Udderly Hands On - cows as a visitor attraction

Don't know what my grandmother would've made of it as she worked as a dairy maid but I think it's good idea that cows can be seen as visitor attractions.

Park Hall Countryside Experience, near Oswestry in England allow visitors to have a go at hand milking a cow. They also have a  high-tech milking parlour which demonstrates new farming practices and shows the origins of the milk which most of us see only on the supermarket shelf. 

And Stockley Farm Park, Arley, Northwich, Cheshire allow visitors to watch the cows being milked from the viewing gallery every afternoon from 3.30pm onwards.

Farmland Fun in Paradise, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. offer to let visitors milk a cow, feed a calf, collect eggs, take a guided tour of the farm and interact with rabbits, goats, chickens, ducks, cows, and sheep; learn how cows turn feed into milk, why their cows wear earrings, and tour their large barn.

It's Party Time in Bavaria!

Bavarian villagers are celebrating the return of their cows from the mountains with folk dancing and other customs including dressing the lead cow with a garland of flowers, if all the animals survived the summer.

The cattle herders have to float the stock across the Koenigsee Lake because it is the only way to bring the cattle home to their owners a tradition known in German as Viehscheid.

From time immemorial, at about the middle of June every year as soon as the Allgäu Alpine pastures are snow free, the young cattle have been driven up to the mountain meadows.

The tradition of driving cattle up to the mountain pastures is carried out for several very good reasons. Firstly, there are just not enough meadows down in the valley to provide for all the cattle especially as hay also has to be harvested for the long winter months to come. But that’s not the only reason. Spending the summer months higher up the mountains makes the animals more hardy as well as the fact that the sweet grass and mountain herbs taste good and are very healthy. No wonder that the Allgäu milk products are renowned for their quality.

You can head over to http://www.allgaeu-viehscheid.de/ where you can buy a Kuh Kalendar

Advertising cows

 

I Like the way you Moo - Coleman's Gravy dancing bull

Butter made by cows since 1886 and some time before

British Beef

Cow & Gate are makers of baby milk formula and they have a free soft toy cow (see picture below) to give away to all members (UK) click here

Game cows - bury the bones please

Minecraft cow

Cows take part in online games and some are prettier than others (as in real life)  Above is the fugly Minecraft cow.  Minecraft allow players to build constructions out of textured cubes in a 3D world. Other activities in the game include exploration, gathering resources, crafting, and combat.

The poor Minecraft cow is exploited for it's resources.  When killed, a cow drops 0-2 pieces of leather, as well as 0 - 3 raw beef. If the cow dies by fire, steak will be dropped instead of beef. Leather is used to craft the first tier of armour. Cows are necessary to make cake!!. A cow can be milked by right clicking the cow with an empty bucket Due to the fact that cows can be bred an unlimited number of times using renewable wheat , all of the cow's products are renewable. 

Next the Runescape cow - a far friendlier looking beast

Runescape cow

A Runescape cow is a monster new players may find useful to train on. They are one of the first monsters new players can encounter around the  town of Lumbridge. Cows will grant 7 experience points when killed in combat.

When a cow dies, it drops raw beef  a cowhide (which players can sell for profit) and bones (which players can bury for Prayer experience).

I now have to shamefully admit that I have played Runescape and that I have kicked a cow to death (in the game), but I did bury the bones and say a prayer for it's soul (and my own too)

20 things you didnt know about cows

Maisie - (c) 2013 Yellow Dexter Ltd

This is a post I found on Mother Earth website 

1. Domestic cows are descendants of wild oxen known as aurochs, and they were first domesticated in southeast Turkey around 10,500 years ago. From the original 80 progenitors, an estimated 1.3 billion cattle exist today.

 

2. When scientists mapped out the bovine genome in 2009, they discovered that cattle have about 22,000 genes; 80 percent of their genes are shared with humans.

 

3. The word “cattle” comes from the Old French “chatel,” as in chattel, meaning property. In many parts of the world, cattle remain an indicator of economic wealth.

 

4. Female cattle are called cows; male cattle are called bulls. Generally in the English language we have a single word that we can use to refer to both the male or female of a species — like cat or dog. But cows are unique in that we don’t have a singular noun that refers equally to an adult cow or a bull; we just have cattle, which is plural. That said, in colloquial usage cattle are often referred to as cows, like in some of the references here.

