Nature Journal: Bovine Beauty
I spent last summer doing research on a dairy farm. Most of you now have conjured images of dull eyed beasts, unpleasant smells, udders and abnormal concentrations of fecal material. To be entirely honest with you, those were the only perceptions I seemed to notice at the beginning of my first visit to the dairy too. As a pre-veterinary medicine student, I’ve been trying to apply my education to as many animals and types of practices as possible. I find it ironic that I began with the very one I was already determined I would never do. I mean, come on, who wants to work with cows all day? Well to tell you the truth, I wouldn’t mind it. What began as an easy way for me to gain veterinary experience ended up giving me a deep love for cows.
It all started with my animal restraint class. We had a field trip planned to go out to the Elberta Dairy – the scanty remains of what was once the BYU dairy – to learn some basic cattle restraint techniques. We had already read the book and seen a few film clips of what we were about to experience. Cattle shoots, headlocks, and halters gave the distinct impression that this was going to be quite the operation. On the way there, I felt ready to go in and give this a shot entirely convinced that this would only reinforce my conviction that I would never work with cattle. The trip was painless however. Not only was it painless – it was fun, simple, and overwhelmingly enlightening.
Consequentially, when Spring Term began, and I was invited to help do research with the dairy, I jumped right in. To provide a little context here’s the concept of the study. Cows often experience metabolic diseases right around the time of calving. Our goal was to find a way of predicting which cows would suffer from disease - effectively to find a way of preventing the disease from happening by providing a way of detecting it so it could be treated before symptoms even appear. So every day we went out to the dairy to collect blood, hair, and fecal samples. Samples were collected two weeks before calving, the day of calving, and two weeks afterwards. As you can imagine, we found ourselves covered in the all sorts of things of some 300 cows. Some of my favorite memories were just coming back to campus as a group, reeking of the whole experience. You can get some pretty good expressions just by walking by someone. We took these samples, freeze dried and powdered them, and analyzed them via mass spectroscopy. Just for your information, it turns out that the levels of different carbon and nitrogen isotopes in the hair samples provided the information we were looking for.
But that’s not why I’m writing about cows. I’m writing about them because we tend to label things and with those labels we bring a whole set of associations that are nearly impossible to rid ourselves of. To most people, cows equal two things: beef and dairy. That’s what they primarily were to me too at first. But being the animal lover that I am, it really wasn’t that long into working with them that they became much more. The numbers on their ear tags became names to us. Soon we were able to identify specific cows by their numbers. Experiences and personalities began to scream at us from those ear tags and before long, our trips to the dairy were more than uncomfortable early morning excursions destined to olfactorily separate us from the rest of our classmates. They became an adventure, different each morning because each set of cows was different. Each cow had her own personality, different from the rest, and different from the herd mentality even though together they made up that separate entity.
I’m not advocating that you become a vegetarian. I’m not planning on it myself and that choice is entirely up to you. But what I am proposing is that we all need to stop and take a look at the world around us and reconsider what we think of it. When you look beyond the “gelatin of those dull cow eyes”, you see something beautiful there. This animal is remarkable, and thankfully I feel we are treating them pretty well. As we went about getting those first set of samples, I was filled with an emotional mixture of admiration and disgust, but all I could hear was my advisor, “You know? Cows really are a miracle. What other animal can you give a hundred pounds of feed to and get a hundred pounds of milk back? I tell you, God knew what He was doing when He made these guys.”
We have become so separated from our own world. Milk and beef and all other groceries no longer come from animals and plants; they come from the grocery store. Man was once tied to the land and lived with it and by it. We no longer work that way. My hope is that next time you eat or drink something, you’ll think about it and be grateful. This is why my research experience with the cows was so special to me. I learned to love these animals and developed a gratitude for the products they provide.
There is real power in opening ourselves up to new ideas and novel ways of thinking. One of my pre-vet buddies tells me how occasionally “he gets a sick desire to go and work with cows for a bit.” And you know what, I get that feeling too. So who knows? Open your eyes. Take a chance. See the world in a way you’ve never done before. And give those cows a break, they’re cooler than you think!
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