Cows! 🐄

I’ve certainly spent a lot of my summer vacation studying them up at the National Forest and reading about them and their behavior in Temple Grandin’s book Handling Livestock on Small Farms which I read on vacation.

The thing about cows is that they are big, expensive and have a lot meat. Certainly not the first animal I would want on a homestead, though after goats clean up a woodland and it transforms back to field, they’re one of the best grazers after sheep. And arguably more tasty in what they transform grass in. But certainly not the first animal you want to raise much less butcher before you have the skills and the equipment to do such things.

But they are also beautiful to watch how they act and how they rip grass and chew it down. Unlike mechanical cutting of grass, cows with their siliva actually stimulate more growth of the grass as their plate and teeth rip it off in their mouths. There is something quite delightful about the smell of grazing and with good management they can really help keep grasslands healthy for a diverse number of wildlife species. They do take a fair amount of land to raise and you still need to buy or make hay for the season grass is not growing.