Apples asked in the comments just what cow magnets do and why we use them. I thought it was a good enough question to answer in a post (plus I don't have much to say today and am grateful for any and all ideas.)
Cows eat all kinds of things in their pursuit of digestible greenery. Autopsies have revealed bicycle tires, shirts, entire feed bags and lots and lots of baling twine. Unfortunately cows often also ingest bits of sharp metal, which can pierce the stomach lining, causing infection and even affecting the heart.The resulting condition is called hardware disease. At the very least it causes the cow a lot of discomfort. In some cases it ends in death. At least some of the time, shooting a powerful magnet down the cow's throat with the same balling gun you use to give aspirin or stomach pills will fix it. Ideally the magnet will grab the offending nail or bit of steel and drag it to the bottom of the stomach where it can just sit there doing no harm.
Magnets don't always work, but sometimes the results are simply spectacular. We had an old cow, number 80, Adela, years ago, before we were married. She went off feed and began a slow decline. Our vet at the time didn't think she had hardware so he treated her symptomatically and went on his way. Days went by and she failed to improve. Finally I suggested to the boss that we give her a magnet just to see what happened. She was obviously dying, so what did we have to lose? By the very next morning she was gobbling hay as if she had never been sick.
Coincidence? Nah...
We had another cow drop dead from a standing position at the end of milking one day. One minute she was standing in her stall chewing her cud; the next she was sprawled on the floor stone dead. We were stunned and really puzzled so we had our veterinarian conduct an autopsy. Amazingly a bit of sharp metal stuck in her stomach wall had worked its way through the stomach lining to pierce her liver, she moved just right (or perhaps just wrong) and bled to death internally in seconds. The metal was a bit of steel off a wagon that a less-than-diligent hired man put through a forage blower into the silo. (Of course we didn't know about it until too late for old Danillla.) We didn't keep him too long after that.
Anyhow, we keep a couple magnets on the fridge among the Far Side cartoons, shot up targets, family photos and school schedules. Then we can always find one when some cow starts refusing dinner and acting odd.
Poor old Danilla. I just wish we could have saved the calf she was carrying. Imagine if we had gotten another Pete.
ReplyDeleteHow fascinating. Wonder who thought up the magnets trick in the first place--pretty engenius, really.
ReplyDeleteIf I didn't have great confidence in this site, I would think you were putting on us city folk.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I liked her too
ReplyDeleteChris, that is a good question! Someone pretty smart, that is for sure
Jan, only on the first of April would I ever mislead you. lol
Well that was enlightening. I knew the general premise of cow magnets, but I pictured them running through and exiting. I didn't realize they stayed in the cow.
ReplyDeleteHi FC, yup they are there for good and they catch an amazing array of stuff. One thing we learned is to avoid the cheap, light aluminum electric fence wire....because guess what-magnets won't catch it.
ReplyDeleteI know that you're not putting us on!
ReplyDeleteIt's a never ending battle with the twine. . .
' . . . shot up targets' ? I am so dull, dull, dull. The most exciting thing on my fridge is the Pizza Hut delivery number.
ReplyDeleteThat cow magnet business is the darnedest thing I've heard in a long time. I'm glad you explained it, cause I didn't want to reveal my ignorance by asking :0)
Well you learn something new every day on the internet! I had no idea, and it is almost hard to believe it it's so funny. But I do believe it. I've been surprised before about what goes on in cattle ranching, after looking at the breeding section of farm catalogs.
ReplyDeleteMoos, I find Jersey cows are the worst in that respect...of course you don't have dairy cows, but those darned things will even eat the wood of their stalls. Twine is a special treat for them. They drive us crazy, because you cannot tie a Jersey calf up with twine. It will chew it up in about two minutes
ReplyDeleteCathy, our son was very proud of his prowess at his hunter training safety course and he won't let me throw the target away, so there it sits...or sticks actually...the nice thing about cow magnets is that they are very strong so until they are needed for a cow, they will hold almost anything on the front of the fridge...lottery tickets, kids, dogs...boots. lol (just kidding.)
Momnpop, thanks for visiting. I know just what you mean. I wasn't born to this life and I can remember reading the catalogs at a farm home where I babysat. I take it all for granted now, but it was sure weird then!