Cows

The Michael Vick dogfighting case, and all of the attention on dogfighting and its attendant practices, show one thing very clearly: As a society, we have no idea what we think about animals. We don't know how much we ought to take them into account, morally. We don't even know how to figure it out. I watched cable news recently, and almost every anchor interviewed an official of the Humane Society, and all expressed horror, especially that Vick's indictment had accused him and acquaintances of executing dogs in ways apparently designed to be as cruel as possible: drowning, strangling, electrocution.

Under a crisp March sky in the western portion of Lancaster County, where fertile fields awaited spring planting, a group of farmers gathered in a huge barn to wage a war on worldwide starvation. They did it by buying cows. "We never know how many we're going to buy," said David King, a Cochranville farmer who attended a cattle auction with his son, Marvin. "It depends on the price and the mood of the buyers. You play it by ear. If you've got the space, now is the time to buy. " The price and the mood were right for the Kings, who spent $9,300 on 13 cows at the 10th annual World Relief Heifer Sale at Melvin Kolb's Sale Barn in Lancaster this month.

The Academy of Natural Sciences is, you could say, cow-towing to bovines in a celebration titled "COWS! Fact & Fancy," beginning next Saturday. There'll be live cows, fossilized cows, cow tales, cow photos, cow videos, a milking machine, a walk-through model of a cow's stomach and more. Opening-weekend festivities will include demonstations of ice-cream making and butter making, and appearances by dairy princesses. The bovine bonanza will be capped by a Cow Roundup Festival, Nov. 18 and 19. The exhibit will run through Jan. 15. Events are free after paying the museum's admission fee. The Academy of Natural Sciences is at 19th Street and the Parkway.

Gateway Inc., the personal-computer company that is recalling one million little rubber cows that promote its corporate logo, said yesterday that other companies should withdraw similar advertising items to avoid harming children. "We bought these little cows off the shelf, and just added our corporate name," said John W. Spelich, director of corporate communications. "We are urging the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission to track down [similar products] before someone gets hurt.

Arsenic poisoning from an unknown source caused the deaths last week of 30 Angus cows on a Gloucester County farm, officials from the New Jersey Department of Agriculture said yesterday. State and county officials have been investigating the mysterious deaths of the cows, which died between March 22 and March 26 on a West Deptford Township farm operated by John F. Marple Jr.; his father, John Sr., and his brother. "The cause of death was arsenic toxicity, but the source has not been identified," said Dr. Janice Nicol of the Agriculture Department's Division of Animal Health.

While their cows napped and munched the afternoon away, eight teenagers from Montgomery County spent several hours last week stringing up green-and- white banners across their cows' stables at the Pennsylvania Farm Show. The students also draped wide strips of green satin with ornately penned nameplates over each cow's head. The nameplates introduced visitors to 11 dairy cows with names such as Lollipop, Primrose and Nutmeg. This year, unlike in previous years, the Montgomery County 4-H Club was determined to be noticed.

"Ze cheesemaker iss married wis an American," the man at the neighboring table told my friends and me at a cafe in Lauterbrunnen, gateway to the Jungfrau region of Switzerland. The region draws visitors from around the world. They board red railcars to the 11,333-foot Jungfraujoch. En route, movie fans gaze out the window - cut through solid rock - that Clint Eastwood clambered into in The Eiger Sanction. Nearby, the Alps' longest cable car rises to the Schilthorn, whose summit restaurant starred as the lair of villainous Ernst Stavro Blofeld in the James Bond film On Her Majesty's Secret Service.

In the minds of many a city dweller, dairy farming is performed by a freckle-faced rustic in coveralls and straw hat, perched on a wooden stool as he milks Bossy. In real life, the modern dairy operation is more likely to resemble Richard Waybright's 1,800-acre-plus farm, with its air-conditioned computer room that so thoroughly monitors production that he can tell which cows are ailing, ovulating, pregnant or in need of a better feed mix. At the Waybright family's Mason Dixon Farms near here, the cows wear computer chips.

The Camden County 4-H fairgrounds look as bucolic as they sound - a stretch of four barns on one of the urban county's last green pastures. In three of the barns, sod and seed are piled high with a few dusty farm tools scattered about the dirt floors. But in the crescent-shaped rafters of the fourth barn is a fully equipped "do jang," or Tae Kwon Do studio, home to what local leaders say is likely the largest 4-H karate club in the country. As 170 small bodies clad in white uniforms and colorful belts grunt and kick their way across spongy mats, the message is clear: This is not the 4-H of the past.

