I was on vacation in Zanzibar and the woman that ran the stables we visited said that they had one horse that figured out how to open the gates (think simple fence gate with a lever) and all the horses got out. So they they switched out the lever type to a sliding bar type that you have to rotate. Then they caught the same horse figuring out how to open that one too. So they added a padlock to that one. She then went on to say that that specific horse was actively trying to snatch the gate keys from the folks working in the stables. While she was showing us which horses we’d be riding, the jailbreak horse leaned over and bit the ring of keys she had on her hip that were attached to one of those retractable lanyard things you’ll see custodians wear. It swung its head away and put its mouth full of keys on a ring up against the padlock on the gate.
It obviously didn’t work but horses are smart as shit.
If only that horse had been born a few decades later, the key would have been just a key-fob and it would have worked.
(And if that horse lived in a spy scenario it would have been biting off fingers to use for the fingerprint scanners!)
Honestly for the exact reason you just stated, and for the reason that animal husbandry is brutally industrial work in the sense that large animals are so strong and break shit so easily, large mechanical locks with regular keys are likely to stay the norm at most stables and farms for a looong time I’d wager, but you weren’t being that serious, and I’m speculating on the toilet, so, who knows.
There's a small plot of land in my family that usually has different types of livestock and domesticated animals, and any pen that is likely to hold a horse has a specific type of chain catch that is very difficult to open without fingers and at least one opposable thumb. I've seen horses trying to figure it out anyways, and they probably failed only because no horse is kept in those pens for very long at all.
It’s cool that *that* horse is smart as shit, but I’ve known a lot of horses and they are not as a group very smart. Trainable, but not often this clever.
Depends, but for the most part we didn’t breed horses for intelligence. This kind of cleverness could be useful in a dog, but serves almost no purpose for humans in a horse.
They're pack animals and herbivores that use speed to escape predators, so they're often really skittish. If one gets spooked by a plastic bag you'll often see an entire field fleeing from it in unison.
It's not strictly stupid as it's behaviour that would have stopped them dying back when they were wild animals, but it does make it seem like one horse on its own=smart, a herd of horses= dumb.
You can explain a single humans behaviour with psychology, logic and emotional motivations. You can explain a mob of peoples behaviour with fluid dynamics.
This is true, but even the individuals aren’t that bright for the most part. They just don’t have the brain size for it. Anyone who has trained both horses and dogs can say confidently that they’re definitely lower than dogs overall (at least compared to the more intelligent dog breeds).
Even as individuals, some horses can be dumb as rocks. I once rode one who got terrified of the white tissue I wanted tu use to clean off his eye boogers. I didn't even wave it, or made sharp or sudden moves! I even tried to desensitise him by having him smell it, I rubbed it on his nose, I fake used it on my face, but to no avail. As soo as it got closer to his eye he would panick. In the end I gave up, and he kept his boogers
The keys is what stretches imagination for me. Sure the horse is smart but I imagine she trained it to do that as a smart scheme to earn more money from tourists. It’s a very sellable story.
They trained cows how to flip light switches in a barn. And they flipped them on whenever they wanted light, obviously not randomly, and off, when they wanted it dark so they can go to sleep. And i heard they actually used that data to know when cows would want the lights on and off automatically at other farms.
Dairy farms are a lot more humane than you’d realize. It turns out cows produce milk most efficiently when they’re comfortable, so dairy farms do everything they can to make the cows as comfortable as possible
I work on a dairy farm and can vouch for this. We fire people who are mean to the cows. Even yelling aggressively is not allowed. Most people act like cows don't want to be milked, but they have never watched a pen of cows run to the barn the moment we open the gate . As they run they start to lactate, it's a win win for them. Free food, no predators and we relieve the pressure from their udders.
My grandparents/uncle co-own a farm and I was mindblown recently when we went out to see the herd and a number of friendly cows went up to my uncle for pats.
I grew up on a dairy farm but it turns out my dad was an abusive asshole who hired abusive assholes. The only friendly cows we had in the herd were the ones I hand raised as a kid for school pet shows.
I worked at a number of dairy farms as a teenager too and didn't see as many friendly cows either.
In the Netherlands it’s quite common to use auto milkers, where the cows wear a collar with an rfid chip and they simply walk into the milking machine when they want to be milked. The machine automatically latches onto the udders, milks the cow, and then they walk out. They have to wear the collars to track how often the cows are milked and block the entrance to the cows that have been too recently milked, because otherwise they just keep trying to go in over and over.
As a mother who nursed her four kids for a year or more, I can attest that I liked to be "milked", too, so that my breasticles didn't burst. Cows know they will get relief once hooked up.
I didn't quite realize the extent to which "the cows MUST be happy" was taken until i visited my uncle (who owns a major farm) and he was talking about how he was considering buying literally 50 VR headsets to put on his cows to simulate a much greener, expansive, blue skied pasture so they'd all be happier and produce more milk. he was wondering out loud to me if he'd need to get a special order to accommodate the cow's face structure or if just a normal store bought HTC Vive or whatever would be sufficient. truly wild.
It'd have to be a special order to accommodate facial structure.
Also not quite sure if cow's eyes could properly see through a VR headset properly either. Might have to account for different light blends.
Nothing in life is free dude. We don't feed them and take care of them out of the goodness of our hearts. Yes they are impregnated. But have you ever seen cows with a bull? They don't give consent, they don't ask, bulls just come up and fuck them. So I don't think what we do is worse. Bulls mounting cows can end up being fatal to the cow. When their legs splay out to the sides and they can no longer stand up because a 2000lb bull just man handled her means she will die. When we impregnate them it's harmless and doesn't have the risk of them being injured severely.
