BARLEY'S BOVINE BLOG

WELCOME 2 BOVINE CITY!

[bovineblogger]

hi! you can call me barley!

🍎 26 years old, it pronouns, aotearoa/nz based

🍋MAIN BLOG🍋 🌾FAQ🌾

(header by @bat-connoisseur, icon by @dandydingo)

[camelidae]

Ah, brahmans, the floppiest of cows~

[llovinghome]

Flower cows

[bovineblogger]

never heard of diversional therapy before so i looked it up and found possibly the worst wikipedia page i've ever encountered? lol

would you mind talking a bit about what it is you do? and is diversional therapy only a thing in australia/aotearoa? or does it exist other places, too, that you know of?

thanks for sharing about pigeons and cowies, regardless :)

oh boy i didnt actually realise diversional therapy was specific to nz/aus! i hope its just called something else in other places lol

basically, i hang out with residents in a retirement home! most of the people i work with have dementia and/or physical disabilities, and my job is to make sure they are all socialising, being creative, getting active, fulfilling their spiritual needs, all that stuff.

every month i come out with a new calendar detailing what activities are going to be on and when, and then i run those activities! (after spending half an hour locating everyone and bringing them to the meeting place lol) every day i start off by gathering everyone in the lounge and we read the morning paper together :) but the rest of the day depends.

like, yesterday it was 9:30am newspaper reading, 10:45am chair yoga, 1:30pm card games and 2:30pm BIIINNGGOOO(i love bingo.) but we do alllll sorts of stuff! we have church services, make art, go for walks in the garden, go out to museums, have happy hour... heaps and heaps of stuff! i ran a jewelry making class not too long ago and it was sooo much fun... (i love being able to make things with the residents that they get to keep and wear around and stuff??? ALSO along that vein we made shrinky dink labels for their walkers which was really cute.)

i really. really really. reaaaaalllyyy love my job. i could talk about it forever. it REALLY tires me out but i dont want to do anything else ever. im so blessed to be able to meet the people ive met and make a difference in their quality of life and stuff. i dont like feeling like im bragging, so its hard to write about, but.. it is genuinely the best feeling in the world when you can help someone feel happy. and stuff. especially when times are tough. and i think im pretty good at it.

anyway, thats my job!

[dogger38]

Oh this one is a cutie.

[oidial]

'i've been letting myself go' because you're fatter? go where? the awesome factory?

[pr0ceeding]

3 week old calf I had the pleasure of feeding 😩🐄💌

[snailtongue]

[farm-paws]

ignoring the "teacup" versions of preexisting breeds, what are the most recently developed breeds of cattle? i know that, ironically, heck cattle are pretty new despite being part of a project to recreate aurochs, but have there been any other 19th or 20th or even 21st century attempts to make a new breed to improve upon a previous or fill some niche?

Square Meaters are probably the youngest breed I know of. Their breed association was registered in 1996 after the breed had been developed. The idea is to have a smaller, tastier Murray Grey (who had only existed for about 70 years at this point lol) specifically for local butcher markets. They’re funny little things

Most of our zebu hybrids aren’t that old either. In Australia there was a huge mistrust about bringing zebu into the country because it was thought they were wild and would go feral (and I mean they did… but they’re also perfect and wonderful). Droughtmaster were developed around 1915, while Braford were developed in 1949, and Australian Brangus in 1950 (American Brangus earlier). Charbray only got here in 1969. My lovely wonderful beloved Santa Gertrudis were only developed in the 1940s (in Texas, USA). My great grandfather judged the first Santa bulls in Australia in the early 1960s.

Prior to the 1900s America and Australia were both pretty wild when it came to agriculture (the age of bushrangers was pretty much done by 1901 when they caught the Kenniff brothers) so once everyone had sort of calmed down and stopped shooting one another they cracked on with what they were all out there to do in the first place. This means most popular beef breeds are pretty young, the exception being European breeds like Angus. They’ve just been up there, minding their own business since like the 16th century.

