Cows Live Like Queens?

You may not know who W.D. Hoard was, but he once said:

Something that I think of when reading this quote is how farmers feel towards their farm and animals. Farmers take very good care of the land that they use to farm and treat their animals with love and respect. Many people peg farmers with the label of being harsh, unintelligent men who don’t care how their animals are being treated as long as they get a check., and this is simply untrue. While, yes, money is a factor in how farmers can run their business, it is most certainly not the only driving force. Farmers take the best possible care of their animals because happy cows equal a happy life. If you want to think of it without emotion, cows make more milk and higher quality milk when they are comfortable, giving food that they want to eat, and healthy. Farmers who can provide more, higher-quality milk receive a larger amount of income, so logically speaking, the better the cows are treated the more money a farmer gets. But I choose to think of it another way - from the cow’s perspective.

Cows are divas at heart. They love getting attention from farmers, delicious snacks, and back rubs all day long. Farmers have found ways to not only make them comfortable but also happy and even spoiled. Some of the amenities for cows on most dairy farms include: sprinklers and fans that are set turn on when it gets above 70℉ (since a cow’s comfortable room temperature is between 30℉ and 65℉), rolling brushes that give cow’s back scratches when the poles just aren’t cutting it, alley scrapers that clean the manure from the walkways so the cow’s always have a clean place to walk from food to bed, 24/7 access to the feed trough piled high with their favorite nutrient-dense delicacy, and pedometers that track the cow’s movement to send a signal to the farmer’s phone when she is either moving too much or too little so they can come check on her anytime. These are just a few of the many things that farmers provide their cows to give them the best place to live, so they feel like queens.

As shown in the diagram above, cows mostly spend their days sleeping and eating. (Just imagine a life without the stress of school and work!) Obviously this graph is not scientific, but, being a farmer myself, I believe it to be pretty accurate. It only takes less than 10 minutes for a cow to be milked, so the rest of the day the cow can decide how she chooses to spend the rest of her day. I don’t know about you but this life seems kind of nice to me.