BARLEY'S BOVINE BLOG @bovineblogger - Tumblr Blog

hi! you can call me barley!

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

🍋MAIN BLOG🍋 🌾FAQ🌾

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

farm-paws

She actually came to say hello to me? Who are you and what have you done to Ruby?

camelidae

I always love the cows with the hangy-down horns.

highlandcattleofsaarela

cow moving it’s sniffer/top lip around to the sounds of a minecraft chest. with shulker sounds too

i was gonna edit this but i couldnt find a clear video of a cow flehmening and gave up. sad!

wizardarchetypes

very irritating how often i see people anthropomorphize nonhuman animals (especially wild animals) on this site and online at large but very disappointing that when someone says 'hey don't project human emotions onto that bird/dog/bear/deer etc.' a bunch of other people are like 'exactly. animals don't care' and then go on to describe nonhuman animals as incapable of sentience, compassion, or thought. perhaps there's a secret option about how nonhuman animals think and feel that's neither 'they think and feel exactly as humans do' nor 'they don't think or feel anything.' but idk i'm just some guy.

aquatic-dusk

it’s a mistake to assume that nonhuman animals have the same conscious experiences as you, but it is also wrong to assume they dont have any conscious experiences at all. both of these are damagingly human-centric, both will lead you to misconceptions about why animals do things, and both completely disregard the unfathomable diversity of possible ways to experience reality.

125tel-by-kum

camelidae

strangebiology

Literature Review Summarizes What We Know about What Cattle Know

This peer-reviewed paper called The Psychology of Cows, funded by Farm Sanctuary’s “The Someone Project,” highlights the things that cows can do, like:

Act more pessimistically after painful experiences

Recognize and prefer gentle people over aggressive people

Get excited when they solve a puzzle (even more so than when they receive a reward for doing nothing.) Eureka!

There is quite a bit of nuance to this article so I’d appreciate at least a cursory read before commenting!

please-call-me-cordelia

The Golden Cow in The Golden Pasture, by Geno Rugh.

bovineblogger

(src)

bovineblogger

how much intent is there in what patterns and colors a specific breed or variety of domestic cow has? i'm only vaguely familiar with color/pattern standardization in cats, where the breeds are much more "about" what the cat looks like. from what I've gathered following this blog, cattle breeds are mostly functional, but there still seems to be tendencies for a breed to have specific fur colors and patterns? is it just how their genetic pool ended up? (i'm realizing i could probably also ask a dog blog this same question, though I'm not even sure i'd get the same answer)

from what i know it's usually secondary! cattle are usually bred for meat/milk quality, hardiness etc. but there are cattle that are bred for showing and that can factor into it! club calves (the cows you see being washed and blowdried online) are mixed breeds that are mostly bred for appearance :)