HOME |
RSS | 
Oh, that guy Banksy. Maybe he's tired of spraying graffiti on walls, so he moved on to cows. Well, at least it's better than Wim Delvoye tattooing pigs! Link - via Waslijn and Skull Swap
How
handsome is Charles, Prince of Wales? So handsome he makes cows cry.
No, really.
That's Prince Charles' new name, as bestowed upon him by the Maasai warriors of Africa:
Charles's new name in the tribe's language is Helper of Cows, which literally translates as ‘the one who makes cows cry’.
According to Matthew Rimba, a village elder and ‘father’ of the Boma, the animals would cry, or call, for their helper because of the support he gives them.
The awarding of the title is considered a great honour as in Maasai culture, the cow is king.
The Maasai believe they own every cow in the world - and had been particularly impressed to hear that Charles keeps over 800 cows on his land in the UK.
Holy calf indeed. These giant sculptures are made by Finnish artist Miina Äkkijyrkkä out of automobile parts. Äkkijyrkkä, who is also a dairy cow advocate, has stated that she “looks at the world from a cow’s point of view.” I wonder if she’s ever thought about converting these sculptures into steerable vehicles.
Link -via Laughing Squid
(Image credit: Juha Metso)
A young bull was spotted in South Ayrshire, Scotland in a delicate situation. His head was wedged into a ladder. Passers-by called the SPCA to report the problem. The farmer who owns the animal was contacted and said he had no idea how that happened. It wasn’t even his ladder!
Scottish SPCA Inspector Kerry Kirkpatrick contacted the farmer after being alerted to the cow’s plight.
He said: “When the job came through my first thought was, this is a wind up, but I arrived at the field to find the cow looking confused but surprisingly calm despite having his head wedged tightly in between the rungs of the ladder.
“The farmer’s family rounded up the whole herd into a holding pen and we managed to gently pull the ladder off the cow’s head.
Link -via Fortean Times
A farmer in south Armagh, Northen Ireland, thought someone was trying to steal his cattle, as they were found outside several times after being locked in the barn for the night. When a camera was installed in the barn, the culprit was found. It was Daisy, the smartest of the cows. Link -via Arbroath
Joe Diffie had a song called “Third Rock from the Sun” about an unbelievable chain of events. A traffic accident in New Zealand is almost as strange. A motorist was traveling near the town of Kaponga Friday night when he hit a cow, killing it.
The animal was thrown over the top of the car, peeling back the bonnet and shattering the windscreen. The car smashed into a pole which caused a power surge to race along the wires into the farmer’s house.
The same surge blew up the cowshed meter board and set it on fire. However, it melted a water line directly above which extinguished the blaze.
The driver was not seriously injured. Link -via Fark
Comments Off
You Tube Link
What happens when your parents won’t buy you a pony? If you are really resourceful you take one of the family farm animals and train it to act like a horse. Meet Luna the cow who acts like a horse.
Forget Jaws! The real danger is far closer to home: statistics reveal that more Americans are killed each year by something far more dangerous …. the cow.
The next time you’re nervously scanning the surface of the sea for a dorsal fin, remember one thing: Statistically speaking, you are much more likely to be killed by a cow than a shark.
Between 2003 and 2008, 108 people died from cattle-induced injuries across the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s 27 times the whopping four people killed in shark attacks in the United States during the same time period, according to the International Shark Attack File. Nearly all those cow-related fatalities were caused by blunt force trauma to the head or chest; a third of the victims were working in enclosed spaces with cattle.
While the ongoing battle between cow and man is overwhelmingly one-sided (and delicious), the people who work closely with cattle take major risks. "I’ve been kicked, I’ve been pushed, I’ve been charged," says 22-year-old Margaret Dunn, a graduate research assistant studying animal science at Iowa State University. "Like what they say about dogs, they can smell fear."
Link – via We Interrupt
Remember the story about the 200 cows that dropped dead in the middle of Wisconsin? Well, you can blame the "apocowlypse" to this unlikely culprit: sweet potato.
Investigators from the University of Wisconsin have determined that the animals were killed by a poison found in spoiled sweet potatoes that were part of the cattle’s feed.
"It is likely that a mycotoxin from moldy sweet potato was a major factor in the disease and deaths of these steers," said Peter Vanderloo, associate director of the Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory.
