Postcard from... Belgium

(Getty)

The farmer had his suspicions about the hulking bull he bought last April. The animal’s task in hand was to get busy on the farm in Belgium’s Flanders region and impregnate eight cows. But more than a year had passed, and the cows remained without calf.

While he was a little perplexed by the lack of action in his fields, the farmer, named Koen was happy to wait and let nature take its course. Then one day, while out on his rounds, he was shocked to discover the reason for the bull’s lack of results.

“We happened to pass the field when we saw the bull jump on the cow’s head,” the farmer – whose first name was not revealed – told the Flanders News website. “I took a snapshot. It was clear evidence that the bull wasn’t doing his work properly.”

And this is the evidence that Mr Koen now plans to submit to a judge, with his lawyer arguing that the €3,000 (£2,487) beast should not have been sold unless he was up to the job. “When you buy something, it should be fit for purpose,” the lawyer said. “In this case it’s absolutely not the case.”

As the narrator of the video points out, “bulls that prefer the front end are few and far between”. However, those words are of little comfort to Mr Koen.

The seller insists the bull had proved his winning ways with the ladies before, but Mr Koen is not convinced. “You can’t teach him better ways,” he says. “You can’t go and stand by the bull all day. And you can’t teach him the proper method.”