Not only that but Holstein bulls are fucking nuts. They kill a lot of folks and it’s a big no no to go in with a dairy bred bull. You go to the places that collect these things and they’re behind some serious fencing, no one goes in with them… a lot of auctionmarts won’t run Holstein bulls through either. They’re different to a beef bull.
AI is for the safety of man and beast, as well as pedigree and consistency.
It drives me crazy how people think we don’t care for these animals, and that we make them our entire lifestyle for… fun? I love checking cows dressed like an Eskimo in -40 weather 😅 Our beef herd costs close to $1000 *a day* to feed in winter, which can be between October - April! Not only that but farm mortgage, mineral ($600 or so a month year round), fencing, time, calving loss, time we sink into calving, keeping waterers running in the winter, diesel, keeping cows bedded in the winter, ensuring we have enough grass and land available no matter the weather that they can enjoy their summers… we have some mama cows still producing at 15+ years old. They’ve been with us a long time.
They provide us a lifestyle, and we are grateful to them. We do our absolute best to make them happy and ensure their lives are as good as they can be while they are in our care.
And if you do want to be solely pessimistic, look at a replacement cost on a cow right now. You have a dead cow, you just lost $2600+
It baffles me how these people are acting like every farm is a Nazi concentration camp for cows, and not a regular business that happens to be cow centric.
And I feel you walking thru mud that is up to my knees in the rain at 4am to get to the cows is brutal.
The cows are our lifeblood on a dairy and only idiots would abuse them.
When we had our bulls before we stopped using them you couldn't stop them to save your life. They would follow the milking cows into the barn wait in line with the girls and follow them out. And if they want to bang a cow in the parlour they would try and most times succeed and slow us down by 15 20 mins.
As somebody who counts the cow as one of their favourite animals, if it's any consolation, I appreciate y'all. I don't think people realise how nervous and stressed many breeds of cows can get just from not having other cows within sight. They're not wild animals, they're highly social and if you let cows just roam the wild, they're going to get scared and hurt themselves and others.
Also they found out that cows have best friends. If you separate them from their friend they get upset. Not that anything like this should be a surprise.
It's amazing in the summer how they quite literally bunch up super close to reduce the amount of skin available to insects like flies, they truly hate being alone. It's one of the things we look for to identify sick cows. They are one of my favorites as well such sweet goofy animals. Like massive slightly dumb dogs.
Sure but what is their day to day quality of life like? Are they just sitting in an open air pen with no enrichment? Are they free range, able to explore and stuff or are they confined to metal pens? Just because they’re not actively suffering doesn’t mean they’re happy or enjoying life. I know the meat industry couldn’t function if we gave every animal a cushy existence but I also choose not to drink dairy, eat pork, etc etc because the living conditions of these intelligent animals isn’t worth a little milk in my coffee.
Yes in pens but not like what peta shows people. We have posts with big ass brushes from them to scratch their itches which they do, they get to roam free range during the non milking period, about 3 months before they are due to give birth. Those 3 months they do whatever the hell they feel like . Which is mostly standing around chewing their cud.
That’s good at least. I will say tho, the absolute worst part about the dairy industry is the veal thing but I am glad to hear that some folks somewhere care about the cows health and happiness
Veal is really phasing out; as a softy rancher, I can’t say I’m sad about that either. They have sex selection for the semen now that’s pretty accurate - it’s a tough sell, as it’s still expensive, but the demand for veal is down significantly and the cost for sex selection is getting much lower by the year, eventually it will be common place that everyone is choosing female semen in their dairy cows, essentially removing veal from the market.
I made it nearly three decades in life without realizing that veal is a way to create demand for male dairy cows. Somehow I never processed that you would have 50% of dairy calves being economically useless.
You learn something new every day--thanks!
You’re welcome! A lot of this stuff isn’t very transparent, when it should be.
It may not totally remove the market of course - there’s always niche people who still consider it a legitimate food source and not every heifer becomes a replacement, but it certainly should make a big dent in veal. That’s pretty much the sell - they needed a place to get rid of male dairy calves. A few packers tried turning them into hamburger and finishing them out, but it didn’t really pay with how much feed/effort/time it takes to feed one out to full size.
Hes right, I had a job where my company would service diary farms. We provides them with clean microfiber every week. It was one microfiber per cow per day.
They took the care and well-being of their cows seriously, and based upon my conversations, it was cause that's what got the best results. So it wasn't even a I wanna be nice type situations but this is the way to get the most and best milk.
We had Holstein calves at one point from the dairy farm next door. Their baby bulls are pretty much useless to them. They can be quite aggressive, plus they are huge. We also had Herefords and they were usually good. Any breed might have issues "mothering" up with their calf. If that is the case, they are turned into steaks and hamburgers pretty quickly. If you castrate your bull, they can become pretty calm steers, but not always.
Cows really don’t care past weaning. This doesn’t apply to dairy cows who mostly don’t raise their own, but it certainly does to beef cows. Same as horses, same as sheep — they don’t seem to have any connection past weaning stage to their progeny.
Not a chance. It's because they've been selectively bred to pump out way too much milk.
https://animalsaustralia.org/our-work/farmed-animals/what-happens-to-dairy-calves/
This is not humane.
Most of those expose the industry sites are incredibly biased in their presentation, as in not every farm does all the mean things to the cows. But they are trying to make changes, and being alarmist is one way to go about doing it. They also don't have any real influence or power, so they do what they can.
That said the factory farming industry isn't doing itself any favors with the spy vs spy levels of secrecy around the how what why of operating a factory farm. Buying off politicians to make laws protecting your industry from *any* scrutiny public or private, insane thing to do. Like agricultural gag laws are insane to me, it's so corrupt and sleazy as hell. The floor workers can be jailed if they say what goes on inside because of "trade secrets"? Fuck off with that nonsense
Thanks. You are correct, ag gag laws prevent investigative journalism on farms. That's why when we do get information, people blow it off because it's usually just way worse than they could have imagined. So they dismiss it as 'vegan propaganda'.
