Many years ago, I read of a local dairy farm that fed their cows on old newspapers. Since cows can digest cellulose, this would have two benefits:
IANAV, but I doubt that old newsprint has much in the way of nutrition for bovines. And wouldn’t consuming all of that ink cause toxicity at some point (or issues with milk production)? Sounds to me more like a publicity stunt than a sounds livestock management practice…
This was explored back in the 1970’s and again in the early 1990’s. I don’t know what the current status of newsprint-as-cattle-fodder is, but here’s a 1991 newspaper article that discusses it:
Hey, you could have steaks that already have the USDA stamp on 'em!
Yeah, I heard some rumor about molasses and newsprint being used for cow fodder, but this was a pre-internet rumor and I have never tried to confirm it.
Hopefully they don’t anymore. These days news is um hard to digest.
Why would old newspapers be germ free? New papers are relatively germ-free because of the production processes, but old newspapers have been handled, and exposed to environmental germs.
I once fed a cow newspapers printed with India ink.
It mooed Indigo.
Cellulose is very poor nutritionally. While some species can break it down efficiently enough to make eating it pay, it is surprising what others can’t. E.g., deer will starve to death eating just bark and such in the winter as the energy cost to break it down is more than than the energy gained. For large animals, you need a really big gut and a slow digestive system (and associated slow lifestyle). Gorillas and cows for example. It is really a borderline food.
Newspaper would have to be supplemented with stuff with a lot of protein. And that’s expensive.
My ex-dairy farming relatives would also grow wheat and bale wheat straw. It was also basically cellulose and they used it/sold it for stall liner and such. Here is Wikipedia’s take on straw as food. Not that great.
I say just stick to alfalfa.
I want to bear your children.
You just brought back very bad memories of cleaning out the apartment of a tenant who had died. His 10-year-old newspaper collection filled an entire closet and had been inhabited by mice for long enough that we should probably have called in a bio-hazard crew.
And the curry-flavored milk was just a side-bonus.
Don’t they have much-needed roughage and essential inks?
<3
Most newspapers used soy-based inks. Not toxic at all.
Did they eventually feed the article to the cows?
Newspaper would be lacking nitrogen, needed for the synthesis of amino acids and proteins. Microorganisms in the digestive track can to some extent split the cellulose in the paper into its glucose units, which serve as an energy fuel. But without an adequate nitrogen source, they cannot live and grow.