 

5. Cows spend 10 to 12 hours a day lying down.

 

6. The average sleep time of a domestic cow is about four hours a day; unlike horses, they don’t sleep standing up.

 

7. Drunken rural carousers swear by their stories of tipping over cows in the middle of the night, but most experts assert that there's more urban myth going on than actual tipping. A 2005 study at the University of British Columbia concluded that tipping a cow would require an exertion of 2,910 newtons of force; meaning that a 4’7” cow pushed at an angle of 23.4 degrees relative to the ground would require the equivalent strength of 4.43 people to tip the poor thing over.

 

8. A dairy cow that is milking consumes around 100 pounds of feed each day.

 

9. When cows digest food, fermentation results in a large amount of methane; cattle produce 250 to 500 liters (and by some accounts, up to 1,000 liters) of the gas per day.

 

10. According to Stanford University, livestock account for anywhere between 18 and 51 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions measured in CO2 equivalent.

 

11. There are about 350 udder squirts in a gallon of milk.

 

12. Researchers have found that if you name a cow and treat her as an individual, she will produce almost 500 more pints of milk a year.

 

13. A German study found that cows tend to face either magnetic north or south when grazing or resting, regardless of the sun’s position or the wind’s direction. The study’s author says that magnetic compass orientation has been relatively under-studied in mammals; why cows use it remains a mystery.

 

14. Cattle have almost 300 degrees of vision, with blind spots only right in front of and behind them.

 

15. Cows have favorite friends and become stressed when they are separated. In a study measuring isolation, heart rates and cortisol levels, researcher Krista McLennan concluded that, "When heifers have their preferred partner with them, their stress levels in terms of their heart rates are reduced compared with if they were with a random individual."

 

16. Cattle are unable to see the color red; the red flags used by matadors only catch a bull’s attention because of the movement.

 

17. Cows can have regional accents. After a group of dairy farmers noticed their cows had different moos, language specialists determined that, "In small populations such as herds you would encounter identifiable dialectical variations which are most affected by the immediate peer group."

 

18. Cows have an excellent sense of smell and can detect odors up to six miles away.

 

19. Hindu nations believe that cows are holy and there are strict laws to protect them. The toughest come from the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, where anyone convicted of killing a cow or taking it somewhere to be killed can be jailed for up to seven years.

 

20. The world’s most expensive cow, Missy, brought in $1.2 million at the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair in 2009.

The Pied Piper of Belgium

A Belgian sax player is the "Pied Piper" of cows.  Watch as he plays his sax and the cows come running to him.

I think he should have played Doris Day's "Moove over darling",  U2's "With or Without Moo" or  that old classic sung by Andy Williams and Frank Sinatra  "Moo River".

Just to remind you it goes like this...


Moo river, wider than a mile
I'm milking you in style some day
Oh, cream maker, you heart breaker
Wherever you're going, I'm going your way

Two dexters, off to see the world
There's such a lot of world to see
We're after the same rainbow's end, waiting, round the bend
My Huckleberry Friend, Moo River, and me

Moo river, wider than a mile
I'm milking you in style some day
Oh, cream maker, you heart breaker
Wherever you're going, I'm going your way

Two dexters, off to see the world
There's such a lot of world to see
We're after that same rainbow's end, waiting, round the bend
My Huckleberry Friend, Moo River, and me

Frankie goes for Assessment

Hit me,  hit me with those laser beams - (c) 2013 Yellow Dexter Ltd

CBC reports that a farmer who claimed his cows had been killed by lasers and heat rays, has been sent for psychiatric assessment.

Werner Bock is facing two counts of failing to provide proper food and water to his animals during the spring of 2011.
Provincial court Judge Troy Sweet was expected to render a decision in the case on Thursday.
Instead, the judge said he wanted Bock to see a psychiatrist first.
Bock, who contends the case against him is a conspiracy by the government, veterinarians, the RCMP and the CBC, refused.
He said a psychiatrist had previously found him to be suffering from paranoia and he doesn't trust them.
The judge repeatedly explained he felt it would be in Bock's best interest and that he didn't have a choice in the matter.
If Bock wouldn't go willingly, he said he would have to have him arrested.
Bock was then led away in handcuffs by the sheriff's deputies.
Crown witnesses testified about a pile of carcasses under hay bales, a dead cow in a brook and others buried in the woods.
Bock, acting in his own defence, called the charges against him a "pack of lies." He says the Crown's case was based on perjury and false evidence.
He says nobody wants to investigate the real reason for his dying cows. He says someone is killing them with lasers and heat rays.
Bock is scheduled to return to court on Monday.

