Herd it before?

Is there such a thing as a World Celebration Day for Cows?

Their contribution to the human race has been immense since their domestication some 5000 years ago and I thought it would be nice to show some appreciation of this.

We may think we know a bit about these animals as they have always been around in our lives from cutesy soft toys, those milk carton novelties that moo-ed when turned over to featuring in children's story books and nursery rhymes but at the same time most of us in the UK do not have to travel far to see the real thing on a daily basis.

We should all be able to recount a few facts and myths about cows as well as tales of personal experience.

I spent a few days on a dairy farm in Somerset that belonged to my Father's cousins. The herd of 70 or so cows would be brought in from the pastures in the early hours to the milking parlour and under the artificial light in the winter months or the pale washy sunlight in summer relieved of their natural produce. I would keep well away from the herd because they did seem to be quite intimidating as well as, without warning, likely to evacuate their bowels under some tangible pressure and direction. My sisters got badly splashed and traumatised.

My Father's younger cousin would connect up and operate the milking machine from the concrete trench below and between the ranks of stalls which would cater for 20 animals at a time. All of the cows were individually named although to my unfamiliar eye I could not distinguish one of the distinctive black and white Friesians from another. The markings are all different like a fingerprint and each, according to David, had an individual character and temperament. Modern domestic cows are believed to come from only two species, Bos Taurus or Bos Indicus but there are about 920 different breeds worldwide.

Saying that did suggest a mutual respect between man and beast but on a few occasions they did throw about their bulk and weight indiscriminately and this did result in a few crushed ribs and broken limbs.

I was always thrilled by the ladling out and drinking of fresh milk from an open churn at cow-body temperature of 38 degrees Celsius before the chilling process for preservation at 4 degrees Celsius.

I would help after the 3 hours of milking to escort the cows back to the field although I got the impression that they were well capable of doing this unsupervised. The herd had to be destroyed during a subsequent outbreak of Foot and Mouth Disease and milk production on the farm ended. The impact on the farming family was devastating on many fronts.

My next close-up experience of cows was in my late teens. The large public common land on the west side of my home town had grazing rights for qualifying citizens and from March to October there would be a surly bunch of young heifers and bulls milling about under the horse chestnut trees or causing mayhem amongst the traffic on the three main roads which crossed and led into town. They would loiter about on the verge before blindly but intentionally making their way into the pathway of vehicles. Motorists had little choice but to skid to an attempted halt before impact with about a ton of muscle and hide. One of my classmates had a collision with a cow on his first motorbike. He had to pay for the body of the unfortunate animal to be removed.

Some cows did manage to work out how to cross the metal cattle grid and visit the town centre. The traditional pit and grate form was replaced for a few years with just painted yellow lines in response to some psychological study that the arrangement inhibited the wanderings of cows. They still came into town and in larger numbers.

My Father was a main instigator and organiser of a campaign to raise sponsorship to buy reflective collars for the grazing cows to reduce road fatalities. These fitted a bit like Sam Browne belt on a cyclist but had to be regularly retrieved from the hawthorn hedges, boundary fences and the lower boughs of the Common trees where discarded during a rubbing and scratching session. The campaign excited considerable media interest including a TV crew from Japan.

I played a lot of football up on a rough grass pitch with goalposts on one of the few flatter sections of the Common. It was a good laugh to try to land a high ball in a pile of cow dung at the same time as the recipient of the pass was crouched down and concentrating on controlling it after it hit the ground. Splat was a very onomatopoeic sound.

It is good advice to keep a respectful distance from a grazing cow as they can be easily startled if approached. They do actually have good all round vision and senses but this can not be fully evident during their 14 hour a day regime of grazing and ruminating in their four compartment bellies. Whilst out dog walking with my wife we were menacingly corralled and eventually chased out of a meadow by a large herd of cows which definitely ranks as one of my scariest moments. There was recently a spate of fatalities at the hoofs of cows which although tragic did not really surprise me on the basis of my own narrow escape. Do not therefore be fooled by the impression given by cows of a gentle nature, docile, placid and unintelligent. They know what they are doing.

Conspiracy theories aside, the cow family have contributed greatly to human development. They have been wealth enabling through ownership and trading, abundant in the production of milk and the many associated foods and goods, providers of hides and by-products and a reason for the survival of much of the character of our agricultural pastures against great pressure for development. On a basic and practical issue I always check that I have an umbrella and coat when I see a field of cows in the lying down position because tradition and folklore dictates that it is likely to rain. Well worth at least one day a year in celebration just for that.