So, Um, When DO the Cows Come Home?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

So I was getting my hair cut. It needed it.

I go to my neighborhood barber shop (7 bucks, can’t beat it) and take gonzomax along because he needed his locks trimmed. The guy cutting my hair is pretty silent until another worker asks about work on a farm.

Guy: “So, you’ve got cows?”

Old Timer 1: “Yeah we had cows! We had to milk 'em!”

Old Timer 2: “We had to milk the cows two…sometimes three times a day!”

Guy: "How do you know?

OT2: “They tell you.”

Me: “What, they’ve got a more urgent moo or something?”

OT1: “Nah, they get full, then it just comes out. You can tell. Milk that hits the floor means money’s being wasted.”

Guy: “So If I retired and ran a farm, I’d be working harder.”

OT1: “Hell yeah you would! Why, we had to wake up at 5 in the morning and work all damn day for these stupid cows!”

OT2: “You city slickers don’t know what life is like on a farm!”

Guy: “So, what kind of cows are there? How much is a cow?”

OT1: "Well you got your Jerseys and your Holsteins…

OT2: “…and holsteins are better. They give better milk. Sometimes 8 percent milkfat!”

So, silence ensues as Guy drinks in this new information muttering something about how that seems to be a lot for a cow.

Me: “So…um…when exactly DO the cows come home? When they need milking?”

More silence.

OT2: “Well, you just send the dog out to go and get 'em. Why, I had a dog once…wasn’t any good, though…only got two cows, so we shot it.”

(This comment is followed by much blinking on the part of me and dad as we realize what he just said"

OT1: “Yep, the dog’ll just run down there and get the cows and bring them back.”

So that was essentially it. Cows come home when they get a useless dog to bring them home (but only two of them). So I’m incredibly unsatisfied with this answer, thinking I was going to get some precious insight, but noooooooo.

Apparently we’re into shooting dogs.

So…um…when do they come home?

2

Shortly before hell freezes over???

3

Well, Hell, Michigan does freeze over. 'Round these parts, that’s not such a good indicator of a long span of time, yanno?

4

I don’t know much about cows other than that I’ve lived in cattle country. My experience is that the cows just start naturally coming back from wherever that day’s grazing has taken them on the farm/ranch, when the light starts to fail. Seems to be instinct to them, and there’s no need for a dog. Dogs are only used for other things like herding 'em onto trucks, for which I guess Darwinism has not seen fit to make an instinct.

Farmers are also notoriously unsentimental about their working dogs. A dog who doesn’t work properly still needs to be fed, so…

Or have I been whooshed?

5

No! No whooshing! It was almost a genuine question.

So, the sun is the cow equivalent to “come home when the street lights come on”. Gotcha.

6

Which is why farmers tend to not like daylight saving very much. Their clocks get changed, but not the sun (or full udders!) as far as the cows are concerned.

7

Makes sense.

Wait, you’ve got Daylight Savings, too? I wasn’t aware that it extended (at least) to Australia.

8

Um … lessee. How do I break this to you gently? … I’m not in Australia. :stuck_out_tongue: :smiley:

And we’ve had daylight saving, one way ot t’other, since about 1927.

9

So, what, you’re the penal colony for Australia?
d&r

10

:smiley:

I like! :smiley:

11

No, no, no. Penal! Not Penile!

12

You’d have to ask the Aussie gals shacked up with Kiwi blokes about that, mate! :wink:

13

I’ll ask 'em. Just send the hot ones over and we’ll make them feel all welcome like.

14

There ya go, ladies from the Great Southern Land – the man’s made an offer. You helpin’ them with plane fare too?

15

Maybe they come home when they hear the fat lady singing?

16

Say…what’s that jacket you’re wearing made of?

Hide.

Hide? Why should I hide?

No no…HIDE! The cows outside.

The cows outside? Well, let him in…I ain’t afraid of no cow.

sorry.

17

the cows i knew usually started moseying home around 4pm. tea time.

18

I grew up on a dairy farm,sometimes the cows would come in on their own when it was milking time,sometimes they wouldn’t.If they didn’t come in,I would call for Lucky,our Australian Shepard(he got hit by a car), and the dog and I would walk out to the back 40 and herd the cows.Once in awhile Lucky would have to earn his keep and go after a wayward cow, but usually the cows saw us coming and would start coming up without canine prodding.
Cows do leak if they get to full of milk, but I think the reason they come up at milking time is more for the goodies they get to eat while being milked.

19

My uncle had cows on his farm. It’s true they’d start moseyin’ (cows are the uber experts when it comes to moseyin’) on back home from whatever pasture they happened to be grazing that day late in the afternoon and were always back before dark. Pretty much all of 'em came back everyday. Every once in a while one or two would straggle and need to be herded back. My cousins (and me when I was there) were the cow herders. We got the stragglers started in the right direction and they’d mosey on home too.

I could have been a professional cow herder. All that talent wasted by me goin’ to college and all. :smiley:

20

But at least this way you no longer have to worry about being shot if you only bring back a coupel of cows.