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Can You Potty Train a Cow?
sciencehabit writes "Think potty training a child is hard? Try teaching a cow when and where to do its business. The bovines can defecate nine to 16 times daily, creating big hygiene problems on dairy and beef farms. So cueing the animals to go in the right place would be a big help for managing manure. But past techniques—including training cows to respond to mild electric shocks—have proven ineffective or impractical for wide use. To see if they could come up with a better potty prompt, scientists tested a series of stimuli on a dozen Holstein cows. The milkers stood in or walked through a footbath filled with water, for example, or had air or water sprayed on their feet. Alas, '[n]one of our tests reliably stimulated defecation,' the team reports."
I love when the headline question is answered right there in the summary.
Ladies and gentlemen: Slashdot in 2013.
From the summary: [quote]The bovines can defecate nine to 16 times daily, creating big hygiene problems on dairy and beef farms[/quote]
Farmers are interested in two things above all the rest: costs and production. So my guess is that it's not about hygiene, but about lowering costs. Although mildly interesting from a science point of view, this research is of course mainly to lower costs and then I think to myself: divine bovine, please shit where you stand.
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
Why should bovine defecate on one same place? That's another ill-minded human stupidity. Cows evolved chewing GRASS, not CORN on the field. And field needs composting EVERYWHERE. Isn't that obvious? The only species that doesn't fit right are humans. Other beings live in harmony with Nature.
The researchers could do far worse than consult the sub-continental experts on the other side of the planet.
Use ISO 8601 dates [YYYY-MM-DD]
The key is control of the bowel moo-vements.
A friend of mine often took her parrot on her finger and shook her hand to make it poo.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
It's not nearly so bad for dairy cows as it is for steer, and even steer get some sun. You're thinking of pigs and chickens - they're the ones that are most severely abused and are generally kept in dark cages indoors for their entire lives.
If this is successful we should try to apply this on human subjects.
http://pix11.com/2013/02/13/feces-all-over-the-floor-carnival-cruise-nightmare-continues-for-trapped-passengers/#axzz2KxRLOguE
Maybe if they gave each of the cows more space to roam, and they ate grass instead of corn, it might not be so bad for them, the "farmers", and for the consumer
Manure management? What manure management? That's a byproduct of factory farming. Just obey the law of nature and you can be as successful as any factory farmer and protect the environment.
Someone needs to come up with a system where the cows receive a reward immediately upon defacating in the nominated area. I.e. When the cow stands on the grate facing the right way and drops a pat, some tasty treats appear in a bowl at mouth level. Other cows which are ready to drop and wanting their reward would hustle any cubicle-occupiers out of the area, ensuring a good level of throughput and discouraging the cows from hanging around in the toilets like naughty schoolchildren (minus cigarettes)
Fuck meat and diary consumers.
Think of the trees !
Nappies, that solves it.
There is no way in hell a cow is going to poop in a specific place. They crap everywhere, constantly. It's just their response to most events.
Many a time a cow raised its posture, stared me directly in the eyes, and then crapped itself with a defiant glare.
No shit Sherlock
but they go there anyway. So I trained the dogs to only chase the chickens when they go on the deck and pool. That works pretty good if the dogs are outside. One of the chickens flew out of the back yard the other day and a big crow cornered her in a hydrangea at the front of the house. I came to see what all the commotion was and scared the crow away. The chicken waddled behind me into the back yard and she hasn't flown out since.
This research smells like a future Ig Nobel:
http://www.improbable.com/ig/
You can imagine why. It takes a lot of time with intelligent beings, aka toddlers. It will very likely take much more with cows.
Maybe cow napkins can help, just like they use to do with horses involved in parades!
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
From the abstract, it sounds as if they made no attempt at all to train the cows -- they were just seeing what would stimulate a cow to poop with no training at all. Or, they were seeing what's the least that counts as a master's thesis! A much more interesting question.
Seems like the obvious solution would involve herding them into the right place and then have a portly Texan setup a BBQ in front.. or maybe that bengal tiger from Life of Pi would do the trick.
Not sure how it would affect milk yields though.
That would be slightly disgusting, but hey, if screwing with meat floats your boat....
Personally I don't mind animals suffering for my pleasure - in fact, looking at my gadgets and my way of living, I'd go as far as apparently, I don't mind humans suffering for my pleasure. I wear clothes produced by cheap labor in India, I use computers produced by cheap labor in China, I eat meat produced under horrible conditions; however, it does make my life pretty nice.
