“And when we see them treated as nothing a part of us hurts with them, recoiling at their cries and attempts to escape. So, too, we often rejoice when we see one get away, escaping even the natural dangers of the wild into which all are born and which all must perish.”
Matthew Scully, Dominion
There’s a dairy farm near where my in-laws live. It proudly calls itself a “family farm”. A family farm evokes images of a handful of happy cows meandering around, munching on grass, while toddlers play on a swing set nearby. In reality it has almost 1000 cows that are confined 24/7 to giant sheds.
I walk by this farm all the time. The cows closest to the windows sometimes take an interest in me and my dogs. They’ll come to the edge of their enclosure, engaged, inquisitive, alert. They’ll watch us walk down the road and out of sight before going back to doing absolutely nothing in their barren, enrichment-free prison.
One day, when I didn’t have my dogs, I jogged over to the barn to get a closer look.
I don’t know anything about cow emotions, but it felt like they eyed me warily. They did not see me as a friend, and I don’t blame them. For years, humans have been poking and prodding them, piercing their ears, repeatedly impregnating them, and hauling off their babies.
Or maybe what I took for agitation was actually excitement? Perhaps they thought I might switch on the giant fans hanging above them? It was a hot day.
I snapped a couple pics and left before a farm worker noticed I was on the property. I didn’t want to get legally shot for approaching their family.
I wished I could open a door and watch them wander off into the hills. I wished I could tell them that, with their heft, if they all banded together, maybe they could make break down the door. Sure, a predator might quickly get them. And they would have to find their own food. They are not built to survive on their own. They are protected in the barn.
Would you try to escape, if you had to switch places?
Stories of badass cows who chose freedom
Yvonne, a German dairy cow, would not go gentle into that good night. In 2011 she escaped her electrified enclosure and hid in the woods for almost 3 months. She evaded all kinds of sophisticated attempts to catch her, including the tactic of leaving her sister tied up in the woods to see if that would lure her back.
Local farmers were given permission to shoot her on sight, but she was too clever for them to get the chance.
She eventually became such a media sensation that the kill order was rescinded. She was taken to an animal sanctuary after she was found.
These girls may be bred for captivity, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have any fight in them. There are tons of stories about cows doing everything they can to escape and live free, way more than I would have guessed. Here are just a few:
- Molly B jumped a 5 foot fence while being led to a slaughterhouse in Montana and evaded capture for weeks. She became a cause célèbre and was taken to a sanctuary when she was caught.
- Matylda escaped her woeful life as a dairy cow and decided to live with wild Bison instead. She was caught two years later. She was reportedly covered in scars. I hope she wore those symbols of her bravery with pride.
- Another cow in Poland, dubbed “Hero Cow”, bolted from her handlers, bashed through a fence, and evaded capture by swimming (!!) out to an island. Polish cows apparently have a lot of gumption. She lived out there for about a month. She died of a heart attack after she was shot with tranquilizers and put back on a truck.
How long would a large group of dairy cows survive if they escaped?
I should probably interview experts if I really want to get to the bottom of this, but for now I did the next best thing — I asked the current most advanced AI chatbot, Claude Opus.
What did it expect would happen if 1000 Wisconsin dairy cows were released and were not actively hunted by humans? How many would be alive after a year? I was curious because there are plenty of people online who are quick to say that freedom for a domesticated farm animal would be a quick death sentence.
After analyzing predation, starvation, exposure, and health issues, Claude said: “As a rough guess, maybe half to two-thirds of the cows might survive for a year, so perhaps 300-600 out of the original 1,000.”
That’s not bad! I asked about the 5 year survival rate, and it thought 100-200 of the cows might still be around. That’s pretty grim, but less so when you consider that the 5 year survival rate of any dairy cow is already terrible. A dairy cow is usually slaughtered when their milk production drops, at around 4-7 years old. The escaped cows could have a longer life than if they’d chosen to stay put.
The cows want to frolic
“A cow on pasture has become a rare thing in the American Dairy Industry.”
Laura Paine, Wisconsin Department of Agriculture (source)
Only about 20% of Wisconsin dairy farms allow any form of pasture grazing. That number has been trending down over time.
You wouldn’t know it by doing a google image search for “dairy cow wisconsin”. The first pictures that comes up are of happy looking cows eating grass under blue skies.
When I actually drive around the state of Wisconsin, I see very few cows like that. Most cows that I see are living in confined squalor on dirty little roadside farms.
Drive on any country road for an hour and you’ll likely see thousands of cows in similarly depressing conditions.
At least those cows get to go outside, even if outside is just a small dirt pit. Most live indoors all the time and only view the outside world through a window. Some are tied up and electrocuted if they move too much.
The proprietors of these farms think they are providing these cows a pretty good life. One dairy farmer who had this to say about cow welfare:
“They are bred into this system, so it’s not like we’re taking a wild animal and putting them in here. If we let them outside they would wonder what was going on.”
I think the stories of the escaped cows above disprove that point. We also have plenty of video evidence that going outside makes cows downright jubilant.
But I’m no farmer, just a guy who likes to watch happy animals on YouTube.
I’m sure they don’t keep up that level of enthusiasm day after day. It’s just a bummer that we set up a system where so many sentient beings are denied even that one fleeting moment of joy.
Hermien was a dairy cow being taken to die when she escaped with her sister. They caught her sister, but Hermien evaded capture for two months, becoming a social media star in the process. A crowdfunding campaign raised 50,000 Euros to put her in a sanctuary instead of a slaughterhouse.
Try to look at Hermien and tell me, because of the way she was bred, she’d actually prefer to be stuck inside hooked up to a milking machine.
Cows are mocked all the time for being dumb. I used to believe that. Now I think of them as giant dogs that we exploit because of their passivity and easygoing nature. (Much like the actual dogs we still do horrible research experiments on.)
The cows that break out may be the exception, but that doesn’t mean the rest of them aren’t yearning for freedom, companionship, and grace.
My thoughts on everything 