First it was the birds, then some fish. Now, 200 dead cows turned up last week in Illinois. Is the Apocowlypse coming?
The 200 dead cattle were discovered on a farm field on 4th Street in Amherst. Sunday, the bodies were taken out in semi-loads to be disposed of.
The farm’s veterinarian says preliminary results show the animals died of acute interstitial pneumonia, also known as AIP. Samples from the dead animals were sent to Madison for testing.
The vet says the steers began to die early last week, with the last dying Saturday. The animals started showing symptoms of illness and then died within 12 hours. The vet says animals didn’t respond to treatment.
The experts claimed it was Acute Interstitial Pneumonia, but we all know that it’s just code word for military death ray.
Link – via Huffington Post
Who says that genetic manipulation is all about the creation of horrific mutants and such? Why, what can be used for evil can also be used for cuteness. Behold, the miniature Panda Cow:
The miniature panda cow is the result of 44 years of genetic manipulation by Richard Gradwohl, a farmer in Covington, Wash., about 20 miles southeast of Seattle.
A white belt encircling the animal’s midsection, and the white face with black ovals around the eyes, give the cow an appearance that is very much panda-like.
And if you wonder why people breed mini cows, the answer is that they’re used as pets.
Tom Hacker of Reporter-Herald has the story: Link (Photo: Tom Hacker/Reporter-Herald) – via Arbroath (who has a video clip of the mini panda cow)
A tiny British cow has been named the world’s smallest cow by the Guinness Book of World records. The cow lives in West Yorkshire, England and measures just 33 inches tall.
The 11-year-old cow is named Swallow and her owner, Caroline Ryder, said she would spend Thursday either grazing with her herd or listening to BBC radio in her cowshed.
Swallow is a Dexter cow, a breed known for its diminutive stature, but is small even by Dexter standards.
She already has nine regular-sized calves and is pregnant with her 10th. Guinness said her youngest calf has already grown larger than she is.
In the photo, Swallow is the little black object to the right of a normal size bull. Link -via Fark
If you want thick and beautiful lawn, don’t reach for the fertilizer – go to the fridge and get some milk instead!
David Wetzel, a former steel executive, told a conference of farmers in Linn that when he started a second career as a dairy farmer in 2002, he doused parts of his 320-acre farm with skim milk, which was a byproduct of his farm’s specialty butters and cheeses.
He soon discovered that his cattle preferred those fields. He called in an expert to figure out what was going on, and the result was a bit staggering: His milk-fed land yielded 1,100 more pounds of grass per acre than untreated land. [...]
Wetzel said he began making butters and cheeses that required only the fats from the milk that his cows produced, which left behind large quantities of skim milk as a waste product. To dispose of it, he would drive up and down a portion of his pasture with milk pouring out of a tank. He dumped up to 600 gallons of skim milk on the field every other day.
"I came from a background that has nothing to do with farming," Wetzel said. "So I don’t know the do’s and don’ts. I don’t have any relatives that would say, ‘You can’t do that.’ So I just kind of did what felt right."
One day, he noticed that his cows favored that patch of field. The grass felt more supple and looked healthier and more dense in that area.
A cow apparently wandered into a culvert in Kaysville, Utah and squeezed through the town’s storm drain system until she became stuck where the drain narrowed just enough. Animal Control officers officers were alerted when a couple heard noises and found a full-grown cow in a street drain.
Holden Holt and his wife told FOX 13 they found the cow stuck the drain while walking Thursday morning.
“We heard a noise in the storm drain and my wife went over and looked and there was a head with some eyes poking out. It was a little frightening,” Holt said.
Animal Control staff tried in vain to chase the cow out the way she came in. Finally a crew had to dig up part of the street, and a tractor was used to pulled the cow out. Officers said she was underground for at least five days. The cow, covered with bruises and scratches, was returned to the farm and reunited with her calf. Link -via Fortean Times
See it? Made by London creative brand agency Cow – via Cakehead Loves Evil
Veterinarians have no choice when they need to check a cow for pregnancy or infection. The standard procedure is to stick your arm up the cow’s rectum. The technique is difficult to teach to veterinary students because, well, it’s dark in there.
That’s why veterinarian and computer scientist Sarah Baillie has created the “Haptic Cow,” a virtual, touch-feedback device that mimics the feeling of real bovine anatomy, placed inside a fiberglass model of a cow’s rear end.