Speaking of cows I need a Red Bull. Okay to answer their question before they wasted the time, no it can't be done for a simple reason. Grazing animals are hardwired to go at will. Notice how pet animals tend to be animals that have dens or burrows? Evolution has adapted them to this condition so they go in one location so they don't soil their dens. Predators have the same ability even when they don't den. Primates do it as well probably because of tree dwelling origins. Evacuating bowels requires muscles that in upright animals is used in locomotion as well as four legged animals on the move as in stalking prey. Notice horses don't go a gallop. I guess you could keep the cows on a treadmill but it would cause severe problems if they kept it up too long. I'm sure over thousands of years they could adapt but it's a waste of time. Let them roam in a field they way they were adapted to live. They'll perfect engineered meat and milk long before you could adapt a cow. I even managed in my caffeine deprived state to get it back onto a Slashdot subject, engineered meat. That's the real solution to the waste problem not teaching cows to cross their legs.
Do cows have any control over their droppings at all? IIRC they do not have a sphincter that could be controlled consciously. Isn't it more like it comes out simply according to the cows bowel movements?
bickerdyke
as a child I visited a farm in France, the cows were gathered in a covered concreted area, the farmer called "aller vite vite vite", the cows would then defecate. The gates were opened and the cows returned to the fields. A motorized boom then scrapped the shit into a slurry pit.
I'm pretty sure the cows still crapped every where else but to a 10 year old kid the whole process was pretty amazing.
And yet none of you seem to care about all the innocent grasses and shrubs that are saved from wholesale slaughter due to the unbridled savagery that are free-range cows.
Of course corn, being the evil little bitch that it is, holds exception. It simply deserves to be eaten by those death camp Nazi cattle.
Fuck herbivores.
As for other meat, virtually all dairy and meat cattle in the UK and Ireland lives outdoors in fields as the seasons permit. Veal is virtually taboo these days though I would not be surprised if animals are exported for consumption on the continent. Sheep live outdoors. Pigs may or may not, but again there are free range choices. My parents live near a pig farm and the animals all live in large outdoor pens.
I'm sure also that the various organic / soil association type organisations supplement the legal definition with their own criteria that members must follow. So vote with your wallet. Getting all precious that people eat meat is not going to change anything.
I lost any respect I ever might have had for bovine kind when I witnessed the miracle of life one day. A newborn calf so fresh it was still wet stumbled gingerly up to Momma, looking for a teat to suck.
The calf approached from the rear, and right as it got in range, BLAAAAAAAAAAAAT!!! Moma took a huge steaming crap right on widdle baby's head.
It was OK though. While the crap was still dribbling out, she unleashed a fire hose of urine right in the calf's face and washed most of the crap off. Momma cows care, people. Momma cows care!
Readers Digest said so in the 70s
Bart: Uh dad... I don't think the dog can handle anymore bacon.
Homer: Looks like he's about ready for another squeezing.
I have noticed that people wearing boots (especially if a size to big, so it acts as a funnel) with short pants or with pants inside (versus hanging over) the boot tend to see the veal take a shit right in there if standing behind one. Seriously it ain't funny anymore.
I keep a cow in my front yard. The shit keeps the neighborhood kids off my lawn. That's humane for the cow.
But, with all the broken toys, beer bottles and the rusty Chevy up on cinder blocks, the neighbors do refer to my front lawn as a Death Camp.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
"Rinder-Roulette"
http://www.usinger-land-extra.de/allgemeine-seiten/artikel.html?tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=4450&cHash=1b37101e2f
That would be slightly disgusting, but hey, if screwing with meat floats your boat....
Personally I don't mind animals suffering for my pleasure - in fact, looking at my gadgets and my way of living, I'd go as far as apparently, I don't mind humans suffering for my pleasure. I wear clothes produced by cheap labor in India, I use computers produced by cheap labor in China, I eat meat produced under horrible conditions; however, it does make my life pretty nice.
There is an old saying: two wrongs don't make a right.
We are conscious of our actions and can therefore exercise control over what we choose to consume. Food is one of our most basic requirements for survival but meat is a luxury, and demonstrably not necessary to function in society. Choosing a vegetarian lifestyle will help put an end to the needless suffering of animals, and is a "good" choice for many other reasons including sustainability and the environment.
Peace,
Andy.
have i stumbled on an alternate gizmodo?
"Notice how pet animals tend to be animals that have dens or burrows?"
What does that say about mothers and their basements?
I take it you have actually never been to a dairy farm?
Here's some pics:
pic1
pic2
Most farms keep the cow's inside for 9 months and outside on pasture for 3 months when they are dry. Inside usually consists of barns with 14' or so open sides or more in warmer climates (ie, in California it is basically just a roof). Cows are not tied up and are free to roam around there pen or pasture depending.
There is an old saying: two wrongs don't make a right.
Lying is wrong. Breaking the law is wrong. Lying to the Nazi's about how you are illegally keeping Anne Frank in your attic is right. Sometimes two wrongs can make a right.
