This was the view from near my home today. Cows on Bidwell Ranch acting like a weather-vane…all pointed north, due to a strong south wind with stinging rain…and who needs stinging wind in your face?
Click for a hi-res image.
Saw it on my weather station at www.bidwellranchcam.com and used my camera to get this photo from ground level. Everybody should have one of these 😉
UPDATE: My assumption about cowvanes was incorrect. Willis Eschenbach advises:
As a reformed cowboy, I fear you’ve made a small error. You assume the cows are facing downwind because they don’t like the wind in their faces … but horses always stand the other way, facing the wind. It has to do with which way the hair runs on their bodies. Horses hair runs from the bow to the stern, and on cows it runs the other way. They both stand so their hair sheds the rain …
w.
“Russ Hatch says:
April 13, 2012 at 10:44 am
But the computer models all say they should be lying down facing South.+
A NASA GISS computer model would say they are actually buffaloes. 🙂
Sorry Anthony, but I have to take a small objection to your Update
Far be it for me to disagree with Willis, but, it’s always been farming folk-lore, that all bovines (Cattle, Buffalo, Bison etc) prefer to stand facing North or South – independent of any prevailing weather – the wind would be a secondary factor.
Nexttime you’re out, just have a look – the vast majority will be on this North/South alignment – some facing South, some facing North
Even the BBC thinks so …http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7575459.stm
Amazing, that “scientists” can “prove” what we Country-Folk have known for countless generations
Andi
Ospreys always turn the fish that they have in their talons so that it’s pointing forward. It appears that the bird knows a forward facing fish produces less wind drag! If you live or visit an area (Florida coasts) where there are Ospreys, watch for them carrying fish.
There certainly seem to be quite a few of us from the general Northern California area!
[Including Anthony, Willis, dbstealey, Steven Mosher, Dr. Leif Svalgaard, Charles the #1 moderator, Alec Rawls, Tom Fuller… and apologies if I’m forgetting any others. ~dbs, mod.]
Anthony, I like your explanation better. If we can get a consensus here, we can call Willis a skeptic, and then banish him from posting in the peer reviewed cow journals! 😉
What an enjoyable thread. I much prefer to be a skeptic, because the alarmists all seem to have had the sense of humour bypass op. Saving the world is obviously a grim business.
Pointman
Having been raised on a 25,000 acre cattle ranch, punched, branded, etc. a lot of doggies, buccarooed a lot, I will say that Willis is wrong. Both cattle and horses will “fanny up” to a hard wind regardless of direction of hair growth which also varies by species, but sometimes they will also face into a wind. Don’t ask me why, they just do it.
When we were kids, to show cattle, 4-H’ers washed and brushed them (and yes, the hair grew the other way compared to a horse). That’s it. Maybe a little saddle soap on the hooves. Showing them was a matter of working with your animal on a lead, and feeding them right so they looked as good on the hoof as off.
If you want to view the udderly rediculous, see what high-end 4-H and professional cattle showers go through to get their animal ready to show these days. What might be in their arsenal? Several different kinds of spray, including spray cans of paint, adhesives, and glo-coat, and two kinds of clippers, three different brushes, the list goes on and on.
Anytime I hear about cows, I always think of the following book
http://www.clarelibrary.ie/eolas/library/services/book_reviews/mccarthys_bar.htm
The ‘part’ with the cow had me in stitches laughing.
@Pointman says:
“It’s hard to believe, but there’s a lot of people in fuel poverty in the developed world nowadays. I kid you not.”
I have lived in Africa for a total of 32 years and worked at least a little in 20 African countries. As you can imagine, I am ‘familiar with the problem’.
Something that always stuck with me was learning in the ’70’s that poor people in Africa use tiny amounts of electricity (dry cell batteries) and they have always paid $50 per kWh for the privilege.
This has always bothered me a lot. Batteries are not sold for a price related to their cost, they are sold for $50/kWh, decade after decade. It is my fevent hope that thermoelectric generators, and if the famous Dr Steve Garrett has his way, thermoacoustic generators, will light up the African night, driven by daytime-deployed simple solar devices or cooking fires.
