A Cow's Life

At my cousin Doug Leman's farm, the dairy cows live row on row in a huge barn. Eight hundred ladies in various stages of lactation and lactational readiness. For a few weeks before giving birth, they go dry and are moved to another location where they are put out to pasture. But mostly they live in a giant barn.

You might think this would be unpleasant for the cow, being cooped up all day. But you'd be wrong. An unhappy cow does not give milk. The converse is also true: if she's giving milk, she must be happy. These ladies give milk, so they must be happy.



So sensitive are the cows that if you kick one or yell at her, there is a measurable decline in her production. You can keep track of who is who by means of the microchip each carries in her ear. The pampering continues in the special nutritionist who monitors the bovine diet. Nothing but the best silage, hay, and grain on the menu.

This sensitivity to adversity is astonishing. It is well-known in the dairy industry that electric fields impair milk production. Presumably because they make the cows feel crappy. Special consultants will come to your dairy and tell you that this machinery must be moved, or that that heating coil--which thaws the drinking water in wintertime--must go. The farmers comply, you may be sure.

Considering the hemming and hawing over the effects of electric fields on humans, and the inconclusive studies that have come out, you'd think this would merit some notice. Here are animals kept under uniform conditions, and a recognized deleterious effect to EMF exposure. If cows get to be shielded from electric fields...why not the rest of us sentient mammals?