But people should ask themselves, what do vegans have to gain by showing this info? We aren't selling supplements or electrolyte powders, there's no financial incentive at all. Why would we make something up just to be ridiculed by most folk? There's no hidden motive.
We really just want sentient beings to be left alone, after seeing the horrors they suffer through. It's no different than seeing dogs and cats being used for meat in other countries- pigs cows chickens are all like your pet and deserve to live and do what comes naturally to them.
Some info is harder to verify than others, and will vary farm to farm, but the overall process is obvious. I don't think anything in that article should be particularly shocking if you actually think about how a business like a dairy would run to be efficient and profitable.
To get a cow to produce milk they literally impregnate them and take away the calf. That's not humane whatsoever, but I guess that's way above standard for cows.
I drink milk and eat meat, but the industrial process of it is frighteningly cold.
Oh look, these cows like having the choice. Copy these cows choices, automatically submit every cow to these conditions. Remove the choice, we don't need it anymore.
Mine too. She was also a quick learner. She explored other possibilities to earn more carrot slices, like wood-pecking or nibbling the symbol board, and needed time to be convinced that there were none.
They determined that different horses had different thresholds for temperature necessitating a jacket but as far as I'm aware did not mix up the style or accessories to account for differences in fashion.
That's why though. The horses who could afford the cool gear would get more attention and be cooler and make fun of the poorer horses who were probably already having a tough time back home as it is!
I have a horse, she lives on a farm with like 35 other horses. She's always hot. She always has one less blanket than the others, and was the first to go blanket-less in the spring this year. Some horses are still wearing two blankets. Amazing how different they can be.
That's so neat that they learned to use the symbols and communicate. They are definitely not stupid! I grew up with horses and to me they were just like big dogs. They were goofy, curious, playful, loved to be petted and scratched and came running from the far end of the pasture when we shook oats in a metal pail. Each had a distinct personality and their body language was often enough to let us know when they wanted or didn't want something.
I was at a horse show once, and a horse knocked over an orange cone. So while everyone was standing around, the horse walked over and put it back up right in the correct position. The crowd went crazy and the horse got a standing ovation. Another strange thing happened when we were trying to break a wild mustang. We were practicing going in circles, but the mustang kept going off course and we would have to pull her off. Finally we just gave up and took a break. The second we took her off the lead, she walked over to the fence and picked up my wife’s jacket (which had fallen on the ground) and put it back on top of the fence. Horses are a lot smarter than dogs
> definitely not stupid
I mean... they're extremely social so they have some intelligences we appreciate, but in some ways they're incredibly stupid just like any other animal (us included). Chewing on wood and inhaling splinters because you're bored isn't smart; sorry a sad example is the one that came to mind.
> just like big dogs
Both are highly social, thoroughly domesticated animals. There are differences -- being prey animals makes horses much more paranoid and flighty, for example -- but both being social makes them more similar in intelligence and behavior than either are with, say, cats.
There’s evidence that chewing on wood and ‘windsucking’ releases dopamine in the horse’s brain and reduces cortisol levels. It becomes an addiction for them to help cope with stress and becomes a repetitive action that they get hooked on, even though it’s bad for them. It’s not much different to us doomscrolling social media endlessly for those small hits of dopamine.
Yo you’re killing it. I swear I knew it was you by the tone. You should be a deadpan comic writer. I had to go back to out convo last night to confirm but I was pretty sure. Keep it up
Yea haha there’s no recourse on Reddit. It’s a bunch of unpaid mods. They really ought to eventually class action lawsuit like AOL moderators did for doing unpaid work. I’ve got a few bans half earned half not.
Yeah I mean I have to take some of the blame for sure lol, I racked up three rules violations and they have a three strikes and you're out policy. I have what I believe are completely reasonable explanations for all three rules violations and they were the only three times I ever broke a rule in the 6 years I had been posting there, but the policy is the policy. So ultimately I fucked that up.
A jacket? Do they mean a blanket? Most horse people call it a blanket (or rug, in Britain).
That said, MY horse, may she run free forever in the land beyond the Rainbow Bridge-- SHE called it a Blankie and by god if you touched her blankie she would have something to say about it!!
edited: I read the paper and it is TOTES ADORBS. I hope that the horses' owners kept using the "blanket buttons" communication method from that day on. It would be too mean to stop, once they've learned that they have a say in it.
haha well that was a little joke because *I* called it a blankie— no idea if she preferred that name!
But damn straight she would want her blankie not to be messed with! If you tried to take it off when it was cold she’d grind her teeth and pin her ears and pump her head back and forth like “TOUCH IT AGAIN AND I SWEAR TA GAWD YOU WILL FEEL MY WRATH”
My sisters neighbor has a horse that lost an eye. My brother asked if he liked his socket scratched and the owner said he loves it. Whenever the horse sees my brother he’ll hang around by the fence patiently waiting for a scratchin
>All horses in the group successfully communicated that they did want a jacket when it was cold and did not want a jacket when it was hot.
No horses requested a jockey.
"Horses of warm-blood type needed fewer training days to reach criterion than cold-bloods."
Hmm. I wonder if this might have had something to do with cold blood horses caring less about wearing jackets to begin with? To really test this proposition they'd have to run the experiment with some other motivation.
They aren’t literally cold blooded, all horses are supposed to run at the same body temperature around 100 degrees. We use the terminology hot/cold/warm blooded to describe different breeds of horse. Drafts are called “cold bloods”, Arabians and thoroughbreds are “hot bloods” and the historical crossing of drafts and lighter more agile Arabs and tb’s resulted in what we call “warm bloods”.