[bovinefigureoftheday]

Bovine figure of the day: Royal Crown Derby Lily Cow

[bovineblogger]

(video source)

[highlandcattleofsaarela]

[iconsumetherot]

cow mug

[farm-paws]

She was suspicious of being touched but then she got so excited about it that she got the zoomies and started fighting her friends

[camelidae]

Could it be that the sun is already setting on this lovely Bovember? If only there were an sufficiently punny way to cowify December. Cowcember? Decowber? Cowristmas Time? No, it simply wouldn’t work, and so the season for cows must be sweetly brief~

[creampuffqueen]

i say this with all my heart, from one person who cares about animal welfare to hopefully many others:

please take the term “factory farm” out of your vocabulary when discussing animal welfare

talking about the welfare of livestock and livestock production is incredibly important! all animals deserve to have the best welfare possible, regardless of if they’re going to end up on a plate or not

but the term “factory farm” does not actually discuss animal welfare in the way so many people seem to assume it does

for starters, “factory farm” is not an actual industry term. it doesn’t actually mean anything, because what constitutes a factory farm is completely subjective. you will never see the phrase “factory farm” in any kind of published research or official article because, again, it doesn’t mean anything

sure, the phrase definitely has connotations. and the connotation is the issue here. people use the term “factory farm” as a shorthand for… well, typically, “farming practice i don’t understand but think looks bad”

the term isn’t something neutral. it is specifically designed to create a negative image when you hear it. someone says “factory farm” and most people imagine large amounts of animals kept in bad condition

the key here: large amounts of animals

the size of a farm does not dictate the welfare of the animals on it. there are plenty of large farms with hundreds, thousands of animals that take stellar care of their livestock. there are small farms with only a couple animals that live horrible lives

the size of a farm is not the issue when it comes to animal welfare, but rather the practices used on the farm. sometimes they do go hand in hand, yes. there are some practices that are only necessary because of the amount of animals present

but say that

there are other terms that are actually industry terms that work better for these scenarios. try “conventional farming” “industrialized farming” “commercialized farming”. these actually have meanings that you can then jump off of into talking about animal welfare practices on these farms

“factory farming” is just a term used to paint farming in an entirely negative light, when what actually makes a farm have good or bad welfare depends on so many other things

[ispeaksforthetrees]

As someone with a degree in sustainable ag and who works in Organic agriculture now, the best term to use when talking about what people picture when they think about "factory farming" is Animal Feeding Operation (AFO) or Confined Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO)

From the USA EPA website:

(https://www.epa.gov/npdes/animal-feeding-operations-afos )

CAFO and AFO are easy to understand even if you aren't interested or involved in ag, but they are also legally defined and there are regulations and policies written about them. While terms like conventional farming and industrialized farming are useful and widely used and you won't be misunderstood (and I agree with op that they're better than 'factory farming') using specific language when talking about something that is regulated is important. "Conventional farming is bad" is a much harder point to argue when compared to "Confined Animal Feeding Operations are bad" even though I would agree that both are true. One is a broad statement about a wide variety of practices and operations and the other is discussing a specific type of operation with well documented animal welfare concerns and environmental impact (there's a reason they're defined on the EPA website - these things absolutely fuck up a watershed).

Using AFO/CAFO is also useful when discussing animal welfare as a whole. There are organic AFOs and while their animal welfare standards are higher than conventional AFO operations, they do exist. I grew up in a county with thousands of turkey and chicken CAFOs and some of them work with organic brands and were Certified Organic. Definitionally these operations are not Conventional, they're Organic. In professional circles those therms are opposite. This is where Industrial Agriculture is a more effective term than conventional, but I think my point stands.

By using AFO/CAFO to discuss any operation that raises animals as future meat products instead of as animals the critique is targeted and issue being discussed is clearer.

[bovinefigureoftheday]

Bovine figure of the day: Wena Art "Apis"