7.20.11
Sunny, 98 degrees
Humidity 34%
Dew Point 58 degrees
Wind SW @ 10-15 mph
Forecast: Sunny, hot

Several folks have asked about cow tipping and cow floating.
I got a cow tipping tee-shirt at the Kansas City Airport (and a triple-shot venti latte for the ride back to the farm) and went out that evening to tip a few sleeping cows. The folk story is that cows are so slow-witted that when they are sleeping they can actually be pushed over (tipped) before they know something is going on.

Well it is harder than it sounds.

First off cows don’t sleep standing up, they lie down and trying to move a cow that is lying down is incredibly hard. This Summer’s heat wave was particularly hard on one of the cows and on several days Bruce (and whoever else was handy) had to get her back on her feet.  Moving a 1300-pound cow that does not want to move takes a bit of patience and effort.

Second, cows standing up may be ‘dozing’ or just thinking about life, but they really are aware that they are cows and don’t like to be pushed.  If they are dozing and wake up suddenly they tend to take up a lot of room.  I’ve known people who wake-up with arms & legs flailing.  Cows may not have arms but they can certainly get their legs and tail moving.  A funny thing about herd animals is that if one begins to move they all begin to move and they may have no idea why they are moving.
During my attempt at cow tipping I could actually see the look of surprise on the faces of the other cows.  Most of these cows actually were asleep not just dozing. Lying quietly, dreaming of the grass on the other side of the fence. All of a sudden they were up and in a hurry but didn’t know why.  Standing in the middle of a startled mass of moving cows can be very interesting and lead to another, though slightly more obscure, myth; running on the backs of cows.

Below is a diagram on the force needed to tip a non-resisting cow (i.e. frozen in place) by Dr Margo Lillie (a zoologist at the University of British Columbia) and one of her graduate students who studied the physics of cow tipping.

the physics of cow tipping