Amazing facts about cows

Stop the herd mentality.
That’s my job.

Ice cream. Cheeseburgers. Buttery soft leather. It’s hard to resist the magical gifts that cows give to us. Yet most of us never take the time to really think about what it costs to get them.

In the U.S., more than 29 million cows suffer and die in the meat and dairy industries. As calves, they are branded with hot irons, dehorned, and castrated—all without painkillers. Once grown, cows are either sent to massive outdoor feedlots to be slaughtered for beef, or, sent to dairy farms to be artificially impregnated and ultimately killed.

We know. It’s total bull.

When given the chance, cows are highly sentient and intelligent individuals with markedly different personalities.

To start, here are a few reasons why they’re more than just milk.

• Cows are smart.
  • There are brains in the barnyard, according to a recent study on cattle intelligence. Cows display the ability to rapidly learn different tasks, display long-term memory, clearly understand cause-and-effect relationships, and differentiate humans from one another.

• Cows are nurturers.
  • Cows are incredibly devoted mothers. They’ve been known to walk for miles to find their calves, and even, sigh, protect their calves by hiding them from farmers.

• Cows have a lot of emotions.
  • Cows experience joy, sadness, stress, and excitement, just like us. They even jump for joy. Just Google “happy cow dance." You’ll see.

• Cows are friends.
  • Krista McLennan found that cows are extremely social beings that form close bonds and make friends in their herds. And not only do cows have best friends, but they even become stressed if they are separated. Bessie’s gotta have her besties.

• Cows are like us. Literally.
  • When the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Department of agriculture mapped out the bovine genome in 2009, they discovered that cattle have about 22,000 genes; 80 percent of their genes are shared with humans. We’re really not that different after all.

Mahatma Gandhi said a cow is “a poem of compassion.” So rather than milking them for all their worth, should we consider sharing the love?

Wear your heart on your chest,
and check out The Vegan Age cow t-shirt.