I cannot, for the life of me, understand how you control the cattle in this game. I know it's a newbie question but the NPCs and manual have been useless on this regard.
Your time and honesty is appreciated.

Well... talk about not getting the obvious. Many thanks.

use liberal use of the ability to stop the herd by going up to them.

Use spacebar to wait so that cattle moves in a straight line without reorienting themselves when you constantly move around.

or use TweakMB to make it so cattle follow the player directly

http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,101731.0.html

it's not as bad as it at first seems, and i never have too much trouble with the cattle quest anymore.

That's a good point! Beef I buy usually spoils before I can sell it off. It's too bad I find the herding thing so tedious :) I wish it was just abstracted by being slightly slower and maybe mitigated by an animal tending skill.

It truly is and that's why I usually only buy cattle in villages near a city (and never pay more than 45 denars a head).
By the way, in the Kingdom of Rhodocks you can get around 400 denars per fresh beef!

Wrong topic.

Cash cows. *snickers* Anyway, I'm guessing it makes sense to buy as close to the quest-giver's village as possible (or just get the mod mentioned in this thread. Hello, new game.)