K
Kilos: a kilo equals two and one-fifth pounds. Bulls are weighed in kilos sometimes after they are killed and before being dressed out and always after they are dressed, drawn, skinned, heads and hoofs and all parts of the meat that has been damaged cut away. This latter state is called en canal and for many years the weight of bulls has been judged when they are in this state. A four-and-a-half-year-old fighting bull should weigh from 295 to 340 kilos en canal depending on their size and type; the present legal minimum that they may weigh is 285 kilos. The dressed-out or en canal weight of a bull is estimated as 52 1/2 per cent of his live weight. Just as in money where the legal unit is the peseta yet sums are never mentioned in conversation in pesetas but rather in reales or 25 centimos, a fourth of a peseta, or in duros, five pesetas, in the weight of bulls for conversational purpose the arroba or weight unit of twenty-five pounds is the measuring unit. A bull is measured or estimated in the number of arrobas of meat he will dress out when butchered. A bull of 26 arrobas will dress out a fraction over 291 kilos. That is as small as bulls should be fought if the animal is to be imposing enough to give real emotion to the corrida. From 26 to 30 arrobas is the ideal weight for fighting bulls that have not been fattened on grain. Each arroba between 24 and 30 means as definite a difference in the hitting power, size, and destructiveness as there is between the different classes in boxing. To make a comparison we may say that in point of strength and destructive power bulls under 24 arrobas are the flyweights, bantamweights, and featherweights. Bulls from 24 to 25 arrobas are lightweights and welterweights. Bulls of 26 arrobas are middleweights and light heavyweights; 27 to 30 arrobas are heavyweights, and all above 30 arrobas approach the Primo Camera class. A cornada or horn wound from a bull that weighs only 24 arrobas will, if it is properly placed, be as fatal as one from a much larger animal. It is a dagger stroke with ordinary force while the bull of 30 arrobas gives the same dagger stroke with the force of a pile-driver. It is a fact, however, that a bull of 24 arrobas is generally immature; little over three years old; and bulls of that age do not know how to use their horns skillfully either offensively or defensively. The ideal bull therefore to provide a sufficiently dangerous enemy for the bullfighters so that the corrida will retain its emotion should be at least four and a half years old in order to be mature, and weigh, when dressed out, an absolute minimum of 25 arrobas. The more arrobas it weighs from 25 up, without losing speed and not simply gaining weight by being fattened, the greater the emotion will be and the more meritorious will be any work accomplished by the man with the animal. To follow bullfights intelligently or understand them thoroughly you must learn to think in arrobas just as in boxing you must class the men in the various formal classifications by weight. At present the bullfight is being killed by unscrupulous bull breeders who sell under-aged, under-weight and under-bred bulls, not testing them sufficiently for bravery, and thus abusing and forfeiting the tolerance that had been extended to their undersized products as long as they were brave and liable to provide a brilliant if unemotional corrida.