However, I agree with you. Animals should be treated better and vegetarianism is a noble choice.
Now if only we combined the wrongs associated with our penchant for meat-eating, the wrongs of our love of processed foods and the wrongs of our genetically engineering without long-term testing to make some mass-produced, tasty meat-in-a-lab, and we might be able to turn meat eating into right as well...
Big apple, new Yorik, undig it, something's unrotting in Edenmark.
Choosing a vegetarian lifestyle will help put an end to the needless suffering of animals, and is a "good" choice for many other reasons including sustainability and the environment.
And choosing a pompous lifestyle where you constantly push your views on others without being prompted is a "good" choice for many reasons too, including not making friends, being despised and unloved, and generally being a prick to those around you in the environment.
I'm going to get vegetarians and vegans up in arms, but we already treat cows as an industrial product. Why bother trying to get them to defecate with external stimuli. Just go all the way and solve it technically. Just attach a tube to the rectum and pump the manure away to a storage area. Neat and clean.
Don't want the product to suffer? Alter the brain chemistry with pharmaceuticals, so the product is unaware of its condition.
# touch universe # chmod +rwx universe #
The methane is odorless, the smell comes from other chemicals and bacteria, By covering the waste to capture methane you would also reduce odor pollution too.
Once the methane has been extracted what remains is a great organic fertilizer.
It is not as sexy as windmills and solar arrays but it is a good viable path. But, alas, USA is never going to go this path. The hydraulic fracking breakthrough has dropped the price of natural gas so low, now it is not worth capturing methane to sell off. Only if there is any kind of credit for not emitting the methane into the atmosphere, odor pollution abatement and value of organic fertilizer works out farmers will invest on this low tech solution. Pond the waste, cover it with thick plastic, capture the gas, separate the methane, and chimney up the noxious pollutants. The break even cost was working out to a dairy farm of at least 1000 cows at the height of oil price spike. Now it is likely to be at 4000 or 5000 cows. Practically impossible in USA.
It would be a great boon for India and China though. Hope it works out
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Actually its the lack of shade at the CAFOs that adds to the misery. Whoever thought of this research is exhibiting the same logic and insight that led them to perpetrate CAFOs in the first place. Cows can't be trained that way. Even I know cows well enough to know that.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
Evacuating bowels requires muscles that in upright animals is used in locomotion as well as four legged animals on the move as in stalking prey.
This doesn't explain why you can fart whilst running for a bus... Cracks me up every time.
So plants should suffer instead? Have you seen how they grow plants these days? Most of them don't ever get to put their roots in soil, but are grown on horrible artificial conditions!
Where does your do good end? Is your clothes made under proper sustainable conditions? How about your computer? Your car? Furniture?
If I had the money to live "right", I'd (probably) do it, but for me to live the way I want, someone has to suffer. Sure I could forgo the telly, the car, the flushing toilet - I could probably live on vegs for a decade or two before dying from malnutrition. (Oh did someone just say vitamin supplement? You know what suffered to make those pills? Pigs.)
Spare me the feel good, do-gooder bullshit. You might think you are doing it right, but fact is, people, plants and animals are suffering just the same for you to live your way.
And the girls asks "So what do you do for a living?" ...
Despite the obvious troll, I am compelled to reply. Everything I want to say is here. I especially like: "Every year millions of animals are killed by wheat and soy bean combines during harvesting season".
Do you grow all of your own food? No, you don't, so you also contribute to animal suffering on an industrial scale. I guess living 'sustainably' and making a 'good' choice is all well and good so long as you aren't too inconvenienced by it. Once it's too inconvenient, you are only too happy to have small animals fed to the harvester for your comfort and enjoyment.
Hypocrite.
each walking from pasture to their own little barn.
I'm sure it's just a matter of time before these cows master pottying (as cats can use toilets).
Shocking them, however, isn't the way... Maybe import some good Swiss cow trainers...?
You are a fucking moron.
a maths professor and a spherical cow.
Can you train your pet scorpion not to sting you? No you cannot.
Free range bovine!
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Grazing animals are hardwired to go at will.
Alpacas don't fit that criteria.
I wonder if Red Bull would make them defecate?
That would be slightly disgusting, but hey, if screwing with meat floats your boat....
Personally I don't mind animals suffering for my pleasure - in fact, looking at my gadgets and my way of living, I'd go as far as apparently, I don't mind humans suffering for my pleasure. I wear clothes produced by cheap labor in India, I use computers produced by cheap labor in China, I eat meat produced under horrible conditions; however, it does make my life pretty nice.
There is an old saying: two wrongs don't make a right.
