Cow magnets

[bungeejumper]

Gosh, you learn something new every day. We've been living with dairy cows all around us for the last 30 years, and I never knew that every cow carries a magnet in its first stomach, just to collect all the screws and nails and bits of old barbed wire that form part of its fairly indiscriminating natural diet. Without which, the vet would spend a lot more time at the farm, and he'd be driving a bigger (and newer) 4x4.

These magnets are about three inches long, and apparently they're administered to calves when they're six months old. They don't normally come out till the slaughterhouse removes them. If that sounds barbaric, the consequences of letting the cows rip their insides about are somewhat worse. The cow's heart is perilously close to its stomachs, and that's not where you want a three inch nail

Nor are they a new idea. They were apparently invented by the Japanese, some time in the 1930s, although the latest types date from the 1970s, and the very latest involve the kinds of rare earth super-magnets that can be so dangerous for children.

Cows don't always swallow iron objects by accident, apparently. They will happily chomp a piece of iron railing, or something that's fallen off a tractor, because the coolness and the hardness answer some deep psychological need in them. (They also have some kind of a pleasure sensor near their mouths that releases endorphins.) "Hardware disease" (yes, it's really called that) is a serious problem that requires such a remarkable remedy. As Michael Caine would have said, not a lot of people know that.

(Sings:) "Oh show me a home where the buffalo roam...." (And I'll show you a very messy carpet.) Aye thang yew.

BJ

[servodude]

Magnets? Just wait till you find out that they can do on a farm with a rubber band

Cows these days are veritable test grounds for interesting (and weird tech)
They make for pretty neat mobile mesh networks and I've seen sensors powered by the bobbing action
The sensors they put in the stomach are amazingly resilient but the fistula viewing windows really give me the boak

-sd

[bungeejumper]

Magnets? Just wait till you find out that they can do on a farm with a rubber band

Oh, indeed. And there's an old trick for safely handling a bull with just a piece of string, which is still in use in many parts of the world.

You tie the string loosely around everything that the bull holds dear , and then loop it back between its legs, over its rump, forward along its back, and then - you devious swine, you - you tie it to the animal's horns.

The thing is, when a bull gets annoyed, the first thing it does is to lower its head. With the string in place, it's only going to try that once.

BJ

[sg31]

Oh, indeed. And there's an old trick for safely handling a bull with just a piece of string, which is still in use in many parts of the world.

You tie the string loosely around everything that the bull holds dear , and then loop it back between its legs, over its rump, forward along its back, and then - you devious swine, you - you tie it to the animal's horns.

The thing is, when a bull gets annoyed, the first thing it does is to lower its head. With the string in place, it's only going to try that once.

BJ

Sounds like a great idea but I'll let you tie the string round the bulls prized equipment.

[Rhyd6]

With the price of milk and butter starting to escalate I've been trying to persuade OH that we really need a house cow. Needless to say I will NOT be mentioning this article to him.

R6

[bungeejumper]

Maybe try a goat? A friend used to run a few in a smallholding in Powys, and although they don't deliver quite the same stuff as bovines, they're a lot less work.

Mind you, they'll murder all your best trees and plants if you let them. And a neighbour's goat used to climb up onto a corrugated iron roof, where it would clatter about all afternoon, just defying you to go up there and stop it. Why, I daresay it was also munching on the steel bolts that held the roof together?

BJ

[Rhyd6]

BJ, when my grandparents had the farm they had goats, I hated the flippin' things as they used to chase my cousin and I and try to bite us. The only one who could milk them was my Nana. A nice Jersey or Guernsey cow on the other hand should be able to supply enough milk for us and the rest of the family, and just think of that gorgeous cream. It's very soothing milking a cow and other than having to teach someone else how to milk by hand for when we go on holiday it should be a sound investment. OH is not keen, but then again he was born and bred within the sounds of Heathrow so hasn't a lot of experience with cows. He definitely prefers his milk from a plastic container.

R6

[bungeejumper]

OH is not keen, but then again he was born and bred within the sounds of Heathrow so hasn't a lot of experience with cows. He definitely prefers his milk from a plastic container.

It's more than 40 years since I bailed out of the teaching profession, but I well remember a classroom discussion in which 30 Brummie teenagers were overwhelmingly unconvinced by the idea that milk came from a cow, and overwhelmingly sure that it came from "a milk factory". Upon being shown a bit of film on the subject, half the class swore that they'd never drink milk again, now that they knew it came "from between a cow's legs."

Happy days. I took some of them out on a trip in the school bus, and when we got to Spaghetti Junction it transpired that half of them had never been that far out of the city in their lives. It was just over ten miles from where they lived.

BJ