There will be no mercy for a Holstein bull that escaped an appointment with the slaughterhouse in Nova Scotia, only to return the next day in search of food and shelter.

Farmer Jan Speelman, 85, and his family say the bull was originally purchased for meat, and its brief time on the lam has not changed its fate.

Nevertheless, it has generated plenty of attention in the community of Aylesford, N.S., where its antics prompted a major search and a warning from RCMP.

The bull leaped over a 1.5-metre barn gate and ran away from the farm on Sunday afternoon, much to the dismay of Speelman, his children and his grandchildren.

“I said ‘Look!’ and there he was going, just going,” Speelman told CTV Atlantic on Monday. “And I jumped on the tractor and put it in high – and that’s quite fast.”

Speelman and his family set off in pursuit of the bull, but it outpaced them and they ultimately gave up the search as darkness fell.

Police issued a warning that evening, amid fears that the bull might cause problems with traffic.

But it was ultimately hunger and fatigue that brought the animal back to the farm of its own accord the next day.

“During the night the bull changed his mind and made a big circle, across the neighbours’ lawn, and then he comes back,” Speelman said.

One of Speelman’s grandsons followed the bull’s tracks and discovered that it had come back to the barn and fallen asleep in the hay.

“He was just looking for shelter,” Speelman’s daughter, Rose Horsnell, told The Canadian Press.

Speelman says his greatest fear during the bull’s absence was that it might be part of a bull in a china shop-type situation. “That bull, if we had that house door open and he went in the house, he would tear the whole house down,” he said.

He added that he was afraid the animal would terrorize the nearby community of Berwick, “because he won’t stop for nothing.”

The Holstein was originally scheduled for slaughter on Monday. It’s unclear when that will happen, although Horsnell says it’s still in the plans.

With files from CTV Altantic’s Heidi Petracek and The Canadian Press