We are conscious of our actions and can therefore exercise control over what we choose to consume. Food is one of our most basic requirements for survival but meat is a luxury, and demonstrably not necessary to function in society. Choosing a vegetarian lifestyle will help put an end to the needless suffering of animals, and is a "good" choice for many other reasons including sustainability and the environment.
Peace, Andy.
It doesn't seem like the he thinks mistreating animals and people is right, is more like he just doesn't care if they are mistreated as long as his food is delicious and electronics are cheap.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
Then bastards like you eat the food of my food.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
The study is flawed, it treats defecation as the problem. Poop is the problem, defecation is the solution.
"What a piece of work is a cow! how now in reason!
how infinite in lactation! in form and moooving how
express and admoooable...''
~Captain Jean Luc Picard, USS Enterprise: Cow Greeting, Alpha Prime
Bovidae in Absurdiae Gloria. Being a treatise on sundry bovidae topics as: Cow Greetings. Cow Banners. Also may contain capricious claptrap. codswallop. and flapdoodle.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
If this is possible, people may use this it fix the cow patty bingo game normally found at county fairs.
The Brown Note, anyone?
Is my calendar broken? Is it April 1 already?
Popisms.com - Connecting pop culture
I didn't make it to the top of the food chain to eat carrots and kale.
And besides... I'd rather eat meat that deal with the case of smug that pollutes the earth from becoming a vegetarian. As bad as Athiests, left/right wing nutjobs or extreme religious wackos.
You want to name the number one reason Vegetarianism will never be big? That is it. I love eating cute things... but I hate the attitude of extremists more. I'd rather deal with suicide bombers.
If enough people chose to become vegetarians then yes, fewer animals will die for food, but they will still be culled and disposed off. Or do you expect farmers to keep cows as pets?
As for suffering, does being locked in a barn lead to more suffering then being allowed to roam freely while being chased by wolves and bears?
Did somone wake up and say lets come up with a wierd question that the answer is NO? Why not post... Can we drink Cat Milk?
If that doesn't work you can bop the cow on the head with a rolled up newspaper and rub its nose in it.
You're thinking of pigs and chickens ... generally kept in dark cages indoors for their entire lives.
One of reasons that pigs are raised in small pens and cows are not, is because it is easy to potty train a pig. They will instinctively defecate as far as possible from their food trough. They are sometimes kept as indoor pets, and can be trained to use a newspaper or litter box with less effort than training a puppy to do the same.
I actually do grow a significant portion of my family's food. Maybe one-quarter of the meat and 1/10th the vegetables. We could make that 100% of our meat and maybe one-quarter of our vegetables, but there would be no variety in our diet. Even the small portion of our diet I produce is a lot of work. Why do I bother? Simple: I developed an interest in how my food was produced. Toured a livestock feedlot (ie. finishing), a chicken operation, and a pig operation. Both from an animal suffering and an environmental impact point-of-view, I was...disappointed. Frankly, it is hard for me to imagine a way that these sorts of enterprises could be made acceptable.
Pastured livestock operations, which I've been periferally involved in most of my life, can certainly be done with an arguably positive environmental impact and a minimum of animal suffering. That's what I've been concentrating on. It's work and I've definitely lost a fair bit of money doing it.
One point I've come to realize is that annual crop production (grain, vegetables, and most fruit) is an environmental nightmare. With the exception of tree- and perennial-based production, there simply isn't a way to produce plant food that doesn't involve killing most of the other plant species on your food production plot. Sure you can cover-crop and under-sow, but you still have bare-ground for a significant part of the year. Mulching just smothers all the plants outside your crop rows. Permaculture is interesting, but I'm not sure how realistic it is outside of temperature regions.
It bothers me a lot to think about this, so I try not to.
I managed to potty train my fat wife.
Do American meat and dairy cows even exist in the wild? I'd expect if we were a 100% vegetarian country that those species would become extinct.
You train dogs to eliminate on demand. Having cows do the same is actually more humane.
Why? One can monitor the stool and if anything is up the animal can be treated faster instead of letting it suffer for weeks on end. Every time I let my dogs out, I'm not to far away from where they do their business so I can monitor if they are having any trouble or if there is something present I should be concerned about (worms/ blood in stool). Another advantage is you can clean up any mess from the animal using the restroom and keep it in a cleaner environment.
Beware of those who profit off the docile and persecute the unbelievers.
If they can make a camera that looks like elephant dung (Elephants - Spy in the Herd` 2003) and machines that mow the lawn.
How difficult can it be do make a robot that runs around the prairie scooping up cowshit automatically?
really? potty train cows, or build a machine to scoop shit...
hell, considering what you could get the costs down to, implant a sensor on each cows ass that detects a fecal event, and spits out the gps location-- per unit you could likely get them down to less than $100 per cow, it would be comparable to branding them, the gps tracker could be used in other ways, and recycled to the next cow with battery changes & sterilization on the point of final processing....