Give that cow a huge Cuban cigar!

A Cuban dairy farmer says one of his cows has given birth to four healthy calves, a highly rare occurrence.

Veterinarian Andres Rodriguez runs state-owned dairy No. 128 in Picadura, about 44 miles (70 kilometers) east of Havana.http://www.nanaimodailynews.com/news/dairy-farmer-cow-gives-birth-to-rare-live-quadruplet-calves-in-cuban-town-1.632312

He says he was shocked when he went to a help a 3-year-old cow named Aleli give birth Aug. 29. She'd already had one calf when he got to her. Then another was born. And another, and another.

Three are male, and one a hermaphrodite.

According to U.S. and European experts, the odds of delivering live quadruplet calves are one in 11 million births. If all are the same gender, the odds rise to one in 179 million. No numbers could be found for a quad birth including a hermaphrodite.

Bear Necessities

My apologies for the huge gap (some weeks) in posting but I have taken the bull by horns and been decorating!

Now Alice (below) would tell you that is prudent to make sure you have bare necessities when out hunting.  Guns? check! Bullets? check!  Spectacles ?  hmm ...

Alice - (c) 2013 Yellow Dexter Ltd

Maybe this group of Swedish hunters, should've gone to Specsavers.

A team of Swedish hunters who spent the night gripped by fear after seeing shadows they thought were a gang of menacing bears, woke to find nothing more than three runaway Norwegian cows. 

The hunters radioed for help shortly after they were dropped off by helicopter at dusk in the mountainous woods of Norbotten, claiming to be under threat from some of the roughly 900 brown known to lurk in the region. 

But as the evening light was dwindling fast, the helicopter pilot explained he wouldn't be able to fly back to rescue the hunters until the next day.

"I was on another assignment and we don't fly in the dark so they had to sit in a little shelter. It's like a little box," pilot Johan Nordlund told the paper.

So the hunters spent the night cowering in their shelter, waiting for the bears to strike. 

But when they peered out from their shelter in the morning, they found themselves face to face, not with a pack of ravenous bears, but with three harmless cows that had apparently lost their way.

"I asked, 'Are you guys drunk or what?'" Nordlund, the helicopter pilot, told Aftonbladet, adding that he thought the hunters were joking when they radioed back to call off the rescue operation.

As the nearest Swedish cattle farm is more than 100 kilometres away, it's likely the wayward cows hail from Norway, according to the paper.

Nordlund, who has seen the bovines on flights in the area in the ensuing days, last saw the visiting cows heading into a nearby national park.

"Maybe that's what they came over to see," he quipped. 

He warned that the cows' owner must be found and the livestock returned before winter's chill takes hold in the region.

"They'll die when winter comes," he told Aftonbladet.

How many cows does it take to make a Zeppelin?

Norah - (c) Yellow Dexter 2013

The answer is 250,000.  The Daily Mail tells us that the Germans were banned from eating sausages to help with the First World War effort..

Zeppelin airships were a key weapon for the Central Powers during the 1914 to 1918 war but production placed a huge demand on cow guts, used to make gas holding cells.

It took more than 250,000 cows to make a single airship and the animals’ intestines became so precious that making the popular bratwurst and other sausages was temporarily made illegal in areas under German control.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Cows - "We have the power"

Jemima - (c) Yellow Dexter Ltd 2013

Jemima states "It's udder nonsense" after reports that Scottish Power are claiming that cows were responsible for power cuts in Angelsey, Wales.

Homes in Llanddona have been suffering intermittent problems affecting supply for a few seconds at a time.

Councillor Carwyn Jones said the long-running cuts were enough to knock out computers and other equipment.

ScottishPower said a broken support for an electricity pole had now been repaired.

"For years now the electricity has been going off for a few seconds then coming back on," said Mr Jones, county councillor for Seiriol ward, which includes Llanddona.

