While cows can technically jump higher than this, most won’t attempt such a feat, especially if you do a good job with your fencing.

This often leads to the rest of the herd being ill at ease, skittish, and behaving differently than usual. Roud Folksong Index S298441 Sing hey , diddle 'diddle, the cat and the fiddle". Vaughan Williams Memorial Library. English Folk Dance and Song Society . Retrieved 20 May 2016. a b C. R. Wilson and M. Calore, Music in Shakespeare: a Dictionary (London: Continuum, 2005), ISBN 0826478468, p. 171. These more experienced animals will be an example to the younger ones on how to behave while out to pasture.J. J. Fuld, The Book of World-Famous Music: Classical, Popular, and Folk (Courier Dover Publications, 5th ed., 2000), ISBN 0486414752, p. 502. Related Reading: How to keep cows away from food and bushes Preventing Cows From Jumping Over Fences Part of your fencing process should include tying a colorful ribbon onto the fencing wire at various intervals. In England, there was even a famous case of an extremely active bovine making a 6′-foot leap to land on the roof of a low house! We also recommend you simultaneously put older, more trusted animals as your newer, more skittish cows.

Bellenden Ker (1837). Archaeology of Popular Phrases and Nursery Rhymes, vol. I, second edition. p.252. Not only are they more likely to get into trouble, but they also negatively affect the energy in the barn or pasture. When people close their eyes and imagine cows, jumping isn’t something likely to come to mind, but it’s not that uncommon. If you keep just a few cows and your farm is relatively isolated, you aren’t as likely to have issues with the herd getting startled.

Add a sudden, loud noise, an overeager onlooker, or even sudden movements, and it’s easy to end up with an overactive, scared cow. Skittish and Stubborn Animals As I mentioned at the start of this article, it’s fun watching your cows romp around when they get excited! This is especially true if they are new to your farm, as this means they haven’t had time to adjust to their physical environment or the people and other animals around them. The numerous theories seeking to explain the rhyme have been largely discredited. James Orchard Halliwell's suggestion that it was a corruption of an ancient Greek chorus was probably passed to him as a hoax by George Burges. [2] [7] Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts (Penguin Random House, 2016, 1st ed), Christopher de Hamel, p. 323