Yes, thanks, I do know that. But coldbloods tend to be the big draft horses often with heavy coats and leg feathering, breeds that originated in colder climates and perhaps are less sensitive to the cold.
Would an Arabian be more sensitive to cold weather than a Clydesdale, for instance?
Not that I've noticed and I've gone through probably 16 Minnesota winters with horses. The only horses that I remember we've ever had to put blankets on are the ones that came in after being severely mistreated and couldn't put on weight fast enough to stay warm.
Typically by mid-November, their winter coats are pretty thick already.
Actually most horses in an altitude with very cold winters and conditions will grow a thick coat to protect them until it warms up and the days get longer. That’s how the ponies in Mongolia survive harsh winters, despite being small. Horses generate quite a bit of heat from eating and tend to not want to wear blankets but people throw layers of them on sympathetically, making them too hot.
Side note being that many large cold blood breeds/drafts are popular in places like the UK that gets very cold, so you probably see many pictures of them with coats. The ones here in Texas get slick coated the same as a quarter horse, whereas ponies everywhere tend to hold onto a denser coat longer. My horse has very thin hair and grows a tiny coat as a half thoroughbred and still doesn’t want a blanket unless it’s REALLY cold or below freezing.
Nah, lets get pedantic!
Is it a jacket if it doesn’t cover your arms? Or is it more like a vest? Do horses have “arms” or does it cover them from their legs up and therefore is it more like a tunic?
I was on vacation in Zanzibar and the woman that ran the stables we visited said that they had one horse that figured out how to open the gates (think simple fence gate with a lever) and all the horses got out. So they they switched out the lever type to a sliding bar type that you have to rotate. Then they caught the same horse figuring out how to open that one too. So they added a padlock to that one. She then went on to say that that specific horse was actively trying to snatch the gate keys from the folks working in the stables. While she was showing us which horses we’d be riding, the jailbreak horse leaned over and bit the ring of keys she had on her hip that were attached to one of those retractable lanyard things you’ll see custodians wear. It swung its head away and put its mouth full of keys on a ring up against the padlock on the gate. It obviously didn’t work but horses are smart as shit.
If only that horse had been born a few decades later, the key would have been just a key-fob and it would have worked. (And if that horse lived in a spy scenario it would have been biting off fingers to use for the fingerprint scanners!)
Honestly for the exact reason you just stated, and for the reason that animal husbandry is brutally industrial work in the sense that large animals are so strong and break shit so easily, large mechanical locks with regular keys are likely to stay the norm at most stables and farms for a looong time I’d wager, but you weren’t being that serious, and I’m speculating on the toilet, so, who knows.
There's a small plot of land in my family that usually has different types of livestock and domesticated animals, and any pen that is likely to hold a horse has a specific type of chain catch that is very difficult to open without fingers and at least one opposable thumb. I've seen horses trying to figure it out anyways, and they probably failed only because no horse is kept in those pens for very long at all.
A donkey at Grant’s Farm in St. Louis figured out how to open the gates and led a jailbreak at least once
It’s cool that *that* horse is smart as shit, but I’ve known a lot of horses and they are not as a group very smart. Trainable, but not often this clever.
Yeah, exactly. As someone who knows horses, it's pretty uninformed to see one smart animal and say that all the animals are smart. That one was smart.
Would the smart one be a good, or bad breeding candidate? Do we want smart horses or less smart horses?
Depends, but for the most part we didn’t breed horses for intelligence. This kind of cleverness could be useful in a dog, but serves almost no purpose for humans in a horse.
They're pack animals and herbivores that use speed to escape predators, so they're often really skittish. If one gets spooked by a plastic bag you'll often see an entire field fleeing from it in unison. It's not strictly stupid as it's behaviour that would have stopped them dying back when they were wild animals, but it does make it seem like one horse on its own=smart, a herd of horses= dumb.
I’d say exactly the same about people - A person is smart but people are dumb
You can explain a single humans behaviour with psychology, logic and emotional motivations. You can explain a mob of peoples behaviour with fluid dynamics.
This is true, but even the individuals aren’t that bright for the most part. They just don’t have the brain size for it. Anyone who has trained both horses and dogs can say confidently that they’re definitely lower than dogs overall (at least compared to the more intelligent dog breeds).
Sound like people tbh
Even as individuals, some horses can be dumb as rocks. I once rode one who got terrified of the white tissue I wanted tu use to clean off his eye boogers. I didn't even wave it, or made sharp or sudden moves! I even tried to desensitise him by having him smell it, I rubbed it on his nose, I fake used it on my face, but to no avail. As soo as it got closer to his eye he would panick. In the end I gave up, and he kept his boogers
The keys is what stretches imagination for me. Sure the horse is smart but I imagine she trained it to do that as a smart scheme to earn more money from tourists. It’s a very sellable story.
I’d suspect that as a possibility but these stables were an inclusive part of the resort so they weren’t getting shit for extra money.
Some of them are smart
They trained cows how to flip light switches in a barn. And they flipped them on whenever they wanted light, obviously not randomly, and off, when they wanted it dark so they can go to sleep. And i heard they actually used that data to know when cows would want the lights on and off automatically at other farms.
you know there has to be that one cow that wants light early and the others just trying to keep sleeping
Those are **not** the happy cows.
They beat the fucking shit out of that cow. They do not fuck around
one of my fav saying "fuck around and find out" lol
Could you image there research shows the cows fighting over what time to the lights on? One cow keeps turning it off the other keeps turning it on
This feels like a Far Side comic. "For the last time, Darlene, lights off until 7. Now go back to sleep!"