.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
A buddy at work made this comparison....
A person in New York City is like a chicken on a high stocking density farm.
A person in The Walking Dead is like a chicken in the wild.
So there!
Since there wouldn't be any market for their mean, my guess is that some of the cows might be turned loose to survive as best they can. So they'd exist in the wild for a few years.
" Another advantage is you can clean up any mess from the animal using the restroom and keep it in a cleaner environment."
My dog uses the toilet and flushes afterwards. Just with the brush handle he has some problems.
My Aunt in Wyoming has a Cow that thinks it's a dog. Long story short, her daughter thought the calf was getting too cold in the barn, they have a large house and the aunt caved to let the calf come into the house during the winter. The calf made friends with the dogs, and followed their every move, including going outside to defecate.
Now the calf has grown into a Cow, and still comes inside with the dogs (They don't use air conditioning and keep doors open during the summer, the house is a flipping barn). It still is potty trained and will not go inside the house.
The answer is, you CAN potty train a cow / calf on an individual basis. So many of these problems would be solved if you would get out into the field and talk to some ranchers / rural hillbillies. /Yes my family is weird, I have accepted this and moved far away from them.
> Standing still in a small area with no access to sun light or stimuli isn't enough.
> Now you have to shit on order and be semi-tortured into doing so.
Wait, are we talking about cube-farm offices here?
I felt like everyone kind of missed the obvious joke.
To many vegetarians would mean the end of rain forest.
I actually do grow a significant portion of my family's food. Maybe one-quarter of the meat and 1/10th the vegetables.
25% and 10% are now considered "significant" amounts of something?
"I'm not sure I like the fugnutish tone you used in your post!" -RogL (608926)-
Wow I thought you were a monster before, but now it seems that you think animals are non-sentient 8-(
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Fuck sanctimonious children on Slashdot.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Let them roam in a field they way they were adapted to live. They'll perfect engineered meat and milk long before you could adapt a cow.
Or we could tear down fences and install more Bison, and let them roam free. Then when you wanted some meat you could just plug one. As a "side" benefit they will help extend grasslands.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You should see what I went through with Eric, my fish.
Actually I think he thinks plants live on a cellular level and animals on a central nervous system. If you take out the central nervous system in an animal it will no longer feel pain. If you chop up a plant it still feels pain. You can take a branch off a plant and put it in water and it will still live or grow it into another plant (depending on the plant). You cant cut the leg off a pig, cow or chicken and grow another animal from it. So when you are asking someone to be humane your asking the them to be nice to the lifeform that can scream the loudest.
You're more like an "animal torturer" than you realize. You personify animals. The only difference is that the "animal torturer" enjoys the supposed suffering, while you are bothered by it. Either way is illogical.
So what if they ARE sentient?
What makes you think plants aren't sentient? As sibling points out, you are on the side of the one that screams the loudest, not the one that wants to live the most.
Personally I don't care whether it's one way or the other, fact is, we humans need to eat meat, we have evolved into these "monsters" as you think of "us".
And if you think I'm a monster, well thank you, I'll take that as a compliment coming from someone that are so full of hot air, they could be used for weather services...
But you never responded to my question, how much leather did you say you use on a daily basis? In fact, how exactly do you get about your daily chores without abusing animals? Do tell, because I'm truly dumbfounded when it comes to figuring out how you do-gooders manage to not hurt any of mother earths precious animals when you live your life.
This is a tired and absurd argument. If you care about the suffering plants, you
Also, let's be real. People chop up live plants in their kitchen every day with out a second thought. Many fewer people would chop up a live animal in their kitchen with out a second thought and that's because plants != animals. I've heard that plants have an ultrasonic "scream" when cut. Okay, but animals have a very distinct sonic scream when cut, that's quite a bit louder. If you get a choice of which groups "suffers" - plants or animals - why would you pick the group with clearly documented central nervous systems? Are you telling me that you would feel the same picking blueberries as you would when killing a chicken?
Also, your general approach seems to be "You can't be perfect, so you shouldn't try at all!". I think that's flawed logic.
A point about "where does the good end": Deciding to eat plants instead of animals is (no pun intended) the 'low hanging fruit' in my mind. It's one of the easier things I can do to improve conditions for others, not to mention myself.
Out of curiosity, from a scientific point of view, I wonder if you have any pets. I wonder just because I've found that people who really appreciate the company of pets like cats and dogs, tend to be more open to vegetarianism or veganism.
See if you can get the cows to control defecation for a strong stimulus.
If that doesn't work, then your hosed. If it does, then you have a starting point.
