Link to original article from 1990: Is there really such a thing as cow tipping? - The Straight Dope
I think this one’s definitely false.
Seems to me that if it truly were possible, some clown with a camera would’ve put up a video of it on youtube by now. Given the lack of evidence and the tone of the original article, it seems to me that this could be another great example of an often-repeated-but-never-witnessed urban myth.
If the service is reasonable, I always tip the cows.
Bull!
I’m a retired large animal Vet. in ‘England’s green and pleasant land’ (where’ve you heard that phrase recently?). If by ‘cow-tipping’ you mean the use of legerdemain and minimal force to flip over a cow- forget it. It’s possible with a calf of course, but nothing bigger.
Very occasionally it was necessary to turn a cow on its side for various procedures. Hobbling it was one way-pull on the hobbles via a rope, let it fall, jump on its head to keep it down. The other way is heavy sedation-and even then brute force and manpower is required. It helps if the beast has horns to give you better leverage when twisting its head to help it over.
It’s worth remembering that a ruminant on its side will eventually die. In this position it cannot belch up the gas continually produced in the rumen. The rumen swells, presses on the diaphragm and lungs-curtains.
I’ve always felt this was a mis-attributed practical joke: the real idea was to get a bunch of city slickers to run around in a cow pasture at night with their fancy shoes on.
Heard a phrase similar to that while working on something for the Royal Welsh Agricultural Society last week. Sounds like Shakespeare.
A different William actually. William Blake
Of course it’s now known as the hymn Jerusalem, featured prominently during the opening ceremony of the London Olympics.
I’ve long thought that.
Cow-tipping is spoofed in the Pixar movie Cars, by the way, but in that automotive world, the “cows” are actually tractors.
Well you have to try something else when snipe hunting gets old.
Great user name/post topic combination – Lord Mondegreen informing us of song lyrics!
I’ve never quite known what to make of this. I have talked to a guy who claimed to have tipped cows. I grew up on a farm with cows, and the cifficulties with cow-tipping would be large, but not necessarily insurmountable.
Cows do not stand when they are fully asleep, but they do stand around at times at night in a sort of doze, and it might be possible then to sneak up on a cow. I would have no difficulty in walking up to and surprising one of our cows. Would this work for a group of young men that the cows did not know? I don’t know. Certainly it would not if the young men were noisy, as you might expect them to be if, say, they had had a drink or two beforehand.
Cows are large, heavy animals and are not particularly unstable. Two ordinary athletic young men could not tip over a cow. Three or four probably could, but they would have to work quickly; the cow isn’t going to just stand there and let you tip her.
On the whole, I’m influenced by the fact that we don’t have Youtube videos of cow-tipping (at least, I assume we don’t; I haven’t checked) and we don’t have people coming forward to say “I’ve tipped cows!” I think you probably could tip a cow under ideal conditions, but it would be difficult and there doesn’t seem to be much evidence that this is something people actually do (my acquaintance’s claims notwithstanding).
One other thing: According to my source (a guy of unknown veracity whom I talked with once), tipping a cow is a two-step process. First, a couple of people push the cow from one side. This makes the cow brace itself against pressure from that side. Then, the remaining people push the other way. Since the cow is already leaning against the first push, it goes over more easily.
And this factors nicely into the “snipe-hunting/practical joke” angle. If cows really are tippable, the idea would be to get the newb (joke victim) to be the guy doing the initial pushing, so that the cow falls over onto them when the “remaining people” do their bit. 
Not described to me that way, and I see no reason why the initial pushers couldn’t jump out of the way. Presumably they would know that the other push was coming. As a joke, having a cow fall on you would be, shall we say, a significant increase in intensity from stepping in a cowpile, with broken bones and other bad things a not unlikely result.
The suggestion was brought up at times during my young wild nights on the rural back roads. We talked about it, but never did it. It was basically equivalent to “let’s go do something crazy.”
If you talk about tipping cows and you actually get someone to try it, you have won.
Urban legend and udder falsehood.
Nothing to see here. Just moooove along.
Iowan ringing in here.
“Tipping cows” is a euphemism for doing stupid shit, e.g., road tripping. Only city slickers would try something like that, because they’re the type who get a kick out of being mean to animals.
Rural legend maybe?