City boy checking in.
So, this one time out on a hike in a semi-rural area, the trail opened out on a grassy riverbank kind of place, and there were a dozen or so cows between me and the path onwards.
Now, I mostly grasp which end of a cow the grass goes in, but that’s about my limit; I have no real idea how they operate IRL.
I ended up carefully edging my way past them and gave them as much space as I possibly could, and got extremely stared at by all of them, who probably thought I was nuts.
Just out of curiosity - how careful did I need to be? Can you just like walk through the middle of them, or would that be asking for trouble?
If I have to give only a binary yes/no answer, the answer is no. In reality, there are lots of variables ranging from breed, pen size, herd makeup, season, socialization, hunger, weather, and even more that would factor in. That’s without considering the other variable of you as a person they don’t know.
Edit: that’s not even to say the cattle or a bovine would intentionally hurt you. They’re big, sometimes clumsy, have horns, etc. I follow some youtubers who have been raising cattle anywhere from a couple years to most of their lives and they still are very careful in a lot of their movements and interactions.