So prove the premise, then develop, doing the other way arounf can be a huge waste of time.
there has to be some physiological activities to take place before they defecate. why don't they monitor the animal and find out the signals that are occurring. Then they might at least have an opportunity to react to it. Like maybe a Bluetooth transponder that summons a little poop bot ....I'm just sayin'
"The world is moving so fast these days that the man who says it can't be done is generally interrupted by someone doing
I do eat meat, so this is just a fact correction: We don't need to eat meat. As we are evolutionary omnivores, it is more difficult to get a balanced diet without it, and meat tastes good - but it is perfectly possible to get a good diet without any kind of animal product - and assuming you spend the effort to do so, it is likely you'll be more healthy in the long run, as consumption of meat is correlated with a number of diseases. And you don't need to use vitamin supplements to do so. However, if you do choose to take them, there's a wide variety of vegan ones available; I have no idea where you got the idea that pigs suffer to make vitamin supplements.
If we can take grain + yeast and get beer, then why can't we design a yeast-variant that produces milk? After all, grass and wheat are very similar.
Of course we might not get all the complex proteins and enzymes required to make good cheese - but it should be possible to get a perfectly decent product for putting in coffee, making ice-cream, and pouring over cereal. A cow is a terribly inefficient way to convert grass into milk - we should be able to do better.
Note, we've gotten to this strange point where people think any mention of WWII evokes Godwin's Law. The law was originally intended to stop unthinking analogies, not apt analogies, nor, as in this case, contextualized ethical examples or moral dilemmas.
Thus, I am forced to hereby invent and evoke a new law: Greenwald's Law.
Big apple, new Yorik, undig it, something's unrotting in Edenmark.
Here in Sweden many cows are free during a while in the summer. I don't know whatever all are. I know for sure some aren't as soon as it's possible and for as long as possible.
But since it's Sweden we are talking about summers aren't that long anyway.
What I hate even more though is meat from Brazil which is sold at about 2/3 the cost of Swedish meat and yeah, they are grass feed for sure, good for them. Too bad they had to cut down the rain forest and just grow grass on the ground instead though ..
Yeah. More better! Possibly not.
Then bastards like you eat the food of my food.
It's my food stupid.
Also this is waste of space, two comments even.
I'm not a vegan or anything but you said you have no problem whatsoever with animals or even humans suffering for your enjoyment. That's what makes you a monster.
Our best scientific knowledge suggests that plants do not have nervous systems, never mind brains.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
If you chop up a plant it still feels pain.
[citation needed]
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
This story is total bullshit, if you ask me.
I learned from a friend who read a book (true story), that a good portion of the USA's greenhouse gases are from raising cattle. But it doesn't HAVE to be that way -- the cows are releasing a lot of methane because they have a hard time digesting the food industrial farms give them; corn.
Since the corn tears up their stomachs, they are given antibiotics. Another factoid is that if they weren't slaughtered in 2 years, they'd probably die anyway from the ravages of their diet. But that works out conveniently, because "Mad Cow" was never eradicated -- they just started a policy of not allowing the Bulls to live beyond 18 months; mad cow doesn't develop, problem solved.
So the whole "pooping in the wrong place" problem is due to not being in a grass field -- where it isn't a problem. The Green House gases problem is due to cows not eating grass. And so is the mad cow disease (not being fed other cows). Add on the bacteria resistance, hormones and other deleterious elements of modern beef on the human diet -- and we've got a situation where almost all the problems we face with cows are due to the unnatural nature of how we raise them.
That would still leave the many gallons of water to produce one pound of beef. We're better off raising Ostriches.
If Famers had to pay a "methane" tax -- we'd solve this issue in a year.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
Oh for fucks sake animals are not people. We need to treat animals like animals. Humans are the apex species, and anthropomorphizing to the point of being "humane" is probably a human pathology.
Your only semi-valid point is monitoring for infections, but it's not really valid when they already take blood samples for better and faster indicators than feces.
But let me guess, your dogs walk in front of you.
Plants don't have nervous systems.
Also, given the conversion rate of energy to biomass, For every 1 unit of animal-based food you used up 10 units of plant-based food. Anything "bad" you may think of in regards to plants is nullified by the fact that by eating meat, it's 10 times worse.
The Internet King? I wonder if he could provide faster nudity.
Never stand behind a coughing cow.
Hey, Mom! Is it beer, yet?
Not all beef and dairy comes from concentration-camp-style factory farms.
http://www.certifiedhumane.org/
Fuck idiots that don't do their research.
A treadmill wouldn't work forever. Dogs if left on a treadmill long enough and they have to go bad enough WILL soil themselves WHILE running. I would imagine horses and cows are the same.
From the paper's abstract
"None of our tests reliably stimulated defecation, which seemed to occur most when cows were exposed to novelty."
