Milking udder nonsense from cows with names

Roaming free with eggs

There isn’t a moment of indecision when one walks down the supermarket aisle looking for eggs and taking the free range variety.

Obviously, free range could be taken to mean the eggs would not sit in the egg-box when opened, but presumably we have been cajoled into thinking the eggs were laid by hens that roam free rather than those in battery cages.

Giving a cow a name

What would surprise me after recent studies is to find that my choices of milk have moved from the basic whole, semi-skimmed or skimmed to some more bizarre description like this was milked from cows with names [1].

Apparently, beyond the context of the holy cow, sme dairy cows have developed a personal relationship with their owners that they have been given names allowing them to produce more milk than would nameless bastard cows.

Cowed by silly names

Typically, the cow is given a name like Daisy in the UK, or Clara with a number in the Netherlands,they might even get names Milka, Crema or Skima to play on the context of names. But then, just imagine people who share their names with cows being called cow for the sake of being unfunny.

However, if a dairy farm has to name its cows, would the cows than have to take on surnames and would surnames denote ownership as was the case with human slaves rather than kinship depicting the brood of the bovine matriarch or the farm bull?

Stressing out on a name

And just as double-barrelled names depict illegitimate liaisons long forgotten what additional stress can be placed on a cow that realises that its name is borne of bad provenance rather than the consummate love of its owner and its healthy progeny?

Would it then be a stretch that named bulls would produce better beef or would the realisation that name-calling is healthy preparation for the abattoir be a weight loss regime on the part of the bull?

For instance, the sheep called Woollies might produce more wool and the crocodile called Snappy might produce more skin – Errr!

Udder nonsense

It goes without saying that there is a lot of useless science expended in stupid discoveries because I would not be surprised if commercial diary farms implement sound systems that whisper sweet nothings to the cows just for the sake of the milk.

At least, one can hope that those in China would call the cow Chin-Milk and completely kill that despicable act of adding melamine to milk to boost its protein content.

I could just hear someone say this is udder nonsense when in fact it is udderly true.

Source

[1] Cows with names produce more milk, scientists say - Telegraph

tags: cow  milk  science  name  

links: digg this    del.icio.us    technorati    reddit