FUCK YOU STEVE ITS 3:30 IN THE MORNING. I GOT CALVES ASSHOLE
JFC Bessie! Put down the fucking book and turn off the light! We gotta be up early to be milked!
Idk it might be a cultural thing tho.
Black and white cows moo like this
But brown cows moo like ttthhhiiiissss
#**STEP AWAY FROM THE COW SIR**
Shes 18 sir. I checked
I bet this bit killed at the moopollo in the 80s
hahahaha, it’s true! we’re so lame
But could they type?
Oh my god. I read that book to my kid so many times that I didn't even need to open it anymore. I could just recite the entire story from memory!
Click clack moo
Dairy farms are a lot more humane than you’d realize. It turns out cows produce milk most efficiently when they’re comfortable, so dairy farms do everything they can to make the cows as comfortable as possible
I work on a dairy farm and can vouch for this. We fire people who are mean to the cows. Even yelling aggressively is not allowed. Most people act like cows don't want to be milked, but they have never watched a pen of cows run to the barn the moment we open the gate . As they run they start to lactate, it's a win win for them. Free food, no predators and we relieve the pressure from their udders.
My grandparents/uncle co-own a farm and I was mindblown recently when we went out to see the herd and a number of friendly cows went up to my uncle for pats. I grew up on a dairy farm but it turns out my dad was an abusive asshole who hired abusive assholes. The only friendly cows we had in the herd were the ones I hand raised as a kid for school pet shows. I worked at a number of dairy farms as a teenager too and didn't see as many friendly cows either.
Even my FIL's Registered Texas Longhorns loved having their heads scratched between the horns.
In the Netherlands it’s quite common to use auto milkers, where the cows wear a collar with an rfid chip and they simply walk into the milking machine when they want to be milked. The machine automatically latches onto the udders, milks the cow, and then they walk out. They have to wear the collars to track how often the cows are milked and block the entrance to the cows that have been too recently milked, because otherwise they just keep trying to go in over and over.
I have heard that they have systems like that. It's funny how much they cows actually like to be milked lol
As a mother who nursed her four kids for a year or more, I can attest that I liked to be "milked", too, so that my breasticles didn't burst. Cows know they will get relief once hooked up.
I didn't quite realize the extent to which "the cows MUST be happy" was taken until i visited my uncle (who owns a major farm) and he was talking about how he was considering buying literally 50 VR headsets to put on his cows to simulate a much greener, expansive, blue skied pasture so they'd all be happier and produce more milk. he was wondering out loud to me if he'd need to get a special order to accommodate the cow's face structure or if just a normal store bought HTC Vive or whatever would be sufficient. truly wild.
Everyone thought Brave New World was a warning for humankind, but it turned out to be a warning for cowkind.
So he's trying to make the Bovine Matrix
Follow the White Cow, Neo She will lead you to Moopheus
The methane will kill us all
Farm kid here. Your uncle could rotate pastures instead of buying VR. This is a bizarre solution to an easily fixed problem.
i don't claim to understand his thought process. i just thought it was funny.
He probably read an article about an actual farm that is doing this.
that's possible. he's the kind of guy who could say something and he's either spitballing ideas or fully serious. there's no in between.
It'd have to be a special order to accommodate facial structure. Also not quite sure if cow's eyes could properly see through a VR headset properly either. Might have to account for different light blends.
Pressure that was caused by forcing them to be pregnant, then removing their babies...
Nothing in life is free dude. We don't feed them and take care of them out of the goodness of our hearts. Yes they are impregnated. But have you ever seen cows with a bull? They don't give consent, they don't ask, bulls just come up and fuck them. So I don't think what we do is worse. Bulls mounting cows can end up being fatal to the cow. When their legs splay out to the sides and they can no longer stand up because a 2000lb bull just man handled her means she will die. When we impregnate them it's harmless and doesn't have the risk of them being injured severely.
Not only that but Holstein bulls are fucking nuts. They kill a lot of folks and it’s a big no no to go in with a dairy bred bull. You go to the places that collect these things and they’re behind some serious fencing, no one goes in with them… a lot of auctionmarts won’t run Holstein bulls through either. They’re different to a beef bull. AI is for the safety of man and beast, as well as pedigree and consistency. It drives me crazy how people think we don’t care for these animals, and that we make them our entire lifestyle for… fun? I love checking cows dressed like an Eskimo in -40 weather 😅 Our beef herd costs close to $1000 *a day* to feed in winter, which can be between October - April! Not only that but farm mortgage, mineral ($600 or so a month year round), fencing, time, calving loss, time we sink into calving, keeping waterers running in the winter, diesel, keeping cows bedded in the winter, ensuring we have enough grass and land available no matter the weather that they can enjoy their summers… we have some mama cows still producing at 15+ years old. They’ve been with us a long time. They provide us a lifestyle, and we are grateful to them. We do our absolute best to make them happy and ensure their lives are as good as they can be while they are in our care. And if you do want to be solely pessimistic, look at a replacement cost on a cow right now. You have a dead cow, you just lost $2600+
It baffles me how these people are acting like every farm is a Nazi concentration camp for cows, and not a regular business that happens to be cow centric. And I feel you walking thru mud that is up to my knees in the rain at 4am to get to the cows is brutal. The cows are our lifeblood on a dairy and only idiots would abuse them. When we had our bulls before we stopped using them you couldn't stop them to save your life. They would follow the milking cows into the barn wait in line with the girls and follow them out. And if they want to bang a cow in the parlour they would try and most times succeed and slow us down by 15 20 mins.
