I admit I’ve never run cattle where it
snows. If that makes me any less of a man in your eyes then so be it.
But I have compensated for my deficiencies in extremely cold weather by
ranching in places where it NEVER rained. Still, I was fascinated by a
study I read about cows eating snow. Or do they drink it?
It
seems Don Adams of the Range Research Station in Miles City, Montana,
identified all the cows in his study with electronic identification so
that their coming and going from the water trough could be recorded. Don
found that 65% of the cows came to water daily, some came every second
or third day, while some never drank out of the water trough at all
during the four month study. Don assumed that some cows were eating snow
thereby saving themselves the long daily trek to the trough. Clearly
these were intellectually remarkable cows.
My
friend Skinner once told me about a set of Nevada calves that were
consigned to his auction in Famoso, California, home to some of the most
clever and cunning cows in America. Skinner took pride in the fill he
could get on cattle but this set of calves refused to drink. He had the
yard crew splashing in the water trough and the dumb calves still didn’t
get it. So Skinner got a backhoe and made an artificial river through
the pen just so the calves wouldn’t die from dehydration before he could
collect a commission. Yes, those were some stupid cattle. As the old
cowboy vet Ben Green would say, “They didn’t have as much sense as a
weak minded west Texas jackrabbit.”
It
did not surprise me that the calves came from Nevada because it’s the
home of the dumbest cows I’ve ever met in an alley. I don’t know why
this is so because Nevada is home to some of the smartest people I know.
Perhaps their cows merely lack socialization skills from living out in
the boonies so far away from civilization.
While Nevada is home to the dumbest cows, the highest IQ cows call
Arizona home. There are cows and steers there that have evaded capture
for 20 years. I’ve been on an Arizona gather where we pushed cattle down
off steep slopes all day only to find at the end of the day, when our
dogs were lost and our horses exhausted, that all the cows we thought we
kicked off the mountains into the valleys, were laughing at us from the
mountain tops. Yes mam, those were some brainy bovines!
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