Jake and Sully were sitting on a Rock from which they could see their Herd roaming the valley. The Herd had grown from the Original 221 Cows. Within a day of buying the 221, they had 1000. 10 of the cows were solid white. They had no offspring. 91 Cows were Brown and produced 2 additional Light Brown Cows. 120 Cows were Black produced 5 additional Dark Grey Cows bringing the Herd to 1000. Everything was beautiful, except they were not making money.
Jake said to Sully “We have a healthy here but now we need to figure out how to make money off of them. We are going to go broke if we don’t do something.” Sully replied “Maybe we need a bigger herd. We need some Bull(s). I here one of them Johnson Boys bought a Bull that produced a Golden Calf on the very first Day. They got 500 bales of hay for it and only cost them 1 bale. Problem was the Horny Bull bred every single cow and they were 500 bales shorter than when they started.”. To this Jake replied “What did they do?”. Sully said “I guess they decided to get another Bull. Last I heard their herd was skin and bones and the Golden Calves were all stillborn. They had to dig a big pit like in that Paul Newman movie.”
Jake had been married once. Maria was a City Girl, but tried to live Jake’s Cowboy Life. They had a son and named him Billy. When Billy was 10, she gave Jake an ultimatum. Jake was still haunted by the vision of Maria packing all of here dishes, dreams and longings and taking Billy back to the City she grew up in. Jake and Sully had been out hunting strays for the next 10 years when one day a motor cycle shown up. The young man on the Bike looked at Jake and said “Are you my Father?” Jake new the face instantly and said “I guess I am. You must be Billy”. “Please call me William” said the young man. “I am a grown man with a College Degree, no thanks to you”.
Billy struggled in the City. He kept it to himself but he longed for the Cowboy life he knew and time with his dad. He resolved himself to his new life. It was not that hard because his mother was from a very wealthy family. He attended the finest schools where he became one of the top students. He graduated with honors from a prestigious university with degrees in Economics and Agriculture. His specialty was Herd Management and he was back where the passion started.
At the Camp Fire that night, Sully announced that he was going to bu4 new bulls. To keep the herd size in check he said that he was going to keep the bulls in separate pens and only let them see a few cows a day. “How you gonna decide which cows to send to the party? Asked Jake. “Don’t know yet” said Sully. Maybe the college boy can figure it out with some of that edgicatian he got”. William smiled and then let out a big belly laugh. He opened the side bag on is bike and pulled out a laptop computer. As it turns out William had been working on a breeding program and he was here to put it into practice. He showed Jake and Sully a bunch of charts and graphs and said they had the secret to breeding the Golden Calf. Neither Jake of Sully understood what they were looking at and both said that they could pick the cows better than some fancy charts.
Every day at Noon and 7:00pm there was a Flash of lightening. A bolt would strike one of the cows and place another mark on its back. The cows would line up in several different orders just prior to the flash. The bolt would split and strike each line at different distances from the ends. Each of those positions contained the same Cow. Jake and Sully had watched this happen several thousand times. They sometimes had heated arguments about which cow was next claiming that they saw know that it would come from some position on one of the lines. Arguments like “This one has the most marks and is in the middle of the skip line, it’s going to be next”. The arguments always made sense but were rarely right. Jake would sometimes ride out into the herd looking for the special cow. He would sometimes put that Jake had started to ride through the here on Trigger the wonder horse. He often had that special twig from the “Vision Bush” in his mouth and through hallucination, would try to spot that special wink. He was sure that the cows knew who was next and that they were hiding the secret. Sully had fallen to shooting a paint ball into the sky and picking the cow or cows that got splashed with paint. Neither was having much success. That is when they turned to the Bulls and all hell broke loose. Grass had just started to grow over the Pit when Billy showed up.
Tonight, Billy or William laid out his Herd Management Plan for Jake and Sully. He put it into words that they could understand.
- We only and always have 1000 Cows.
- We only and always have 221 Original Cows.
- Each Cow has a Number from 0 to 999.
- A Bull is a Formula. Ok that’s over you head so think of it as the DNA that it passes. That DNA is a formula that is applied to a Cow’s Number to produce an offspring. The 4 Bulls that Sully ordered have the following DNA.
- “x2” Each Digit is multiplied by 2 with only the right digit of the product used.
