From the “A Field Guide To Cows” . I knew this book would pay off. ( Falcon press, isbn: 156044424) A funny and informative book (And very very easy to read) if you’ve ever wondered about our bovine friends.
Sit back and scroll, it’s a bunch of stuff:
A cow has four stomachs. In descending order they are:
- Rumen or paunch - holds thirty gallons.
2)Reticulum or honeycomb;
3)Omasum or manyplies;
4)Abomasum - considered the only true stomach
Beef cattle have a retangular outline.
Dairy cattle have a wedge shaped outline.
(Although I’ll be damned, the drawing in the book looks exactly the same, so they could be messing with my mind.)
The offical term of Mooing is actually called “Lowing”
Per day, a cow spends 6 hours eating and chewing cud.
It takes about 1.5 gallons of milk to make 1 gallon of ice cream.
The total value ( 1994 prices) of the 100,110,000 head in the USA was $63,016,005,000.
Today dairy cows produce double the amount of milk compared to milk production from the 1960’s.
New Zealand is first in butter consumption at 26 albs a year per person. The US is 4.6 lbs.
Cows can hear lower and higher frewquencies better than humans.
A cow can live 25 years
A cows heart beats between 60-70 beats per minute.
A 1,000 pound cow produces on average 10 tons of manure a year.
In an average herd, there is one bull to every 30 cows.
A cow stands up and sits down about 14 times a day. ( Musta been a catholic in a former life.)
An average cow with 2 milkings produces about 10 gallons of milk a day, or 50-60 pounds.
An average cow drinks about 30 gallons of water and eats 95 lbs of feed per day.
There are an estimated 920 different breeds in this world.
In the ancient Celtic religion the cows of different colors held different meanings: A black cow meant death; a brown cow meant fertility; and a white cow symbolized the sun cult.
Cows can detect odors up to five miles away.
(Now here is food for thought) There are approximately 350 squirts in a gallon of milk.
Old cows in India have their own nursing homes.
FAMOUS COWS IN HISTORY:
Achelous - a Greek river god who turned himself into a bull.
Apis or Hap - Bul god of the sun from Memphis, Egypt.
Audhumia - Norse cow god
Babe - Paul Bunyan’s Blue Ox. Seven ax handles fit between her eyes and she weighed more than the combined weight of all the fish that got away.
Beecher Alinda Ellen - The record miling cow giving 5,392.7 gallon in a year. She was a Holstein.
Bevo 1 - The first U of Texas mascot, in 1916. Irate A&M Aggie fans served the steer up at a banquent. Ahhh, now yesterday’s disaster at College Station makes sense.
Black Diamond: a bison and the model for the Buffalo nickel.
Brown Eyes: The Jersey cow in Buster Keaton’s 1925 “Go West” film
Donnetto - 4,300 pound record cow, a Chianna.
Elm Farm Ollie - as noted above.
Enola Gay - the cow of Captian Paul Tibbets mother and the name of the plane of Hiroshima.
Islero - the bull that gored and killed the world’s greatest bullfighter while the matador was giving the final fatal blow to the bull. ( Yeah, bull.)
Norman - Billy Cyrstal’s cow in “City Slickers.”
And for real trivia buffs: You’ll Do, Lobelia - The original model for Elsie the cow, on the milk bottle.
The guy who wrote this book, John Pukite, is coming out with a book on either Pigs or Goats. I can’t wait…