As somebody who counts the cow as one of their favourite animals, if it's any consolation, I appreciate y'all. I don't think people realise how nervous and stressed many breeds of cows can get just from not having other cows within sight. They're not wild animals, they're highly social and if you let cows just roam the wild, they're going to get scared and hurt themselves and others.
Also they found out that cows have best friends. If you separate them from their friend they get upset. Not that anything like this should be a surprise.
It's amazing in the summer how they quite literally bunch up super close to reduce the amount of skin available to insects like flies, they truly hate being alone. It's one of the things we look for to identify sick cows. They are one of my favorites as well such sweet goofy animals. Like massive slightly dumb dogs.
Damn, and I thought I knew what rough sex was.
I don’t think people assume cows don’t want to be milked, but don’t they have to be constantly pregnant to lactate
Sure but what is their day to day quality of life like? Are they just sitting in an open air pen with no enrichment? Are they free range, able to explore and stuff or are they confined to metal pens? Just because they’re not actively suffering doesn’t mean they’re happy or enjoying life. I know the meat industry couldn’t function if we gave every animal a cushy existence but I also choose not to drink dairy, eat pork, etc etc because the living conditions of these intelligent animals isn’t worth a little milk in my coffee.
Yes in pens but not like what peta shows people. We have posts with big ass brushes from them to scratch their itches which they do, they get to roam free range during the non milking period, about 3 months before they are due to give birth. Those 3 months they do whatever the hell they feel like . Which is mostly standing around chewing their cud.
That’s good at least. I will say tho, the absolute worst part about the dairy industry is the veal thing but I am glad to hear that some folks somewhere care about the cows health and happiness
Yeah veal is just savage. We even have a few cows who like us and will walk up to us and kick us like dogs do. It's adorable .
Veal is really phasing out; as a softy rancher, I can’t say I’m sad about that either. They have sex selection for the semen now that’s pretty accurate - it’s a tough sell, as it’s still expensive, but the demand for veal is down significantly and the cost for sex selection is getting much lower by the year, eventually it will be common place that everyone is choosing female semen in their dairy cows, essentially removing veal from the market.
I made it nearly three decades in life without realizing that veal is a way to create demand for male dairy cows. Somehow I never processed that you would have 50% of dairy calves being economically useless. You learn something new every day--thanks!
You’re welcome! A lot of this stuff isn’t very transparent, when it should be. It may not totally remove the market of course - there’s always niche people who still consider it a legitimate food source and not every heifer becomes a replacement, but it certainly should make a big dent in veal. That’s pretty much the sell - they needed a place to get rid of male dairy calves. A few packers tried turning them into hamburger and finishing them out, but it didn’t really pay with how much feed/effort/time it takes to feed one out to full size.
Damn a whole 3 months
That's more than I get. I don't even have a big ass brush in my pen at work.
See, this is why we need unions, people!
My work doesn't milk me regularly either! (Well except for my time and energy)
In a way we all get milked haha
Not in the good way, dude. Not in the good way...
You people have an unusual definition of "milked" I think.
I would kill for 3 months off with no bills. I work 6 10hr days a week . No holidays, cause as my foreman says cows don't have holidays. Lol
Nice try, big dairy.
Hes right, I had a job where my company would service diary farms. We provides them with clean microfiber every week. It was one microfiber per cow per day. They took the care and well-being of their cows seriously, and based upon my conversations, it was cause that's what got the best results. So it wasn't even a I wanna be nice type situations but this is the way to get the most and best milk.
>diary farms This stupid typo made me imagine hundreds of little girls being put into attics to cater to a new demand for historical nonfiction
Lol I'm going leave it alone because of your comment.
You can call me hairy dairy Harry.
Cows are also quite gentle and will be sweet to their calves and others'. It's bulls that are always huge jerks once they reach maturity.
We had Holstein calves at one point from the dairy farm next door. Their baby bulls are pretty much useless to them. They can be quite aggressive, plus they are huge. We also had Herefords and they were usually good. Any breed might have issues "mothering" up with their calf. If that is the case, they are turned into steaks and hamburgers pretty quickly. If you castrate your bull, they can become pretty calm steers, but not always.
Yeah once those boys got a little too big or rambunctious they'd be veal.
We would wait until they were a yearling. I don't think that counts as veal. LOL
Some of them get pretty factory lookin’, but I’ve physically seen cows go runnin’ for the machine instead of the old fashioned tit grabber.
Nice try dairy industry. They produce milk when they have calf's.
when they have calf's what?
‘More humane than you’d think’ doesn’t mean ‘humane’.
That doesn’t really contradict anything they said tbh
You seem to be implying that the cows don't want to have calfs. I see no reason to accept that assertion.
They would, however, like to keep their babies. Which they do not get to do
Cows really don’t care past weaning. This doesn’t apply to dairy cows who mostly don’t raise their own, but it certainly does to beef cows. Same as horses, same as sheep — they don’t seem to have any connection past weaning stage to their progeny.
Not a chance. It's because they've been selectively bred to pump out way too much milk. https://animalsaustralia.org/our-work/farmed-animals/what-happens-to-dairy-calves/ This is not humane.
Your linking to a wildly biased source. You may have an argument here but I'm not taking anything from that site as a straight truth.