For anyone who wants to ‘do something’ with electric micro-power projects, please investigate the use of ‘dead’ cellphone batteries. A battery that will no linger power a phone can run an HE-LED light for a few hours a night for a month on a single charge. In one Central American project they are charged at school and the students are able to study at night for a couple of hours. It is a great idea, cheap, develops local skills and helps those who want to help themselves.
If they have a cowlick do they spin in the wind?
Percentage of cows hunkered down is correlated to probability of rain. True fact. And, LarryG, we’ve got ospreys here in Texas, in Downtown Houston, no less.
This country girl still has her cowlick (one side of my bangs stands straight up) and no I don’t spin in the wind. But a hard wind can knock me over, since I ain’t very big.
Air & water…
The cows tell us the wind goes from right to left on the image, the grass also bends to the left. But can you also tell the direction the water is streaming? Did study the water flow for a while, the shapes, the lay-out… It gives me the feeling from left to right, but then the erosion in the bank looks like water flowing there from right to left… I have no real clue. Can anybody tell from the image?
If the site is near Chico Calif. you would expect the slope going down to the south so to the right on the picture, but I am wondering if there are clues in the picture itself…
I can tell you true that weather gets worse when one lone girl on a tractor tries to herd 40 cow units out of CRP grazing by herself. It hailed that day (Thanksgiving day) and blew my black felt cowboy hat off my head and threw it into the salt lick circle where it got stomped, soiled, and chewed on. But I got the cows out and the gate put back up. Never been that cold in all my life.
Bountiful bovine buffoonery…
(But it does give me an idea of what’s for dinner.)
MarciaF says:
April 13, 2012 at 2:07 pm
Oh no–cowlicks are mostly found on big blocks of salt set out for the herd.
Actually, on most cows the hair runs from dorsal to belly.
I suspect a cow in stinging rain rotates a bit as she has the choice of getting it in the face, on her lady parts and rear, or either side which have much more area to sting. If it gets bad enough, they will walk or run downwind until they run into an obstacle.
Cows, conversely, also graze into the breeze on hot days to keep cool. As a drover turned sailor and participating in a national sailing championship on an inland lake, in light/variable winds, I was able to gain advantage by watching which way the cows were pointing.
Whichever way a cow stands, in my experience, it’ll always try and stand on one of your feet. It’s a bit like a horse in that way. I’m sure there’s a scientific conclusion to be drawn from that but I’m blowed if I can make it out.
Pointman
I love hamburgers. ( Hot though.)
When I was a kid Dad and his buddy would sometimes take us fishing down to Dale Hollow. His buddy said that cows would lay (lie?) down when it was going to rain. For years aferward if we passed a field where some of cows were laying down the standing joke was, “50% chance of rain”.
Cattle also can be used as lightning detectors. If all the cattle are laying down with their feet in the air lightning is probably present.
Larry
Chad Jessup says:
April 13, 2012 at 1:50 pm
Having been raised on a 25,000 acre cattle ranch, punched, branded, etc. a lot of doggies, buccarooed a lot, I will say that Willis is wrong. Both cattle and horses will “fanny up” to a hard wind regardless of direction of hair growth which also varies by species, but sometimes they will also face into a wind. Don’t ask me why, they just do it.
_________________________________
I notice my ponies face into the wind when the whether is nice (and/or the flies are out) but they fanny into the wind in miserable cold wet weather.
Well, just as there is more to climate than average temperatures, there is more to the direction cows stand than the wind.
Animals spend a lot of time in thermal regulation. Notice cows and horses (deer ect. too) standing broadside to the sun to warm up. Cows and horses also have a hard time with insects, and a little breeze helps keep them away from their face and tails help at the other end. The top of hills or ridges are usually exposed to more wind and breezes so you will see cows chewing their cud on the top of hills and ridges in fly season, but in lower lands with cover when its cold. Also, where they go and which way they stand also sometimes depends upon what they are grazing and how steep the land is.
It would help if CAGW “scientists” would look at climate in its whole than just temperture. Perhaps they should have a few field trips a year to watch cows.