- “+137” First Digit plus 1, Second Digit plus 3, Third Digit plus 7 (Right Digits Only)
- “+317” First Digit plus 3, Second Digit plus 1, Third Digit plus 7 (Right Digits Only)
- “+713” First Digit plus 7, Second Digit plus 1, Third Digit plus 3 (Right Digits Only)
- We are going to use the Cows with a mark from the last 10 Lightning Bolt Flashes.
- We are going to breed those 10 Cows to a Bull.
- For each Mating we are going to take the New Cow and create 9 more by adding 1 to each digit (Right Digit Only) giving us 10 “New Cows”
- We do this for each of the Last 10 Cows resulting in the Corralling of 100 Cows.
- The Cows are arraigned in a 10x10 Grid.
- Our Goal is to Select the correct Line or Column in the Grid and find the Golden Calf in the 10 Cows in said row or column.
NOW we have a lot of Options to Chose from. We have a 10x10 Corral for Each Bull. We can’t afford to actually Breed more than 30 offspring per Flash.
“I think I understand enough to know that this is going to Hard” said Sully. “I’m thinking about getting a few more Bulls and Now a bigger Truck”. “Be Patient” said William. “There is much to see”
He turned on a projector aimed at the sheet hanging between two trees. He pressed Enter and a Picture of the Earth came on. He pressed “Go” and the globe spun and got closer until they were looking at the Valley and finally the Camp Fire. Jake and Sully could see themselves seated at the Fire and before William could blink he saw both of them mooning the Earth. “Well I’ll be darned Jake. You got a hairy ass”. As they pulled up their pants they saw a list of all of Flashes that had occurred in the Valley since the Aliens arrived. At least that was the theory among most because that was when the Golden Calf Buyers started to flash burn the cows and pay a bonus if you had one roped when the flash hit.
The List morphed into the 10x10 Grid. Billy selected a Bull from the 4 Options. He then set the Flash for Day since that was the Next Flash. He pressed a button on the screen and the grid began to roll down as the computer went back in time. Each Row and Column in the Grid lit up when the Next Cow marked was present. As the grid changed, a tally of the Row and Column was recorded for each hit.
“Pass me that Jug” said Billy for the first time. After taking a big gulp and wheezing for a few minutes he said “Tonight we celebrate the Birth of our Herd Management Plan. He dropped his pants, bent over and grabbed his ankles and said “Kiss this Google Earth. Go ahead and put my ass in your stinking data base”. He took another swig just as the computer beeped signaling the end of its analysis.
The Screen showed the Following for the Last 100 Flashes
Top Performers
|
Game
|
Formula
|
Best on Delay
|
California
|
Day
|
x2
|
2 Hits on Delay 1
|
x2
|
Evening
|
x2
|
2 Hits on Delay 2
|
3
|
Evening
|
_+137
|
3 Hits on Delay 3
|
_+137
|
Evening
|
_+317
|
5 Hits on Delay 4
|
3
|
Day
|
_+137
|
2 Hits on Delay 5
|
_+317
|
Day
|
_+137
|
4 Hits on Delay 6
|
3
|
Combined
|
_+713
|
3 Hits on Delay 7
|
_+713
|
Day
|
x2
|
5 Hits on Delay 8
|
1
|
Day
|
_+317
|
2 Hits on Delay 9
|
|
Evening
|
_+317
|
3 Hits on Delay 10
|
Results above are for the Pure Breed Golden Calf. Results for the Silver Calves show more hits but payouts are to small for profit. Entering that market requires more intense management to get down to a profitable operation.
Break Even is 2 Hits in 100 Flashes. 6 Delays had 3 or more hits. Delays were the Column Lines in the Grid. This seems to suggest that you could not lose by playing any one of these 10 options Every Draw. That is true but they only represent 25% of your possible choices. You have a 75% chance of being wrong. Still, it suggests a breeding program to be followed requiring us to pick the Mated Offspring.
Jake began to chew on a “Magic Stick”. He whistled and Trigger appeared fully saddled and ready to go. “I’m coming for you girl” he said and rode off. Sully had passed out right after Billy buckled his trousers.
Billy sat back and thought “It’s a perfect program. How long will it take? I’m working with some real Hicks.