The new energy bill the president signed will extend daylight saving from March into November.
I understand the school groups concern about children waiting for a bus in the dark. What I don’t under stand are the farmers:
How’s that, exactly? Cows don’t wear watches. The length of the day and the time of sunrise and sunset vary throughout the year with or without daylight saving time. I seriously cannot wrap my mind around the problem farmers have with it. Can someone explain it to me?
IANADairy Farmer, but maybe the cows need to be milked every so often. Let’s just say for the sake of argument twelve hours. So, they’re milked at 9:00 AM and 9:00 PM every day. Then daylight savings comes and 9:00 AM is thirteen hours after 9:00 PM instead of twelve.
But then why don’t they just milk the cows every 12 hours? What does that have to do with the time on the clock? And anyway, that arguement is only valid on the first and last day of daylight saving.
It depends uponwhom you talk to. In any case it doesn’t take too long to readjust the milking schedule. As noted in the cite, some people readjust in steps. Of course if you are running a big dairy with lots of cows to milk it’s a temporary nuisance.
For some cows the extra hour can be a literal pain. Big producers are often seen with milk running from their udders if you are even a little late or even sometimes on time.
Again I say, milk the cows every 12 hours. How does daylight savings prevent dairy farmers from milking their cows every 12 hours?
As it was discussed when Cecil addressed DST in his column, part of the problem is that out on the farm the cows, being cows, will produce milk according to their natural cycles, but down in town, the processors/distributors of dairy products want that truck loaded when the clocks say 6:00AM, regardless of whether that’s now an hour before or after sunrise.
Right. If you maintain the 12 hour schedule year around then you are effectively on standard time because a dairy’s whole work schedule is based on milking time. So for a considerable fraction of the year your schedule is our of sync with your suppliers and your customers. Not good.
Most if not all farmers, dairy included, are not concerned with DST but regulate their activities with the daylight available and or the demands of the dairy herd and their schedule.
Congress will likely change the times once they run into the complications of the US being out of sync with the rest of the world.
We’re already out of sync in the spring. Currently we start DST a week after everyone else.
IAADF(I am a dairy farmer) Cows do fine with the time change. We change their milking times often. 1hour early 1 hour late they do fine. The people have a problem way more than the cows.
The very same argument was made when DST was first adopted. The first morning there were reporters all over the country waiting for school buses, so that they could tell about all the problems on shows like The Today Show. Problem was that there were no problems. It died down so fast that it isn’t remembered, except by those that wanted to argue against the new change. Of course, they conveniently forgot the outcome. :rolleyes:
Moving a cow from the front of the barn to the back of the barn (assuming a non-parlor system) will create an hour’s difference in milking time. Switching clocks bothers the cows not at all.
Another point: DST already exists now, so the problem of switching schedules twice a year is not a new one. If you have DST at all, you have that problem; adding more DST just changes the date when you have to do the switch.
I thought Indiana doesn’t do DST because it “confuses the cows”. At least, that’s what I’ve been told, by Indianans (Indianites?). If not, why doesn’t Indiana follow DST?
It fades the curtains too.
The term would be Hoosier. What? You expect us to come up with a name that makes sense?
And another thing - cows are pretty much *born confused. I don’t think it’s possible to confuse them any more than they already naturally are.
They like to pull the legs of city boys. 
It doesn’t. It’s only other cows that effect dairy cows.
(I know, I know. If it’s any consolation, I annoy myself most of the time.)
Exactly. Also, DST itself doesn’t bother the cows, but the farmers who have to adjust how they schedule milking to adapt to DST.