Cows

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Det er en fin lille bog, og der er mange gode fortællinger, men jeg nåede også til at punkt, hvor jeg var lidt mættet i de mange historier fra Kite’s Nest. Jeg savnede mere videnskabelig opbakning og konkrete fakta, men jeg anerkender samtidig også, at det netop er narrativet, der gør den lille bog til noget ganske særligt. Den er både vedkommende og tankevækkende og introduktionen burde være pligtlæsning for enhver. Rosamund Young’s The Secret Life of Cows deserves its sudden reputation as a first-hand account of unutterable charm… Young describes her own work as simply a string of anecdotes and observations grouped around certain themes (example: ‘Bovine friendships are seldom casual’), but the musings reveal things far more profound… The extraordinary sensitivity she exhibits towards their idiosyncrasies puts our understanding of the minds of cattle onto a completely different plane—an anecdotal accompaniment to the scientific work that scientists likeTemple Grandinhave already done… Young’s personal approach gets the message across gently, but no less urgently. Spending a few hours in their company…will certainly teach you a loving lesson about animal dignity, and the value of kindness.” —Vogue.com

This is a wonderful little book, and a breeze to read. Young has a deep respect and affection for the animals in her charge, and a great knowledge of sustainable and ethical organic farming. Her years of experience tending to animals is a fitting testament (if you still needed it) to the fact that all creatures, including cows, have their own unique personhoods - thoughts, feelings, imaginations, desires - just like humans do. Author Rosamund Young runs Kite's Nest Farm, on the edge of the Cotswolds, with her brother and partner. She has lived on the farm since her childhood, and has been observing the animals ever since. Her ethos is admirable; they let the cows decide when they wish to finish weaning, allow them to live in mixed generational groups to give the younger members the opportunity to learn from their elders, and give the animals constant access to food and water. Young writes: 'We decided that the animals themselves are by far the most qualified individuals to make decisions about their own welfare and it is the decisions they make, as well as many other occurrences both humdrum and extraordinary, that I have observed, learned from and written down here.' Young then goes on to elaborate further, explaining that she and her colleagues 'have tried on this farm to create an environment that allows all of the animals the freedom to communicate with or dissociate themselves from us as they choose.' Throughout, she makes highly thoughtful points; for instance: '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.'This book had one of our four-year-olds laughing hysterically. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen her laugh so hard from listening to a story before. In the book, there is a cow who says “oink” and all the animals on the farm laugh at her but then she finds a pig who says “moo” and they teach each other their sounds. As they are learning, they mistakenly say the wrong sounds which makes the book even funnier. Ralph the cow really wants his dad to buy him a bicycle but Ralph’s dad tells him no. Not until pigs fly. That begins Ralph’s mission to learn how to fly a helicopter so that he can bring some pigs onboard with him and get them to “fly”. It is a story of Ralph’s persistence as everyone continues to tell him that “cows don’t do that.” Does he get his bike in the end? You bet he does! This is a great book for teaching young children the process of a cow’s milk production as well as what happens once it gets to the dairy and then to the stores. There is enough detail in the book for children in early elementary grades to learn something new while also appealing to preschoolers.

Cows produce methane when they digest food, which they release as flatulence. Twenty-five percent of the methane polluting the atmosphere in the United States comes from cows. [2] Scientists are currently trying to alter the genetic makeup of the basic cow, in an attempt to lower the amount of methane gas they produce during digestion. [2]I loved Rosamund Young’s The Secret Life of Cows. It’s apleafor us to appreciatethe complex inner lives of our inquisitive, loving, bovine friends,whom we arguably exploit more than any other creature on Earth—from what we wear on our feet, via our Sunday roast, to what we pour on our granola. It also makesthe great pointthat we should not judge animal intelligence in relation to our own.” —Matt Haig, bestselling author of Reasons to Stay Alive and How to Stop Time Martha is tired of being a cow and one day she confesses to the farmer that she is unhappy with just eating grass and giving milk all day. She wants to experience something greater and tells him that she won’t give him any milk until he takes her to the moon. The farmer takes her to several exciting places but they aren’t the moon so Martha isn’t satisfied. Martha winds up at a moon exhibit at a museum and realizes that it’s not so great after all. Wagyu beef, generally held to be some of the best beef in the world, usually comes from cows raised in Japan with such luxuries as massages, a better diet, and longer life spans before being butchered. [3] Within a day of receiving this book, I had consumed it… Absorbing, moving, and compulsively readable.”—Lydia Davis The second of two volumes charting the emergence of organic farming from the 1920s to 1995. This system of food production depends on the fertility-building nature of grass, forage legumes like clover and the animals that graze them. Conford analyses the growing influence of food processing on standards and the rise of processed organic food, which purists still see as an oxymoron. The debate has real relevance for a society where diet-related disease threatens to undermine healthcare. At its simplest, it boils down to an argument about whether an “organic Mars bar” would symbolise ultimate success, or ultimate failure for a movement that set out to produce food that would make everyone more healthy.