On the cows that do not go gentle into that good night
If you were a farm animal, would you try to escape?
Yvonne was a German dairy cow who sensed her impending doom and said, “Nope.” In 2011, just before she was to be slaughtered, she escaped her electrified enclosure and hid in the woods. They tried to lure her back with her sister, a breeding bull, and even one of her own calves. They enlisted hunting dogs. Local farmers were given permission to shoot her on sight.
Yvonne was too clever for all of them.
She became a media sensation and the kill order was rescinded. She hid in the woods for almost 3 months until she was tranquilized by activists and taken to a sanctuary, where she lived her final 8 years in peace.
Cows may be domesticated and bred for captivity, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have any fight in them. Here are just a few other cases of cows casting off their shackles:
Molly B jumped a 5 foot fence while being led to a slaughterhouse in Montana and evaded capture for weeks. She became a cause célèbre and was taken to a sanctuary when she was caught.
Matylda escaped her woeful life as a dairy cow and decided to live with wild Bison instead. She was caught two years later, reportedly covered in scars, and without the calf she was sometimes seen with. From what I can tell she never became a celebrity and had to go right back to her old life.
Another cow in Poland, dubbed “Hero Cow”, bolted from her handlers, bashed through a fence, and evaded capture by swimming out to an island. Polish cows apparently have a lot of gumption. She lived out there for about a month. She died of a heart attack after she was shot with tranquilizers and put back on a truck.
How long would a large group of dairy cows survive if they escaped?
I should probably interview experts if I really want to get to learn about domesticated cow survival rates, but for now I did the next best thing — I asked Claude and ChatGPT.
What did they expect would happen if 1000 Wisconsin dairy cows were released and were not actively hunted by humans? How many would be alive after a year? I was curious because there are plenty of people online who are quick to say that freedom for a domesticated farm animal would be a quick death sentence.
After analyzing predation, starvation, exposure, and health issues, Claude said: “As a rough guess, maybe half to two-thirds of the cows might survive for a year, so perhaps 300-600 out of the original 1,000.” ChatGPT was more negative in general, expecting only 150-200 of the original cows to survive for a year.
I asked about the 5 year survival rate. Claude thought 100-200 of the cows might still be around, ChatGPT only 35-40.
That’s pretty grim, but less so when you consider that the 5 year survival rate of any dairy cow is already terrible. A dairy cow is usually slaughtered when their milk production drops, at around 4-7 years old. Personally, I’d rather pull a Matylda and take my chances living with a pack of wild bison.
The cows want to frolic
“A cow on pasture has become a rare thing in the American Dairy Industry.”
Laura Paine, Wisconsin Department of Agriculture (source)
Only about 20% of Wisconsin dairy farms allow any form of pasture grazing. That number has been trending down over time.
You wouldn’t know it by doing a google image search for “dairy cow wisconsin”. The first pictures that comes up are of happy looking cows eating grass under blue skies.
When I actually drive around the state of Wisconsin, I see very few cows like that. Most cows that I see are living in confined squalor, either in giant sheds or on dirty little roadside farms.
Drive on any country road for an hour and you’ll likely see thousands of cows in similarly depressing conditions.
At least those cows get to go outside, even if outside is just a small dirt pit. Most live indoors all the time.
There’s a dairy farm near where my in-laws live. It proudly calls itself a “family farm”. A family farm evokes images of a handful of happy cows munching on grass while toddlers play on a swing set nearby. In reality, this farm has almost 1000 cows that are confined 24/7 to a their indoor facility.
I walk by the barn all the time. The animals closest to the windows sometimes take an interest in me and my dogs. They’ll come to the edge of their enclosure, engaged, inquisitive, alert. They’ll watch us walk down the road and out of sight before going back to doing absolutely nothing in their barren, enrichment-free prison.
One day, when I didn’t have my dogs, I jogged over to the barn to get a closer look.
I don’t know anything about cow emotions, but it felt like they eyed me warily. They did not see me as a friend, and I don’t blame them. For years, humans have been poking and prodding them, piercing their ears, repeatedly impregnating them, and hauling off their babies.
Or maybe what I took for agitation was actually excitement? Perhaps they thought I might switch on the giant fans hanging above them? It was a hot day.
I snapped a couple pics and left before a farm worker noticed I was on the property. I didn’t want to get legally shot.
The proprietors of these farms think they are providing these cows a good life. One dairy farmer had this to say about cow welfare:
“They are bred into this system, so it’s not like we’re taking a wild animal and putting them in here. If we let them outside they would wonder what was going on.”
I think the stories I’ve shared of the escaped cows disprove that point. We also have plenty of video evidence that going outside makes cows downright jubilant.
But I’m no farmer, just a guy who likes to watch happy animals on YouTube.
I’m sure they don’t keep up that level of enthusiasm day after day. It’s just a bummer that we set up a system where so many sentient beings are denied even that one fleeting moment of joy.
Hermien was a dairy cow who took decided to seize that joy herself. While being shipped off to die, she escaped with her sister. They caught her sister, but Hermien evaded capture for two months, becoming yet another ‘escaped cow turned social media phenomenon.’ A crowdfunding campaign raised 50,000 Euros to put her in a sanctuary instead of a slaughterhouse.
Try to look at Hermien and tell me, because of the way she was bred, she’d actually prefer to be stuck inside hooked up to a milking machine.
The cows that escape may be the exception, but that doesn’t mean the rest of them aren’t yearning for freedom, companionship, and grace.