The Secret Life of Cows
ROSAMUND YOUNG
Some of my first memories are of one or other of my parents relating ‘stories’ that had occurred involving cows or pigs or hens or wild birds. I hope that I am continuing here what began as an oral tradition.
ROSAMUND YOUNG, KITE’S NEST FARM
AUTHOR NOTE: While putting this book together I was reminded that books have chapters. However, most of my anecdotes weave in and out of one another to form a narrative, making individual chapters unnecessary and cumbersome. Instead, headers between sections guide the reader through the text. This is a reissued edition of my book so I have had the opportunity to update some of the material. R.Y.
‘Nature teaches beasts to know their friends.’
SHAKESPEARE: Coriolanus, Act II, scene i
‘People watch with amazement a television programme on the social lives of elephants – their family groupings, affections and mutual help, their sense of fun – without realising that our own domestic cattle develop very similar lifestyles if given the opportunity.’
JOANNE BOWER, The Farm and Food Society
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Author note
Epigraph
Foreword by Alan Bennett
Introduction
The Secret Life of Cows
A little bit about ingenuity
Alice and Jim
Mothers and daughters
Jake
Unusual behaviour needs investigating
A little bit on names and more on grieving
A brief note about sleep
Different kinds of mooing
Cows make good decisions
Bovine friendships are seldom casual
But bulls are a different kettle of fish
Fat Hat II
Cows have preferences
Eye contact
Cows remember
A little bit about horses
A digression on sheep, and pigs and hens
Difficult calvings – cows are never wrong
Dizzy and her family
Something happens here every day …
Physical communication
Notes on grooming
A word about milk
Calf games
Amelia
Hens like playing
There’s another side to hens
Amelia again
A brief note on birds
Self-medication
Dorothy and her daughter, Little Dorothy
Twenty things you ought to know about cows
Twenty things you ought to know about hens
Twenty things you ought to know about sheep
Twenty things you ought to know
about pigs
Kite’s Nest Farm
Bibliography
About the Author
Copyright
Foreword
When I came across The Secret Life of Cows I thought the title was a joke. But it isn’t and it’s about exactly that. It’s a delightful book, though insofar as it reveals that cows (and indeed sheep and even hens) have far more awareness and know-how than they have ever been given credit for, it could also be thought deeply depressing, as it means entirely revising one’s view of the world.
Had the book been written simply by an enthusiast one could dismiss it as the work of a crackpot but Rosamund Young has been running her organic farm at Kite’s Nest in Worcestershire since before organics started. It’s a farm where the farm hands can tell from the taste alone which cow the milk comes from, and Young makes the case against factory farming more simply and compellingly than anyone I’ve read and wholly on grounds of common sense.
One curiosity about the book is that while the author goes into much detail about the behaviour of cows and their differences of temperament and outlook she never mentions any idiosyncrasies about when the cows go with the bull and whether their individuality, which she has made much of elsewhere, is still in evidence. Are some shyer than others? More flirty? It may be that her reticence in this regard is a measure of her respect for her charges with the feeling that cows are entitled to their privacy as much as their keepers.
Still it’s a book that alters the way one looks at the world, with dumb animals not as dumb as we would sometimes like to think. It’s a book that alters the way one sees things and passing a field of cows nowadays I find myself wondering about their friendships and their outlook, notions that before reading Young’s book I would have thought fanciful, even daft. Not any more.
ALAN BENNETT
Introduction
Watching cows and calves playing, grooming one another or being assertive, takes on a whole new dimension if you know that those taking part are siblings, cousins, friends or sworn enemies. If you know animals as individuals you notice how often older brothers are kind to younger ones, how sisters seek or avoid each other’s company, and which families always get together at night to sleep and which never do so.
Cows are as varied as people. They can be highly intelligent or slow to understand; friendly, considerate, aggressive, docile, inventive, dull, proud or shy. All these characteristics are present in a large enough herd and for many years we have been steadfast in our determination to treat our animals as individuals.
My mother and father started farming in their own right in 1953. My brother Richard was nearly three and I was twelve days old. To begin with they had five cows and an old tractor, no electricity and no telephone.
They gradually built up a herd of pedigree Ayrshires and also kept Wessex Saddleback pigs. There were enormous numbers of rabbits on the land, which made crop-growing impossible.
Financial incentives in those days depended on intensification; there was undisguised pressure from government departments for farmers to use every modern aid. My parents’ instincts were to be organic, although they had never heard the word, and the process of going against the official line happened gradually. From the start they both shared an absolute determination to make the lives of the animals in their care dignified and comfortable.
Some of my first memories are of one or other of my parents relating ‘stories’ that had occurred involving cows or pigs or hens or wild birds. I hope that I am continuing here what began as an oral tradition.