Going to www.novelties.com redirects to www.bobbleheads.com, so we can only conclude that the study needs more bobbleheads (it has enough cowbell, I think).
Gross.
Fuck meat and diary consumers./quote>
Well, if you're on slashdot, your chances are slim to none...
Have they tried squeezing them? I'm imagining something resembling a car wash, but with giant foam cow squeezers instead of brushes.
Grazing animals are hardwired to go at will.
This is not necessarily true. These people have done it, and say that training a young horse to go outside to relieve herself was actually easier than with their dogs.
Captcha is "meadow," which is a good place to pee.
It's a product. They even bag it and sell it. I heard that in Argentina they "solve" this problem by rotating the fields between grazing and agricultural production. The combination of nitrogen fixing plants and cattle grazing restores the fertility of the fields. IIRC, it was 7 years of grazing and one or two years of corn growing per cycle. The only way we get continuous corn production is by dumping massive quantities of petrochemical fertilizer on GMO'd crops.
Cow poop a problem? No. It's a solution.
If potty training a cow is like potty training a child, where you teach them to only go on the potty, maybe not.
If potty training a cow is like potty training a dog, where you teach them not to go potty in the house, it can definitely be done.
We had a series of family cows, and I didn't like the mess they made in the barn, so I started training them not to urinate or defecate in the barn. It took some time, but it was pretty successful. It isn't that hard. She gives a pretty definite warning when she is about to make a mess. She lifts her tail. That's when you shoo her out of the barn and wait for her to finish her business. Then let her back in and finish milking. It only takes a few weeks before she usually does her business before the milking or after.
I found the Jerseys learned much quicker than the Holstein.
...keep looking, Watson!
Meat is absolutely not a luxury. Vegetarian diets are unsustainable without supplementation through artificial means. Everything about our anatomy tells us that we are omnivores, not herbivores. Unlike herbivores, we have a simple stomach which can't break down the majority of common plant matter, and we lack a cecum to process cellulose with. Our bodies aren't even capable of producing all 20 amino acid groups; we have to get most of them in an already existing form which is usually meat, unless you take artificial or at least exotic supplements. And even then, the amino acid groups found in these plant based supplements aren't quite as good as those found in meat.
Also indigenous tribes that live off of 80%+ meat diets are known to have longer natural lifespans than all others. These would include the American Inuit and Australian aboriginals. It wasn't until Europeans came into their land that their lifespans declined quickly due to disease. Another thing you can observe is that American natives, who again consumed large amounts of meat, are now eating European diets which consist of mostly plant matter, and are frequently overweight and diabetic. We've had a long period to adapt to this kind of food, but they haven't.
One really bad food that we eat in huge abundance is bread. Wheat is actually not very nourishing, and the gluten it contains is rather toxic to our intestines (but most of us can tolerate it.) The advantage of bread is that it is relatively cheap and is filling, but it isn't really something we should be eating.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
Just to chip in here on your statement that annual crop production and environmental nightmare. Vegetarianism is NOT environmentally friendly. In general, growing plants that humans can eat directly requires lots of what farmers call "inputs". These include lots of water, fertilizers, etc. Trying to grow these crops on land that is better suited for grass is a bad deal in many ways. There is simply no way you can feed the worlds population on vegetarian foods without killing the environment. Most land is better suited for grass and the most environmentally friendly thing you can do is eat herbivores that are fed on that grass.
Have you ever been on a hog farm? They aren't kept in dark cages their entire lives or even a large portion of it. Modern farming practices allow them to stay dry & clean, give them access to clean water and provide them with a clean, balanced diet that's geared towards optimum muscle growth. That's a hell of a lot better than the old days where they would roll around in their own shit & mud while eating whatever they happened to find in the pen. It's why your chances of getting Trichinosis is a lot lower today if your cook didn't properly prepare a meal.
Well, if you're on slashdot, your chances are slim to none...
lol! :D
Well, for sure can't fuck vegans - They are all freaks! Can't fuck meat eaters either.
I'm screwed. Not. But yes. Never. Damn.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1998/08/980806090010.htm
Depends how you define meat. Many people limit it to beef, mutton, pork, goat, and poultry. Basically warm blooded animals.
You can avoid eating these with no problems, you just have to eat a lot of fish or insects.
The AU aborigines you mention lived in a pretty tough environment and ate damn near anything that wasn't actually poisonous.
Insects, and for the coastal tribes fish and shellfish, were a significant part of their diet. (Insects are actually a very good source of protein.)
I'm guessing that wasn't on their radar screen...
That's hardly the same thing as animal pain. A plant has no nervous system or brain. Plant pain is closer to the chemical response in a self-sealing fuel cell than animal pain.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I got it. Start your own cricket farm. Protein with ease! And it doesn't take up much space.