WASHINGTON BORO, Pa. - Twenty years ago, John Harnish was happy if his cows each yielded 17,000 pounds of milk a year. These days, his 145 black-and-white animals are veritable dairy queens - producing a hefty 27,000 pounds each. He credits most of the increase to breeding, more frequent milking, and better feed. Another factor comes straight from the biotech lab: biweekly injections of synthetic growth hormone. If you don't like that, you won't like this: As of Feb. 1 in Pennsylvania, consumers won't be able to tell the difference between milk from farms that inject their cows and milk from those that don't.

On a March morning in 2009, Tyree Bush fired a 9mm weapon at a man heading to a corner store in Overbrook to buy Pampers. The timid teenager was a lousy shot, striking the victim in the hand. Bush, a gentle loner with an IQ of 52, had no clue what he was doing except following orders from a menacing neighborhood drug dealer. For the next three years, state and local officials found themselves equally perplexed about how to punish, and release, an unlikely felon at a time of dwindling resources for the intellectually disabled.

The number of cattle tested for mad cow disease has fallen almost 90 percent since 2005, according to Agriculture Department statistics, a drop that consumer groups say endangers America's food supply. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack on Wednesday said that animal testing was adequate, a day after his department confirmed the nation's first known case of mad cow disease in six years, a dead dairy animal on its way to a rendering plant in central California. About 40,000 cattle were tested in the year ended Sept.

SAN JOSE, Calif. - In a move that could raise new questions about food safety and result in economic setbacks to California's agricultural industry, the U.S. Department of Agriculture on Tuesday confirmed that a case of mad cow disease has been found in a dairy cow in California's Central Valley. The incident is the first case of the disease ever found in California - and the first in the United States since 2006. John Clifford, the USDA's chief veterinary officer, said the cow was detected at a rendering plant, where the animal is being held as part of an investigation.

By David Holahan When I was a child, my family shared an aluminum extension ladder with the Harmon clan and another neighbor in Long Island. Sometimes finding it was a kind of shell game: Which garage, shed, or porch is the ladder under now? The money saved by not buying our own ladders couldn't have been much, but the Harmons had 10 kids, and I had four brothers, so every little bit helped. And how often did any of us need a ladder? The boundary between us and the Harmons was vague.

Gustavo Ramirez, 17, has aspirations of someday opening his own tattoo parlor. The soft-spoken sophomore at Overbrook High School in Pine Hill never expected his first client to be a life-size fiberglass cow. Ramirez is one of nine finalists - and the only one from New Jersey - selected by a panel of judges from 9,200 entrants nationwide in the seventh annual Lucerne Art of Dairy Contest, an art competition sponsored by Safeway Inc., the grocery...

Let's talk about the smallness first. The bullying is troubling, the thin-skinned aversion to criticism vexing. But in the end, it is the sheer, Lilliputian smallness of the behavior that I can't quite get past. We are talking about Emma Sullivan's tweet - and the governor's response. Sullivan, an 18-year-old senior at a high school just south of Kansas City, Kan., heard Gov. Sam Brownback speak recently at a "Youth in Government" program in Topeka. Afterward, Sullivan tweeted to her Twitter followers, who numbered perhaps 60: "Just made mean comments at gov brownback and told him he sucked, in person #heblowsalot.

Kayli, the white cow that fled an Upper Darby slaughter market late last month and led police on a merry chase before being corralled to face an uncertain future has landed at her new home. Kayli was off-loaded from an animal carrier this morning and got her first look at the Woodstock Farm Sanctuary in upstate New York where she will graze and chew her cud for the rest of her life. She met her new handler, Jenny Brown, and bumped noses with two enormous steers, one of whom seemed to be smitten.

The cow that bolted to freedom from an Upper Darby slaughterhouse last month will be headed to a farm sanctuary in New York on Monday. Kayli, as the bovine is now named, split from Madina Live Poultry market on June 18. Police were called in to help round up the white cow. Animal activists offered to buy the animal to save her from certain death. Gov. Corbett's office and the state Department of Agriculture granted an exemption to allow the group to purchase a live cow. The cow has spent the last two weeks quarantined at the Quakertown Veterinary Clinic while undergoing required health checks.

THE media jumped all over the incident involving the cow that escaped from an Upper Darby slaughterhouse. It received so much attention, Gov. Corbett even issued a "pardon" for the cow. Meanwhile, the media have paid very little attention to the fact that the governor is pen-happy in signing death warrants for humans. Although he's been in office less than six months, he's already signed (at least) four, including one for James "Jimmy" Dennis, whom many people, myself included, believe is innocent.