Cows are individuals, as are sheep, pigs and hens, and, I dare say, all the creatures on the planet however unnoticed, unstudied or unsung. Certainly, few would dispute that this is true of cats and dogs and horses. When we have had occasion to treat a farm animal as a pet, because of illness, accident or bereavement, it has exhibited great intelligence, a huge capacity for affection and an ability to fit in with an unusual routine. Perhaps everything boils down to the amount of time spent with any one animal – and perhaps that is true of humans too.
Everyone who keeps just a few animals will unquestionably know them as individuals and will probably talk about the finer points or idiosyncrasies of their natures with much understanding. Farmed animals are usually kept in large groups but this does not mean that individuality disappears. Their levels of intelligence vary just as much as is true of human beings.
No teacher would ever expect or want all the pupils in one class to be identical. No one would want to create a society in which everyone wore the same clothes or had the same hobbies. Just because we are not clever enough to notice the differences between individual spiders or butterflies, yellowhammers or cows is not a reason for presuming that there are none.
Animals and people can appear to lose their identities or become institutionalised if forced to live in unnatural, crowded, featureless, regimented or boring conditions. When this happens, it is not proof that individuals
are all the same or want to be treated as such.
Many people judge the comparative intelligence of different species by human standards. Yet why should human criteria have any relevance to other species? We should presume that every animal has a limitless ability to experience a whole range of emotions, judged only on its own terms. If a cow’s intelligence is sufficient to make her a success as a cow, what more could be desired?
If, when a young calf tries to eat some hay, it is repeatedly pushed away by bigger, stronger cattle and it then works out that by squeezing in under its mother’s chin it will be able to eat in peace, that seems to me an example of useful practical intelligence. What would be achieved by teaching the same calf to open a gate by pressing a button with its nose? Nothing.
During a lifetime observing cattle I have witnessed amazing examples of logical, practical intelligence and some cases of outright stupidity, both of which qualities I have also remarked in respect of human beings. Cattle merely get on with the day-to-day business of living, solving or failing to solve problems as they arise. The important point is that they should be given the wherewithal to succeed as animals, not as some inadequate servants of human beings.
The assertion I once noted in Star and Furrow magazine, that restricting a cow’s ability to move freely would, after a few generations, result in a 30 per cent reduction in brain size, ties in interestingly with our own observations. In the 1970s my parents noticed that their cows’ foreheads were getting wider and that the cows looked and indeed behaved more intelligently. Some ten or fifteen years later, and quite by chance, we were visited by a scientist who worked for one of the country’s largest zoos. He was exclusively occupied, and had been for the twenty years preceding the first acknowledged case of BSE, in examining and specifically measuring the craniums of dead animals. He had chronicled a relentless shrinking of brain size during this period and had concluded that it was caused entirely by what he described as the atrocious and probably BSE-infected food on which the animals were fed. I now consider it likely that the incarceration of the animals could be equally, if not more, to blame.
Meat quality also is affected by diet and freedom. There are higher levels of omega-3 polyunsaturated oils and a lower fat-to-protein ratio in meat from animals that enjoyed a wild diet in comparison to those reared in an intensive manner.
No one would expect a child to develop normally when kept in cramped, unfriendly conditions, deprived of parents and siblings and with restricted exercise and the same diet every day, yet many farmers and the government departments that inform them seem to expect farm animals to develop normally in such circumstances.
For many years we have noticed that if you give cows the opportunity and the time to choose between several alternatives – for instance between staying outside or coming in for shelter, or walking on grass or on straw or concrete, or a choice of diet – then they will choose what is best for them and they will not all choose the same thing.
A hen loves to run and investigate everything that moves, to spread its wings in the sun and preen its feathers and bathe in the dust. It must never be confined in a tiny cage or overcrowded building. The claim that some ‘free-range’ hens do not choose to venture outside even when the portholes are left open for them is quite invalid once it is realised that there isn’t always enough grass outside to make it worthwhile and that in large flocks hens at the bottom of the pecking order can become very intimidated and frightened to venture outside.
The mutilation of farm animals has its roots in propaganda, custom and thoughtless adherence to tradition and it cannot be justified on any grounds. The routine tail-docking and teeth-cutting of piglets, the debeaking of poultry and the tail-docking of sheep is indefensible.
If pigs bite or hens peck one another it is because they are unhappy, and if lambs’ tails get dirty – I have seen at first hand the misery of dealing with maggot-infested sheep – the cause needs to be addressed; it is not a solution to cut off the tail.
Making animals happy and allowing them to express their natural behavioural instincts is not just morally and ethically essential; it also makes sound financial sense. Happy animals grow faster.