Memory is deceptive because it is colored by today's events. - Albert Einstein
I think the only problem is there isn't enough space. People want to have a yard, and a house (at least where I live). It appears as if a lot of people don't like living in a cramped apartment with no space. I can't tell you what drives people to want to live in New York though I guess. Anyway, so if your free range needs so much space per cow; where you getting it?
People have told me I'm crazy, but I think we should invest in "food Scyscrapers". So farm/scientist that knows more about what plants need what soil, and crop rotation make a scyscrapper green house. You water at the top, and it filters down the layers. Footprint is smaller, and you can have multiple "farms" stacked. I'm sure people will call me crazy here too.
Memory is deceptive because it is colored by today's events. - Albert Einstein
Almond or soy milk.
Thanks for adding to the discussion.
Certainly, annual crop production is nightmarish, environmentally speaking, whether we eat the result directly or, even worse, feed it to an animal and then eat the animal. Perennial production does look like it has some promise. This discussion got me to revisit some of my permaculture books on the shelf, and checking the local tree nursery catalogs. I actually think, even in my climate, that one could grow the bulk of their diet in an agroforestry operation. Basically, pasture (for sheep or cattle) broken by rows or patches of fruit and nut trees.
We're already started in this direction, but as a result of this discussion, we're going to commit to an additional 30 trees this spring. (That's about the most that one can get started while holding down a full-time job.)
Wow! Something positive resulting from a Slashdot discussion.
I can't validate this as being true, but family stories of my great-grandfather, a simple pig farmer in Montana, was able to condition and train his cows to crap in the barn. He also grew corn to feed to his pigs, and even encouraged having beavers on his land to create dams. He always sold every pig at auction, sometimes as a larger profit than other pig farmers.
How? The secrets died with him.
Your ideas clearly differ:
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Still true.
Sure I've been.
9+3 months may be correct here to. I don't know exactly.
I don't live in California.
The bottom one here says newly built. The one I've been in hasn't looked like that. Each cow have their spot here to but at least it's bright and looks rather clean:
http://www.lansstyrelsen.se/halland/Sv/lantbruk-och-landsbygd/lantbruk/utbildning-och-radgivning/Pages/Okad_djurvalfard.aspx
Maybe not as good as the Californian one but still pretty good.
I can't find any good pictures because googling for the Swedish word for farmyard mostly brings up a bunch of kid toys and what not.
But the ones I'm used to seeing are things similar though maybe a little bigger than this:
http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fil:Estlandssvensk_bondg%C3%A5rd_p%C3%A5_Nuck%C3%B6_i_augusti_1993..jpg
Which is rather small scale. And old. Maybe in this case bigger is better rather than the opposite.
The brightness here seem more correct to what I would expect:
http://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/article16233191.ab
http://www.expressen.se/kvp/trillingar-i-baset-pa-bondgard-i-knislinge/
http://sverigesradio.se/diverse/appdata/isidor/images/news_images/3762/2372613_520_292.jpg
This is about what I typically would expect from a Swedish farm yard:
http://www.expressen.se/noje/hanna-mjolkar-efter-karleken/
These of similar style to what you linked actually seem like a better idea, at least if the interior looks like this:
http://www.cover-all.se/djurstallar.htm
I don't know if something such would be used during winter time to or not. I guess it's a pain to heat it up. Very little insulation and huge space?
Guess newer is better:
http://www.soderasensmiljoforbund.se/Tillstaandspliktig-djurhaallning.htm
And I guess maybe those ugly closed sheds actually may be better because they are newer, still look rather boring to me:
http://gunnarodsgard.skanemejerier.se/?p=2927
This is more similar to the one you linked to:
http://www.tectum.se/stalbyggnader/lantbruk/
This was a weird picture:
http://www.metro.se/nyheter/52-kor-dog-blixten-slog-ner-i-stangsel/Objhjz!17_3854-45/
It's cattle who has gone towards the fence during a lightning storm in Uruguay but then the lightning hit the fence and killed 52 of them.
Ã-rebro is 59Â 16â 26.2â N, 15Â 12â 48.1â E
Right in the middle of Hudson bay would be the same amount to the north over in north america.
By removing yourself from the market completely, you're giving up your ability to vote with your wallet to support farmers who actually care about their animals.
But the consequences of course isn't that a few animals get to live poor lifes due to my decision.
you would be out there supporting proper regulation of agriculture rather than just inflating your own ego at the expense of other people
That's you just filling in gaps in your knowledge with whatever you feel like.
you forgot the GALLONS of piss flowing out of the cow
but the thing that worries me is that if you teach a cow to control it's bowels you give it a weapon that it can use against humans.
just don't tell the us government or they'll pass laws requiring you to shit at certain times
the closest things in the animal world to humans are viruses