Cows And Fractions

A small U.S. rancher whose business was raising exclusive and expensive brood cows from Switzerland was growing older and decided to have his will drawn-up so that there would be no arguing about his possessions between his three sons when he passed.  In that time it was customary for the elder son to inherit the bulk of the estate with the others getting token amounts of money to help them fend for themselves in the outer world  .  The rancher wanted his small business to continue with the elder son but he did want the other two boys to have some chance at continuing the family ways so he decided to bequeath one-half of the ranch and cows to the eldest son, one-third of same to the middle son and one-ninth to the youngest son who seemed more interested in becoming a vet than he was a farmer.

As it turned out, at the time of his death there were just seventeen of the gorgeous cows on the ranch.  So although the ranch was easy enough to settle – with the younger son quite willing to take one-ninth the acreage where-on to build his clinic and raise his small share of the brood cows and the same being true with the other two sons who decided to go partners on the rest of the ranch with their income being determined by the number of cows they each owned -  it turned out that they could not agree on how to share up the animals.

The eldest was to get one-half of seventeen cows, i.e. eight and one-half cows, the second one-third, i.e. five and two-third cows, and with the youngest getting one-ninth, i.e. one and eight-ninth cows.   Don’t forget that these were really expensive cows so there was not even a chance of killing them for beef and sharing the money from the beef sales as this would be a mere fraction of their worth as brood animals.  After several days of wrangling and arguing the three normally friendly brothers were starting to become angry with one another, with shouting going back and forth quite loudly. Loudly enough to raise the ear of their adjoining neighbor who by happenstance raised the same breed of cows.  He moseyed over to their ranch to see what was happening and to see if he might be able to keep them on friendly terms.

When he managed to calm them down a little and explain things to him, he grinned at them and said “Hold on boys – just give me a minute to run over to my place.  I will be right back and then we will settle this quickly AND to everyone’s satisfaction”.   They looked sheepishly at one another, after all they were good friends as well as brothers, and nodded their heads ok.

To their surprise he came back leading one of his best cows.  “Here”, he said, “put this girl in with your herd and try divvying them up again”.  The brothers looked at him like he was half crazy, then shrugged their shoulders and said ok. 

Sure enough it was slick as wax now that there were eighteen cows.  The elder brother took half the cows, nine to be exact.  Then the middle boy took his one third, six sturdy and handsome beasts.  Finally the youngest son took his one ninth share, two cows – leaving one remaining cow (9+6+2=17, right) the friendly neighbor’s cow in fact, which he led by the halter back to his ranch.