday morning. We chatted about the four or five inches snow that fell the night before and the wind that was predicted that day.

Duane was getting ready to feed his cows in the next thirty minutes or so, and he was wondering what kind of mood the cows might be in when they came up on the feedlot, considering the snow and all.

“Weather” and “mood” triggered a memory for me. I was a teacher at Eaton High School some years ago. Sometimes in the mornings as I waited for the students to arrive, I looked out of one of the many windows that lined the upstairs biology room.

I watched some horses in a pasture to the south. Most mornings they were still, often standing where they could look over a fence. However, on cloudy, stormy-looking mornings, the horses were often running and running across the pasture.

I remember thinking,”The kids will be wild today, too.”

And they were.

This column isn’t about horses (or kids). It’s about the cow, an animal my brother and I know all too well, and her moods, especially with weather changes.

I don’t know that I have noticed cows running across a pasture when the weather is about to change — certainly not to the degree that a horse does — but they do get a little grumpy. Cows will be cows.

My brother had good reason to wonder about his cows’ temperaments following the stormy night.

The snowstorm followed a few days of spring-like temperatures that melted a lot of winter snow. It left bare ground on the ranch so after the cows finished eating their hay, they wandered around the ranch, even traveling across the creek.

They browsed on last year’s grass and possibly even a few sprouts of new green grass. They wandered around like this for several days. Monday evening arrived.

They returned to the feedlot and went down by the creek to bed down in the trees. The wind blew during the night, and the next morning — surprise — the ground was covered with snow, enough to cover up the vegetation again. Nobody knows what cows think, but one could guess that they might not be in the best of moods. Spring was gone.

Duane knew from many years of experience that the cows were apt to be in a grouchy mood, indeed, when they came up on the feedlot, not that they would pose a danger for him but certainly act like pests, working extra hard to push other cows around and to pull bales off the feed truck or other feed vehicle.

How do you know that a cow is in a bad mood? First of all, she might have “that look” in her eyes, she might even bawl, paw the ground, or shake her head. Mostly, she would butt another cow, causing that cow to bump into others. If cows are in a particularly bad space, several fights might break out, causing a big commotion.

Some say that cows don’t like to experience wind blowing between their ears. Maybe that’s the case with horses, too.

There are all kinds of reasons why a cow might be cranky. Cows will be cows.