Anywhere else it’s a disease. It’s called OCD or obsessive compulsive disorder, someone who counts everything. It becomes such an ingrained habit that you start counting the steps from the kitchen to the bedroom, or how many times you squeeze you left hand with you right when washing your hands. It’s the result of long, arduous training, handed down through the generations of guardians of bovine creatures.
"How many came to cake this ev’en?"
"Thirty eight, grampa."
"That old six-titted cow with the floppy horn come in?"
"Nope."
"Betcha she’s got a calf hid down in the bottom."
"Yep."
You count cows who come into the cake line (other-wise known as a string of 20% protein range cubes.) You count heifers going through the gate, out to pasture. You count mares coming to hay. You count scoops of feed for each working gelding, constantly fearing colic if they get too much and starvation if they get to little and the weather turns bad. You even count how many turns a horse takes around you in the round pen.
Of course you can hardly blame a fellow for being a little neurotic when he daily deals with confrontations from 1000-2000 lb. varmints with an attitude (theirs).
Weather provides another adversary making you count how many round bales are left to make it through the rest of the winter. It’s called a counter at the feed store because you count your hard earned coins across it.
Or used to before everything became either plastic or (worse yet) computerized. Grampa don’t trust ATM’s, he prefers to keep his shekel under the mattress in a smelly old brown Army sock (or was it Navy) beside the colt 45 (well oiled).
So it’s no wonder that one of the worst epithets in cow country is "he’s no-count."