…there is a day when students get to come in with any food items, ranging from Snickers bars to Twinkies. It’s not all work and no play at Darr Ranch, though. At the University of Arkansas, Upward Bound high school students learn that “the surgical process is like any surgery and is virtually painless for the cow.” Part science lesson, part freak show, students get to reach into the belly of Hilda, U of A’s cannulated cow.įrom The Standard, Missouri State University’s newspaper: “Holey Cow! You all know that there is whole milk that comes from whole cows, but what about cows with holes in them?” MSU’s ag center features four cannulated steers, and “they each have a first name that was hand-picked for each of them and are treated like kings of the castle.” Pain–or the lack of it–figures into this article, also: “The surgery takes about an hour, and the cows are anesthetized so they don’t experience any pain.” agricultural universities have had a hand in cannulation, and you’d be right.
Given the longevity of this practice, you’d suspect that U.S. Cannulation is all about optimization: determining the optimal feed optimizes livestock production for optimal profit. With schema newly adjusted, I learned that this procedure has been in use since the 1920s with even earlier instances occurring in the 1800s (see previous link, which includes Swiss research video). Once the cannula is surgically placed in the cow, the animals grazes for a set period of time before being examined. Farmers remove the plug and pull the grass and oat mixture from the rumen. This material is collected and tested, and this analysis shows farmers and researches which forages get the best results from the livestock, based on how much is digested.Ĭannulated (also called fistulated) cows are not a new phenomenon and might not even be new to you. “Hole-y cow! How farmers are monitoring what cows eat using ‘window’ in their sides” reads the headline of a recent article about Swiss researchers who’ve cut holes in cows’ sides and fitted the holes with plastic sleeves called cannulas, using them as “portholes” for direct access to the cows’ stomach contents: Welcome to another shocking episode of It’s a Speciesist Life. But the latest revelation comes like a gut-punch–perhaps opening a window into the heart of darkness itself. Recently I learned about poultry blinders and shook my head in disbelief over the relentless human ambition to thwart animals’ behavior and lives for our convenience, gratification, sport, and profit. If you’ve been an animal rights activist for any time at all, you know this sad pattern all too well. Again and again you’ve adjusted your schema to accommodate new knowledge and, in doing so, have come to understand just how far your species is willing to go in its use and abuse of other animals. You continued to learn about other abominations–the cruel weaning rings that prevent calves from nursing ( video) surgical dog devocalization ( video) fox and coyote penning ( video)–and so much more. “Now,” you might have thought, “I understand the scope of Homo sapiens’ exploitation of animals.”īut of course you didn’t. Remember how shocked, horrified, and disgusted you were? You had to adjust your schema–the cognitive framework that helps you make intellectual sense of the human animal/nonhuman animal relationship–to accommodate this new and terrible information. Think back to when you first read or heard about debeaking.
#Cow porthole pdf
pdf copies of Dr.European Pressphoto Agency image from Mail Online He has used the cows for studies of lipid and protein metabolism related to milk synthesis.Į-mail: can access. One of these researchers is Mark McGuire, Ph.D PAS.
Several researchers at the University of Idaho are using the fistulated cows for research. We have reproduced our Real Life fistulated cows in our Virtual Campus. These cows are visible in their pasture on the west side of campus and are one of our easily recognizable research projects. The cannula (or "window") in the cows allows for access to the stomach contents for various analysis and research. On our campus in Moscow, ID, we have several fistulated cows used for research.
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