Why Cows Need Names: And More Secrets of Amish Farms

Afterword

Afterword · 227 227 Afterword “If he is objective, the operator of a super large farm should not claim that it is appreciably more efficient. He has an interest in a super large farm. But society will not get its food much, if any, cheaper as a result.” —Don Paarlberg, Farming and Food Policies: Issues of the 1980s. lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1980 it’s all here, stretched out in front of me like a hellish prison for gentle cows. Thousands of black-and-white cows milling aimlessly about on rock-hard concrete floors, covered with a soup of runny, loose feces and steaming urine. But this farm is not unique. in fact, it’s the norm for modern , large dairy farms. The bleak, short lives of the cows in front of me are little different from many thousands of their sisters on other large dairy farms. indeed, most of the dairy cows in these United States live out their lives in huge, covered metal sheds like this one. and most of the milk, butter , cheese, and ice cream that we gobble down each day gets its start in the stench and filth of floors like this. a single cow wandering up the aisle toward me has caught my eye. Her ear tag identifies her as cow #3076. She’s probably looking for an empty stall to collapse into. To save money, these barns are nearly always built with many fewer stalls than there are cows. Therefore, #3076 may spend a fair portion of her day or night looking for a place to lie down. if she gets too tired, she may give up and flop her carcass down in the runny manure of the aisle floor. If she does find a stall, it will be a little longer than she is and about twice as wide. Two curved pipes will delineate the sides. The 228 · Afterword floor of each stall is raised about six inches above the aisle floor and covered with rubber mats. Cows always walk headfirst into a stall, so except for a few inches in the back covered in manure, the stall floor is relatively clean and dry. i’ve always hated using numbers rather than names for cows. Of course, if you’re going to treat them like this, a numbering system certainly provides some emotional distance and allows them to be efficiently reduced to mere “animal units.” The simple act of assigning a number to a living creature reduces its moral standing and helps dehumanize it for those responsible for its care. Just for a moment, i silently rename cow #3076 and call her elsie after the gentle brown cow that lightly danced through many of the TV milk commercials of the 1960s and 1970s. But this big-boned, brooding, blackand -white cow, with the horns cut off—or burned off—of her drooping head, bears little resemblance to the doe-eyed elsie. except she is almost certainly gentle. Were I to walk down onto this floor, I could easily push my way through this herd of beasts, even though each is several times my size and weight. Hundreds of years of careful breeding and close association with humans have led to the modern, very docile dairy cow. in the past, when a farm family milked and cared for one cow or a small herd, a mean cow could not be tolerated. Someone in the family might get hurt. a young cow who kicked, butted, or horned a person once too often was soon removed from the gene pool—and added to the family larder. So docile cows got to have many docile cow babies, and mean cows got to be supper. The end result is that being “gentle” is in a cow’s genes. She truly can’t help herself, even if we choose to treat her poorly. Cow #3076 is still slowly making her way toward this end of the barn. Just now cow #923 strides down the aisle. She’s a tall first-calf heifer with small patches of black hair on her sleek, well-conditioned white body. She’s in good flesh with a swelling udder tightly attached to her frame. She bumps poor old #3076 out of the way, and the old girl ends up directly behind cow #1448, who unfortunately just stood up to relieve herself. Sadly, #3076 hardly seems to notice. She just resumes her unsteady sojourn toward this end of the barn. She is close enough...