Sent Friday, July 11, 2008 in response to my aunt’s query about anybody having any thoughts on cow magnets. I think she was secretly just trying to spark a story out of Dad.
This is me. Cow magnets were great things to play with, especially if you had 2 or more of them. They made excellent “space battle fighters”, able to attract or repel enemy ships at will. I hardly ever get to do that anymore.
Other than that, they saved several of our cows from “hardware disease”. For the city types, hardware disease was when a cow would ingest a piece of metal, which would puncture one of her stomachs, usually the first one. The cow magnet was induced into the cows stomach by inserting a special tool down her throat. The business end of the device held the magnet. The device being about 30 inches long, with a plunger mechanism which when pushed, dislodged the magnet into the cows stomach. The tool being made of brass or aluminum, of course. The magnet was approximately 3 inches long, and about 5/8 inch in diameter. The theory being that the magnet would stick to the metal and pull it out of the stomach lining. What happened to it after that, I do not know, as I never attempted to locate one after the fact. If the “hardware” was ferrous metal, you had roughly a 50/50 chance of saving the cow. When a cow was sick from this, or any other ailment, they tended not to eat. Thats bad for a cow.
One way to get the ailing cow to eat was to get her to chew her cud. However, being that she hasn’t eaten, she has no cud to chew. Therein comes the “donor” cow. You would pick a cow, any contended cow, and wait for her to bring up a cud. Just as she did so, you reached into her mouth and grabbed the cud, hopefully before she started to chew. Those big molars can mess hell out of your manicure. The “donor cud” a stinking mass of fermented stuff , would then be placed into the sick cows mouth. More often than not, the sick cow would start to chew, and then having no new cud to bring up, would start to eat. Now the sick cow never seemed surprised that a cud suddenly appeared, but the poor “donor” cow would get the most perplexed look on her face as she attempted to chew a cud that just wasn’t there. Sometimes I would steal a cud just to confuse the cow.
You just got to love cows. They are great big friendly things, but they just don’t have a clue. God bless ‘em.
Tags: cow, cow magnet, cow stomachs, cows, cud, hardware disease
July 27, 2008 at 8:26 pm |
Justin, you caught me. Your dad is always good for a story to enlighten the reader; the touches of whimsy interspersed in the narrative give proof to the smile he tries to hide in the telling. He’s not only The Old Wise One, he’s also The Old Witty One.
September 17, 2008 at 9:59 pm |
To my favorite youngest son, Carl. I’ve read “Cow Magnets” before but never zeroed in on the part of stealing a cud from a healthy, contende cow and placing it in the mouth of a sick cow. How did I live on a farm with your father for almost thirty years and never have known that? Thought I knew just about every thing there was to know about cows. Really, you should add more stories to your blogsite.
October 19, 2008 at 11:39 pm |
Hey, Carl, Let’s hear from you now and then. Surely, you have some memories of farm life worth passing on, things of which I have little memory but worth writing about. Love, Mom