“With this technology, students can feel something that feels like the inside of a real cow, but I or another instructor can be following their movements on a monitor,” said Baillie, who teaches at the Royal Veterinary College in London. “This means we can say, ‘Come back a bit or go left a bit.’ It actually means you can direct them.”
Not only can professors follow a student’s exact movements and critique the technique, but they can also keep track of how much force is being applied. If a fledgling vet gets too rough and exceeds the number of Newtons considered safe by experienced vets, virtual Bessie will belt out a cautionary “Moo-oo!”
(image credit: Sarah Baillie/Royal Veterinary College)
Nancy Dickenson of Ocate, New Mexico and her stepdaughter Martha found an 11-month-old calf on a neighbor’s ranch that was suffering from severe frostbite. The black angus heifer had lost the use of her back legs and hooves. What to do? Obviously, the answer is to give her prosthetic legs!
The Dickensons have rescued dozens of animals and wanted to give Meadow a chance to walk normally again. They located the calf’s owner and bought Meadow, and convinced veterinarians and students at Colorado State University to help her.
Doctors amputated a portion of Meadow’s hind legs in August and fitted her with the prosthetics, a rare procedure done on livestock typically destined for the food supply. Meadow is believed to be the first bovine calf fitted with double prosthetics, Colorado State veterinarian Dr. Robert Callan said. He based his claim on discussions with other veterinarian clinics and schools.
Nancy Dickenson said the family decided to pay what she expects will cost “thousands of dollars” for the procedures because Meadow has become another family pet.
Meadow is no longer in any danger of becoming beef. Link -via Fark
(image credit: Colorado State University)
Angry farmers took to the streets to protest low food prices in Brussels, Belgium. They dumped milk into the streets and threw eggs. One pictures shows a farmer aiming streams of milk directly from a cow’s udder onto policemen.
The protest organizers, the European Milk Board, said that more than 1,000 tractors and 5,000 people took part on behalf of “more than 80,000 dairy farmers”.
The group said milk prices are below 75 percent of production costs. Another European farm union organization, Copa-Cogeca, says that milk prices have plummeted 30 percent in a year and that dairy producers will lose up to 14 billion euros before the end of the year if nothing is done.
See the awesome full version of this cropped picture at the New York Times. Link -via Buzzfeed
(image credit: Georges Gobet/Agence France-Presse)
Poor Lulu. When the bovine miscowculated the steepness of the pathway near the German castle of Neuschwanstein in Bavaria, she was stuck down in the valley with moo way back up to the farm. What to do?
Help came in the form of the local mountain rescue who hitched the hapless heifers one by one to the local cable-car used by hikers for a free ride home.
For the mountain rescuers, it was all in day’s work.
‘It happens quite a lot,’ said one, ‘but usually we end up airlifting the cows back home via helicopter.
‘It just so happened this trio ended up stuck near the cable car station so we were able to use the cable car. They were quite cool about it.’
After some fresh grass and a good milking, the cows were settled in their stall for the evening with the high-life behind them for good.
Allan Hall of the Daily Mail got the story and the super-sized pic: Link
A seven-legged calf was born in Steamboat Springs, Colorado on Thursday.
Veterinarian Lee Meyring delivered the animal and called its condition a birth anomaly.
“I’ve been in practice for 14 years, and I’ve only seen one other calf with a fifth leg,” Meyring said. “And so this one’s definitely the most bizarre I’ve seen. It’s just a twinning process that had an incomplete splitting of the embryo, then the fetus.”
The mother seemed to be OK, Lynn said. The calf lived only 10 minutes, she said. One of the seven legs had two hooves. The calf had two spines but just one head. The veterinarians don’t plan to examine its organs.
They have, however, contacted Ripley’s Believe It Or Not. Warning: article contains a picture of the dead calf. Link -via Unique Daily
(image credit: Matt Stensland)
The Cairns Post reported this incredible story of a cow that is believed to have survived a lightning strike:
In a moo-ving experience, this cow is believed to have been struck by lightning and somehow survived.
This is no mad cow story. It’s entirely feasible, according to JCU Professor of Geo-Sciences, Jon Nott.
"Cows are susceptible to lightning strikes because of both sets of legs being on the ground, and they’re eating grass from where electricity is conducted from the strike so it is possible it happened but, more often than not, cows die from it," Prof Nott said.
Link – via Neatorama Forum, posted by liviaL
