Monthly Archives: March 2014

Some fun facts about cows:
1. 1. Cows are not native to America; the first cow in America arrived in 1611 and lived in the Jamestown colony.¹
2. For a long period of American history (until the 1850’s) most families had their own cow.¹
3. Genetic improvements and breeding techniques have drastically changed cows over the past decades. Today, the output of one cow is ten times as great as the output for one cow previously. ¹
4. Milking machines allowed farmers to improve from being able to milk only six cows per hour to more than 100 cows per hour.¹
5. Cows are ruminants, which means they have four stomach compartments. When I was little, I thought that cows literally had four separate small stomachs, and I was pretty disappointed when I learned otherwise. The first compartment of the stomach, called the rumen, changes carbohydrates to volatile fatty acids that are absorbed by the animal. The second compartment, the reticulum, helps the cow regurgitate their food so they can chew the cud. The third compartment, the omasum, helps with the absorption of water and helps digest food a bit. The last compartment, the abomasum, functions like a stomach in a monogastric, secreting enzymes to digest food further.

Source: www.furrytalk.com

As seen by some of the fun facts, cows are very important to society. Without cows, we would not have milk, cheese, beef, or Penn State’s famous creamery ice cream. Both the beef and milk industries are multi-billion dollar industries worldwide. In addition, cows are used to make leather, and their manure that can be used as fertilizer. They can also be used for manual labor; they can pull carts or plows. In addition, cows are sacred animals in the Hindi religion and seen as a maternal figure; slaughtering cows is illegal in most states in India.

So the next time you see a cow, take time to appreciate how awesome cows are.

¹ http://www.aipl.arsusda.gov/kc/cowfacts.html

My fifth grade class raised chickens for fun. We got about twelve eggs for the whole class and incubated them. After they hatched, we got to observe them and watch them turn from cute fuzzy yellow chickens to ones with white feathers. Raising the chickens was a lot of work; they ate and drank copiously, as any growing animal should. In addition, we could not keep the chickens at school during the weekends, and thus we had to take them home, resulting in many fun adventures and encounters with other pets. At the start of the project, our teacher informed us that we would be required to do projects and experiments with the chickens, such as testing their intelligence by making them run through a maze. We did not actually perform any experiments, but instead learned a lot about chickens via day-to-day observation.

Source: www.infocium.com

When I was in fifth grade, I thought our experience was a relatively unique one and that most people raise chickens just for food or eggs. However, many people enjoy the companionship of chickens and keep them as pets, though having a pet chicken is a bit more exotic than having a pet cat or dog.¹ In addition, people raise poultry for shows and fairs.

However, the most important role poultry play in society is in the meat and egg industry. Eggs are a good source of protein, a better source than milk or meat, because they are designed to feed a growing embryo that has high nutritional needs. Thus the egg laying industry is very important, and there are millions of egg-laying hens in the United States.¹ In addition, billions of chickens are harvested each year in the United States, and consumption of poultry has gone up significantly in the last couple of decades as consumer trends and lifestyle changes occurred.¹ As countries develop, the demand for meat increases; thus other countries have shown an increase in chicken consumption also.

¹http://web.uconn.edu/poultry/4-H%20Poultry/importanceofpoultry.html