There is an ongoing bet in my college dormitory as to whether or not a lone milk cow can be seen occasionally prancing across an open field. Many feel that milk cows meander or occasionally hurry, but would never gallop or run in any sort. What’s the deal, settle it for the kids.
I used to live next door to a dairy farm, and I have personally observed dairy cows to run on multiple occasions. In fact, one once paced my car down the road as I was driving past, the way a dog might. It was amusing.
How do you think they get milk shakes? Duh.
They didn’t used to, in the old days. But the new sports bras cut down on their self-conciousness. Many now run. 
Why on earth would anyone ever think that just because a cow gives milk it doesn’t run on occasion? I know this is just anecdotal evidence, but as a kid, we had both a holstein and a jersey cow and they’d both run now and then. One notable occurrence happened when a friend and I decided that since one of the cows was big as a horse, we could ride her as if she were.
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- If a ball of decent size (such as a soccer ball) is tossed in their enclosures, farm animals like cows and horses will occasionally play with it.
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- And they do make toys for horses (and they work with cows too): search online for something called “Horse Balls”.
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Do Highland Cattle count? If a dog gets into a field with them they run off mooing. “Moo, moo” they moo.
I love the word “moo”.
I used to live next to a dairy farm as well. I have seen them trot quite fast but not when they were full of milk. Then they would just walk - but with a certain urgency, like when you’re lining up at the toilets at the football at half time. I’m sure you can relate.
My brother and I had the job of bringing the cows in for milking, and depending on who was pissed at who, one of us would get the cows to chase the other.
Yes, they do; I happened to be crossing a smallish field containing a couple of dozen or so dairy cows once and something (not me) must have happened to set them off running; they charged in a loose group right around the field (and around me) a couple of times; it was not a little scary, as they had a sort of 'don’t-get-in-the-way-‘cause-we-can’t-stop’ sort of mad look in their eyes.
Yes, they run, and I’ve even seen one jump an electric fence that was about 3 feet off the ground.
Growing up we used to shoot them in the udders and the asses with a BB Gun. (Yes, I understand the ridiculous cruelty of this now.)
On one occasion we must have got one in a real sore spot because she just ran away from us until she reached the electric fence and then jumped it.
We had cattle when I was young and today we have friends that have cattle.
Of course they can run.
Would had been bad if we had caught someone shooting our cows with a BB gun.
Knowing my dad he would have probably done the same thing to the stupid kid.
I had a BB gun at a young age but would never dreamed of shooting a cow.
Okay, I have seen milk cows run… but I’ve never seen one jump.
And if I even thought about shooting cows with a BB guns… well, the results wouldn’t have been pretty. Luckily it never occurred to me, although I doubt I’d have done it.
We started out by flinging apples at them. We had a technique where we would get an apple on the end of a sharp stick and we were able to fling the apples at the cows across a long distance.
When we got BB Guns, we had a Daisy that was weak and we’d plug the cows in the side with it. It irritated them more than anything. Eventually we got pump guns and “graduated” to hitting them in the udders.
This wasn’t a regular thing. We did it a couple times and if you hit one, they all would really move away. And then, they started to know us. They would move away when they saw us coming.
I also remember throwing a rock at a cow once and hitting her on the nose. This spaced her out royally. She flipped out and – I’m not making this up – charged at me for a short distance.
I think we knew it irritated them but didn’t really care. I even remember telling my mom about it because we thought it was no big deal. She told us to stop because the cows might give blood. We just outgrew it, I think.
Just anecdotal evidence, but I can certainly attest to the fact that they’ll jump. I worked on a dairy farm for four years or so, and one day, as I was bringing the cows in for milking the following happened.
The cows were divided into three small barns, and I was bringing in the third barn. This entailed taking them along a fairly narrow fenced in corridor. At the end where it opened out into the barnyard, there is a gate that attaches to a large concrete block. The block stands about mid-chest on me, maybe four and a half feet high. Unknown to me, someone had closed the gate at the end so the cows were just getting bunched together. One of them must have been really anxious to be milked, becuase she lept up onto the block. I managed to get through the herd to get the gate opened, but then I just stood there staring at the cow, wondering what I was going to do to get her down. Then, just as easily as she got up, she jumped down. It was the strangest thing I ever saw while working there.
Since the OP’s question has been answered, I’ll continue with the hijack.
I shudder thinking about what my dad would have done to me if I shot one of his cows with my pellet rifle. I would have ran away in fear for my life if I had caused one to jump a fence by shooting it. Of course, I didn’t do anything like this since I could imagine the consequesces.
That said, my dad was the one that taught me how to make a blind in the garage and bait the driveway with bread crumbs to shoot grackles. Grackles can also run, but they mostly fly. :rolleyes:
I knew a guy who was in the US Army. One time he was out on manuvers in an APC, and I guess the crew was bored so they decided to chase a herd of cows. Apparently they ran pretty fast.
My dad would have killed us had we shot one of his girls with a pellet gun.
One the other hand, the pigs he raised for some quick cash were fair game as long as they were out. We never got close enough to them to hurt them though. When we hit one (in the butt), it would jump a little and shake it’s leg.