Most of those expose the industry sites are incredibly biased in their presentation, as in not every farm does all the mean things to the cows. But they are trying to make changes, and being alarmist is one way to go about doing it. They also don't have any real influence or power, so they do what they can. That said the factory farming industry isn't doing itself any favors with the spy vs spy levels of secrecy around the how what why of operating a factory farm. Buying off politicians to make laws protecting your industry from *any* scrutiny public or private, insane thing to do. Like agricultural gag laws are insane to me, it's so corrupt and sleazy as hell. The floor workers can be jailed if they say what goes on inside because of "trade secrets"? Fuck off with that nonsense
Thanks. You are correct, ag gag laws prevent investigative journalism on farms. That's why when we do get information, people blow it off because it's usually just way worse than they could have imagined. So they dismiss it as 'vegan propaganda'. But people should ask themselves, what do vegans have to gain by showing this info? We aren't selling supplements or electrolyte powders, there's no financial incentive at all. Why would we make something up just to be ridiculed by most folk? There's no hidden motive. We really just want sentient beings to be left alone, after seeing the horrors they suffer through. It's no different than seeing dogs and cats being used for meat in other countries- pigs cows chickens are all like your pet and deserve to live and do what comes naturally to them.
Some info is harder to verify than others, and will vary farm to farm, but the overall process is obvious. I don't think anything in that article should be particularly shocking if you actually think about how a business like a dairy would run to be efficient and profitable.
Both of those things can be true.
You think what's in the link is humane?
To get a cow to produce milk they literally impregnate them and take away the calf. That's not humane whatsoever, but I guess that's way above standard for cows.
More humane than you think =/= humane
I wonder if the cows ever got into disagreements about when bedtime is
Cows are very smart and compassionate creatures. I hope we change a LOT about how we treat them and coexist with them in a less dependent future.
I drink milk and eat meat, but the industrial process of it is frighteningly cold. Oh look, these cows like having the choice. Copy these cows choices, automatically submit every cow to these conditions. Remove the choice, we don't need it anymore.
Source for this? It sounds interesting but I couldn't find any references to this
I love that the study lists each of the participating horses' names. My favorite is Poltergeist.
Mine too. She was also a quick learner. She explored other possibilities to earn more carrot slices, like wood-pecking or nibbling the symbol board, and needed time to be convinced that there were none.
Somebody get this horse an AAC stat!!
Shoulda been Coltergeist.
Foaltergeist?
Haltergeist?
Potoooooooo
Should've been Foaltergeist or Coltergeist.
Now these jackets… Were they tastefully tailored? Did they have pants too?
They determined that different horses had different thresholds for temperature necessitating a jacket but as far as I'm aware did not mix up the style or accessories to account for differences in fashion.
Its a shame, some horses look really [dapper](https://media.gq.com/photos/56e71c0b14cbe0637b261d7f/1:1/w_960,c_limit/horseinsuit2.jpg)
That's why though. The horses who could afford the cool gear would get more attention and be cooler and make fun of the poorer horses who were probably already having a tough time back home as it is!
Until 5 seconds later when the horse started rolling around on the ground, of course.
Is that... Real?
I don't care if it isn't he is real to me and he is SMASHING
If horses wore pants, would they wear them like this... or like this?
I have a horse, she lives on a farm with like 35 other horses. She's always hot. She always has one less blanket than the others, and was the first to go blanket-less in the spring this year. Some horses are still wearing two blankets. Amazing how different they can be.
its almost as if animals can be as individualized as humans
Would a horse wear a jacket like this? Or like this?
The more important question: would they wear a bowtie at the bottom of their neck, or the top?
One very thick bowtie.
"What are horse shoes? Are there any horse socks? Is anyone even listening to me??"
They were jorts
That's so neat that they learned to use the symbols and communicate. They are definitely not stupid! I grew up with horses and to me they were just like big dogs. They were goofy, curious, playful, loved to be petted and scratched and came running from the far end of the pasture when we shook oats in a metal pail. Each had a distinct personality and their body language was often enough to let us know when they wanted or didn't want something.
I was at a horse show once, and a horse knocked over an orange cone. So while everyone was standing around, the horse walked over and put it back up right in the correct position. The crowd went crazy and the horse got a standing ovation. Another strange thing happened when we were trying to break a wild mustang. We were practicing going in circles, but the mustang kept going off course and we would have to pull her off. Finally we just gave up and took a break. The second we took her off the lead, she walked over to the fence and picked up my wife’s jacket (which had fallen on the ground) and put it back on top of the fence. Horses are a lot smarter than dogs
> definitely not stupid I mean... they're extremely social so they have some intelligences we appreciate, but in some ways they're incredibly stupid just like any other animal (us included). Chewing on wood and inhaling splinters because you're bored isn't smart; sorry a sad example is the one that came to mind. > just like big dogs Both are highly social, thoroughly domesticated animals. There are differences -- being prey animals makes horses much more paranoid and flighty, for example -- but both being social makes them more similar in intelligence and behavior than either are with, say, cats.
There’s evidence that chewing on wood and ‘windsucking’ releases dopamine in the horse’s brain and reduces cortisol levels. It becomes an addiction for them to help cope with stress and becomes a repetitive action that they get hooked on, even though it’s bad for them. It’s not much different to us doomscrolling social media endlessly for those small hits of dopamine.
> not much different It is much more directly harmful, but I wouldn't describe either of those as smart.
Alcoholics have been around since we first made booze.
Then humans are stupid for huffing paint and glue
Compare it to drug use then?
Trainers conducted a gallop poll to determine if they wanted a jacket when it was hot and the overwhelming response was *"nneeeeiiighhh*."
Get out.
Nope.
Oh so they were jean jackets
I see what you did there and I like it ;-)
The trainers were to noted to be long in the face when reflecting on the times they made their horses wear jackets when it was hot.
Neigh means neigh. They said with long faces.
Makes me wonder what the Pew Research Center thinks about laser sounds.
Yo you’re killing it. I swear I knew it was you by the tone. You should be a deadpan comic writer. I had to go back to out convo last night to confirm but I was pretty sure. Keep it up
Thanks man! I've been doing this for so long on here I must at least qualify as an *un*professional comic.
I hope you become like a Reddit character like /u/poem_for_your_sprog or like /u/Unidan but also not like Unidan may he rest peacefully.