"I contacted ScottishPower and they got back to me saying they thought it was cows scratching against equipment, leading to a temporary cut as the equipment is moved.

"They said they were going to install fencing around the poles to try and sort it out, but as far as I know that has not happened yet."

Cow Takes On a Lion

A report in the Daily Mail today:

Ah well not quite!!

A passenger jet hit a cow when landing and skidded off the runway in Indonesia.

The Lion Air jet carrying 110 passengers and seven crew crashed into one of three cows that were wandering on the runway in Gorontalo, on Sulawesi Island.

No injuries were reported, but the incident forced the cancellation of flights, stranding hundreds of passengers traveling for the Eid holiday.

Transportation Ministry spokesman Bambang Ervan said three cows were on the runway, and the plane hit at least one of them and careened off the runway before coming to a stop.

The condition of the cows was unclear.

Pilot Iwan Permadi told Antara news agency that he could smell ‘burning meat’ during the incident, reported The Sydney Morning Herald.

He had thought there were dogs on the runway, but soon found out they were cows.

The plane suffered minor damage and skidded into the field next to the runway.

According to local media it had left Jakarta and also had a stopover in Makassar, on Sulawesi.

Indonesia has Asia’s worst aviation safety records.

In April, a Lion Air plane belly-flopped into the ocean just short of the runway off the resort island of Bali. All 108 people aboard survived.

The company has also put in orders with Airbus and Bowing. It has an aim to own 1000 planes within 10 years.

The incident is under investigation.

More Moo than Boo

The News & Star reported some ghostly goings on in Gretna.

Staff at the world-famous marriage centre say they have seen a mysterious grey figure appearing out of nowhere, books flying off shelves and have heard unexplained footsteps in the building, which aptly has the address Headless Hill.

Ghost-hunters have experienced a drop in temperature and a “strong presence” in rooms which adjoin the building which has witnessed countless runaway weddings from young couples taking advantage of Scotland’s lenient marriage laws.

Now Dumfries and Galloway paranormal team Mostly Ghostly Investigations is to spend a night inside the attraction’s Wee Big Shop and its adjoining restaurant on August 16.

Cath Johnston, who manages the shop, has experienced some of the spooky happenings at first hand.

“Ever since a wall was knocked down inside the shop in March 2012 to give us more room spooky things have been happening,” she said. “It got to the point where I asked for someone to be with me when I opened up in the morning.”

After a preliminary visit paranormal investigator John Hill sensed a strong presence at one particular point in the room.

“The temperature had dropped and I felt as if someone was watching me,” he said.

“It’s interesting that these events started happening after a wall was knocked down as paranormal activity is often associated with renovation or demolition of a property.”

He went on: “Something has possibly been disturbed which may well be connected to these unusual reports”.

John also picked up on a strong presence in the kitchen of the restaurant.

Cath together with shop assistant colleagues David Edgar, Karen Nicholson, Rachel Dalton and restaurant manager Bill Hudson, have all seen and felt things that they cannot explain or pass off as their imagination running away.

“I used to be sceptical about these things but not anymore,” said Bill.

“There is something out of the ordinary here. I’ve seen a grey figure in a cloak standing watching me and then it disappears.

“And sometimes when I have been doing my bookwork in my office, after the restaurant has closed to the public and everyone has gone home, I have heard loud footsteps in the corridor outside. When I have rushed outside there is no-one there.”

In another incident a book about Highland cattle jumped from a shelf and hit Rachel Dalton. On another day the same book was found lying on the floor.

A plastic beaker cup also sprung off a rack and flew past David, and Karen was hit by a flying key.

“I had gone into the storage room and suddenly something smacked me on the head and a key clattered to the floor,” she said. “When we tried to find out what the key was for – as we had not seen it before – no-one knew.”

Cath was so spooked by one experience that she ran out of one part of the shop.

“I was at the back of the shop doing the papers when I heard a tapping noise,” she said. “I went to see if someone was at the windows or door but no-one was there.”

Davina (c) Yellow Dexter Ltd

Out and about today and we met Davina who was sheltering out of the sun, under a large tree.   She wasn't in the mood for a photo shoot but I think, after we left, she got out her pom poms and did a ra-ra dance.

Hi

Hi and welcome to my new blog.  As you may be able to tell I am crazy about cows !

Donald (c) Yellow Dexter Ltd 2013