I have known some farmers that step outside and yell “Come boss” at milking time and the cows would gather around the door and enter the barn, knowing their stalls. As a kid, I remember my dad doing this, but I remember hearing him yell it as a contraction, “c’baas.” In later years, simply opening the door got them to come in. Prior to that, the door may* have just been left open all day for them to wander in and out as desired. I recall stories of my dad’s youth when a dog would herd them in. I also recall dogs being shot when stray dogs would form a pack and chase cows, usually at night. Farmers didn’t want injured cows, so they would shoot at stray dogs. We had one neighbor who let everyone know that it was okay to shoot his dog if it chased their cows. About a week later, his friend called him up to let him know that he shot his dog. People from the city drop off unwanted dogs often, probably not aware of the risks.
*I honestly don’t recall the details of barn door practices back then because I was a very young child in the “c’baas” days.
What do I care what the cow heard? I didn’t say anything wrong!
Equally sorry.
But, seriously, you don’t need to worry about when the cows come home, because when they do, they can milk themselves, thanks to Voluntary Milking Systems. Seriously. The cows decide when they need to be milked!
If you feed your cows a favorite food (even a small amount) when they arrive at the barn, and open the gate at the same solar mean times every day, most of the cows will be there waiting for the gate to open. Then, you train your dog to go out and harass, but not hurt cows if they are away from the gate twenty minutes after you want them there. It’s not instinct, it’s behavioral conditioning. The younger cows will learn by following the older cows, and the younger dogs will do the same. Works on chickens too, but you need really smart dogs in that case. (A chicken is just too tasty!)
That is the wackiest thing I’ve seen in a long time! Can’t wait to show the movie to my dad, who grew up on a farm in the thirties and forties. “Cow managment software.” Ha!
I have a friend who writes this sort of stuff. In particular, they were working on a cow weighbridge, based on rfid eartags to monitor the weight of the cows. These were outdoor grass-grazing cows, but they had thought about individual feeding systems based on the rfid tags for grain-fed cows.
And I knew a guy who worked on robotic milking equipment. Imagine being the machine-vision programmer for that - “I write software to identify individual tits”.
I worked in cow-town central, NZ. I also knew a mathematician who’s job was to model a cow. As in validate the inputs and outputs, and produce a set of equations to feed into the sort of software discussed above. His biggest problem - measuring the methane output of cows based on their inputs. Duct tape and plastic bags, maybe. And NO SMOKING. :smack:
Well, I laughed! I read this joke as a kid and loved it. I still use it so imagine my surprise when Tim Powers’ last book, “Three Days to Never” used it as a theme.
No cows tho’.
But I did make a special side trip when I visited the University of Tennessee at Martin to see the cow with the window in it’s stomach. Why I was expecting a sill and drapes I’ll never know . . .
This reminds me of the story about the cattle buyer that was wondering through the contryside buying the odd cow or two from the locals when a farmer offered to sell him a young breeding age cow because, “She’s sucking on one of my cows that due to have another calf soon and I need to get rid of her.”
So, the broker negotiates a price and then herds her back to a small pasture next to his house. A few days later, someone rides up to his house and yells, “Hey, come out here. You’ve got to see this.”
This new cow was flexible enough that she could bend around and suck her own teats. The broker got angry and rode back to the farmer’s house and demanded his money back.
The farmer’s response was, “I said she was sucking on one of my cows. Now she’s sucking on one of your cows.”