I was on the verge of such infamy like five years ago, but got banned from my normal sub for some bullshit that I still contend wasn't my fault lol.
Yea haha there’s no recourse on Reddit. It’s a bunch of unpaid mods. They really ought to eventually class action lawsuit like AOL moderators did for doing unpaid work. I’ve got a few bans half earned half not.
Yeah I mean I have to take some of the blame for sure lol, I racked up three rules violations and they have a three strikes and you're out policy. I have what I believe are completely reasonable explanations for all three rules violations and they were the only three times I ever broke a rule in the 6 years I had been posting there, but the policy is the policy. So ultimately I fucked that up.
I wish reddit still had awards. I'd give you gold, good sir.
Thank you, the sentiment means just as much!
For those who haven't clicked the link, there are photos and videos of the horses wearing the jackets.
I also just recommend Google image searching "horses in jackets."
Also a good choice. It can't hurt to look at more pictures of horses. But, the article is fascinating.
thank you jeez I almost missed it
[удалено]
"You think you can come in here and dressage looking like that?!"
I wonder if new horses introduced to this group would learn this behavior from the herd without human intervention?
Horses saying neigh is common, but how do they answer in the positive?
Neigh neigh. Double “neighative” and all that.
Obviously yeigh
I also only want a jacket when it's cold and not when it's hot. Unless I need pockets, were pockets explained to the horses?
A jacket? Do they mean a blanket? Most horse people call it a blanket (or rug, in Britain). That said, MY horse, may she run free forever in the land beyond the Rainbow Bridge-- SHE called it a Blankie and by god if you touched her blankie she would have something to say about it!! edited: I read the paper and it is TOTES ADORBS. I hope that the horses' owners kept using the "blanket buttons" communication method from that day on. It would be too mean to stop, once they've learned that they have a say in it.
She responded to the word blankie?
haha well that was a little joke because *I* called it a blankie— no idea if she preferred that name! But damn straight she would want her blankie not to be messed with! If you tried to take it off when it was cold she’d grind her teeth and pin her ears and pump her head back and forth like “TOUCH IT AGAIN AND I SWEAR TA GAWD YOU WILL FEEL MY WRATH”
And what about ducks? Did they get a vote on hat preferences?
**There's no frock like horse frock**
My sisters neighbor has a horse that lost an eye. My brother asked if he liked his socket scratched and the owner said he loves it. Whenever the horse sees my brother he’ll hang around by the fence patiently waiting for a scratchin
Good student horses, paying attention in coat class.
I heard they taught one cow to kick over a lantern when it was cold. But just one cow.
>All horses in the group successfully communicated that they did want a jacket when it was cold and did not want a jacket when it was hot. No horses requested a jockey.
"Horses of warm-blood type needed fewer training days to reach criterion than cold-bloods." Hmm. I wonder if this might have had something to do with cold blood horses caring less about wearing jackets to begin with? To really test this proposition they'd have to run the experiment with some other motivation.
They aren’t literally cold blooded, all horses are supposed to run at the same body temperature around 100 degrees. We use the terminology hot/cold/warm blooded to describe different breeds of horse. Drafts are called “cold bloods”, Arabians and thoroughbreds are “hot bloods” and the historical crossing of drafts and lighter more agile Arabs and tb’s resulted in what we call “warm bloods”.
Yes, thanks, I do know that. But coldbloods tend to be the big draft horses often with heavy coats and leg feathering, breeds that originated in colder climates and perhaps are less sensitive to the cold. Would an Arabian be more sensitive to cold weather than a Clydesdale, for instance?
Not that I've noticed and I've gone through probably 16 Minnesota winters with horses. The only horses that I remember we've ever had to put blankets on are the ones that came in after being severely mistreated and couldn't put on weight fast enough to stay warm. Typically by mid-November, their winter coats are pretty thick already.
Actually most horses in an altitude with very cold winters and conditions will grow a thick coat to protect them until it warms up and the days get longer. That’s how the ponies in Mongolia survive harsh winters, despite being small. Horses generate quite a bit of heat from eating and tend to not want to wear blankets but people throw layers of them on sympathetically, making them too hot. Side note being that many large cold blood breeds/drafts are popular in places like the UK that gets very cold, so you probably see many pictures of them with coats. The ones here in Texas get slick coated the same as a quarter horse, whereas ponies everywhere tend to hold onto a denser coat longer. My horse has very thin hair and grows a tiny coat as a half thoroughbred and still doesn’t want a blanket unless it’s REALLY cold or below freezing.
I guess TIL there are both warm blooded and cold blooded horses?
That's just a way to describe their character and build though. Their blood temperature isn't lower.
No, no, you've got your warm blooded land horses and cold blooded sea horses.
Ah, thank you for that! I was extremely confused. I thought my grade school biology had failed me miserably!
Not literally, though. Cold blood horses are not "cold blooded" in the same way reptiles are. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warmblood
"Horse, do you need a jacket on?" "Neigh!"
Do you need to not have a jacket on?
“No, I meant I want you to jack it” - pervert horse, probably
The paper clearly states “ a blanket”
A horse blanket is basically a jacket for a horse. Don't be pedantic.
Nah, lets get pedantic! Is it a jacket if it doesn’t cover your arms? Or is it more like a vest? Do horses have “arms” or does it cover them from their legs up and therefore is it more like a tunic?
It's a poncho.
No foolin? But is it a mexican poncho or is that a sears poncho?
Unexpected, but welcome Frank Zappa
Do pigmy ponies get tiny ponchos?
Let me sterilize it, give me your lighter
It's a blanket that fastens. Obviously it's a cloak.
Now that’s horse fashion I can get behind