Children under stress eat and sleep less well than those who are happy and relaxed. Unhappy children develop real and imaginary ailments such as headaches, eczema and weight problems. Stress can be reduced or eliminated by improving existing conditions. A change of environment or diet and more understanding or love all play their part; it is the same with animals.
It is misplaced conceit to believe that any man-made environment can equal or better the natural one. Piglets are often weaned when they are far too young and transferred to seemingly warm and safe accommodation. No artificially manufactured conditions can match the re assurance, stability, attention, companionship and appropriate food that nature provides. As a result, it is at this point that they frequently become ill and are given their first course of antibiotics.
Success in farming is increasingly measured in terms of output. High output figures are recorded and success is assumed if a female animal produces a large number of offspring within a short space of time. However, what is not taken into account is the fact that the almost constantly pregnant mother might well have a reduced life-span and will not have the opportunity to pass on to her progeny her own accumulated wisdom because of unnatural, forced weaning strategies. This increases the chances that future generations will be less know ledgeable and less well equipped to deal with maturity or motherhood themselves. This is farming for the short term.
Einstein said that ‘the only really valuable thing is intuition’. Instinct and intuition are the most useful tools any living creature possesses. Yet in virtually all intensive farm livestock enterprises they are ruthlessly suppressed and all possibility of their developing is blocked. We suppress instinct in animals and children at a huge risk to the whole community.
Wherever the pursuit of maximum profit has led to intensification it is the animals that have suffered most. Livestock diseases are often caused or exacerbated by overcrowding, inadequate housing and poor or dangerous feed quality. The living conditions created within these systems cause stress, and it is widely recognised that the production of stress hormones reduces the efficiency of the immune system.
Where cattle have adequate living space, freedom from competition for food, licence to roam freely and, above all, where they can live in family groups in which there is a preponderance of mature animals, immunity to lung and stomach worms can be established. This obviates the need for anthelmintics, which compromise the natural ability to resist such parasitic infections and can leave residues in meat and milk.
On farms where animals are grouped by age or size, they are deprived not only of health benefits, but also of the company of older animals, from whom, in a more natural environment, they would learn. Many cows live totally unnatural lives, and dairy cows in particular are much misused animals. Frequently regarded solely as providers of milk, most dairy cows are fed in such a way as to maximise their output. Often the high-protein diet takes no account of the cows’ preferences, physical or dietary requirements, comfort or long-term health. Immediately after being born, calves are usually forcibly taken from their mothers and reared in a variety of unnatural ways, or simply shot. They are often fed on a milk substitute, rather than the cows’ milk that is their birthright. They are frequently housed unsuitably in tiny, individual pens or kennels where they have no contact with others of their species. Some pens are permanently under cover, depriving the calves of fresh air, sunshine and exercise. Feeding regimes prevent calves from eating or drinking as and when they need to.
Lameness, which is often chronic, affects a large proportion of dairy cows and much of their life is spent walking and standing on unsuitable and uncomfortable surfaces. When cows are in pain they eat less, if at all, and frequently become infertile, as a result of which they are culled from the herd.
Many cows are kept permanently insid
e, often in very large numbers in so-called mega-dairies. Milking cows in these systems never graze grass, see a field or leave their area of confinement. The quality of the resultant milk is questionable; the quality of the life of the cow is at best unnatural and at worst unbearable.
At our farm, Kite’s Nest, the calves stay with their mothers for as long as they choose. They suckle milk for at least nine months, effectively weaning themselves when the cows’ milk dries up, between one and three months before the next calf is due. Back in 1953 we milked a commercial herd of pedigree Ayrshires but by 1974, we realised that not only was milk production uneconomic (and very hard work) but my parents, my brother and I were seriously questioning whether such a system was truly the one we felt happy with. We decided to change to a single-suckle system where each cow rears her own calf.
The very significant turning point came in the early 1980s on the day an especially clever and delightful young bullock called Lochinvar was due to leave the farm to be sold as a store, for someone else to fatten for beef, in the local livestock market. We all knew just how much we would miss him and we couldn’t help dwelling on what his subsequent home might be like: whether he would have to travel too far and become hungry or thirsty: whether he would be treated kindly. That was the day we decided to retail beef from our own farm shop so that we could be in charge of every stage of production and be able to give our customers the assurance that we knew precisely what the animals had been fed on for the whole of their lives. As recently as 2012, we started a commercial flock of sheep and now also sell lamb and mutton.
When it comes to milk most calves will know where to look for milk and how to suckle but on occasions at the very beginning they might need help from us. If parturition has been trouble-free and relatively painless, calves will suckle from a ‘normal’ position, whereas if the calving has been difficult and painful the cow will sometimes appear to hold the new arrival responsible for the pain and permit it to suckle only from behind, out of sight.
The Secret Life of Cows Page 1