When you live and work with farm animals every day and give them names, you come to see them as individuals. When you know how they are related to each other, you start to see differences between individuals and between families. As I watched them, it seemed to me that they are far more intelligent than is generally accepted. But small grassland farms and cows with names instead of electronic numbers are under threat of extinction, as farms get ever bigger and campaigners turn the public against grazing animals. Thankfully, other authors are also fighting to save them and what they symbolise, just as they were in the past. The author has a farm where the animals are allowed to live more or less as they like until they go to the butcher. This last is referred to very briefly as in, Kite Farm is a beef farm. The rest of the time the animals are referred to in more or less the same way as people and as if they are going to live out their long lives until old age takes them. Perhaps this is true of the animals the author talks about, but what about the rest? I guess my biggest struggle with this book, and it appears to be the same thing for a lot of reviewers, is how Young talked so lovingly of these cows all the way through but in the end, she slaughtered them anyway. That feels bizarre to me. Factory farmers don’t care about the animals so there is no feeling there when they are killed. With Young, she talked about these cows as though they were pet dogs. You wouldn’t kill your pet dog! It just didn’t sit right with me and I can assure you it still wouldn’t have if I was still eating meat. Young’s animal stories are truly charming and quietly convincing of the great value of a more natural form of farming.”– Booklist The words in this book can be sung to the tune of Skip to My Lou which makes the story more fun to read. All the animals are having a lot of fun in the house as Tom Farmer naps. He wakes up and sends them out just to find them in the house again the next times he naps!

Cows and sheep "ask politely for help," or they "have a chat" with each other, or they "stand together and enjoy the view" or they "ask advice of older animals". This meditative little book isn’t new: it came out first in 2003, when it was published by a small farming press. But then a beady-eyed editor at Faber noticed Alan Bennett had praised it in his diary (“it alters the way one looks at the world”, he wrote in an entry on 24 August 2006), with the result that it has now been republished. Its author, Rosamund Young, who lives and works at Kite’s Nest, an organic farm on the edge of the Cotswold escarpment, must be thrilled – or maybe not. Having read her book, which is very sensible but also somewhat dreamy and a bit obsessive, she strikes me as the kind of woman who would rather be standing in a muddy field in her wellies than listening to some eager townie praise her for her wisdom. I loved Rosamund Young’s The Secret Life of Cows. It’s apleafor us to appreciatethe complex inner lives of our inquisitive, loving, bovine friends,whom we arguably exploit more than any other creature on Earth—from what we wear on our feet, via our Sunday roast, to what we pour on our granola. It also makesthe great pointthat we should not judge animal intelligence in relation to our own.” —Matt Haig, bestselling author of Reasons to Stay Alive and How to Stop Time The book, though enjoyable in its way, was not what I think of as a good book. I thought too much of the 'secret life' was fanciful and not at all credible. And I speak from a point of view of knowledge. I know cows as cows who are not subject to people at all, I've been observing 'wild' ones for decades, mostly in my garden where they eat what they fancy every now and again. (They like psychedelic magic mushrooms but I've not seen if they get high or not on them). Cows are not farmed in farms here, the farmer lets the gardens of the whole island feed them and they just cull the baby bulls, the cows are free to live out their lives until old age weakens them, then they too go to the abbatoir.Cows have near-panoramic vision, meaning they can see in almost every direction of a 360-degree circle. [5] In a decaying apartment: a mother, a son and a paralysed dog. Monstrously fat and murderously driven, referred to only as The Hagbeast, the mother employs her own unique version of dinnertime cuisine as she attempts to bring about the demise of her only child.​ This is a book about farming. About a family trying to make a living. And even though – as many, many people have repeatedly mentioned here – they accomplish this by “raising cattle just to slaughter them”, they manage to treat the animals with utmost respect. Yes, the cows and calves get slaughtered when their time comes. But that doesn’t influence the fact that, while they were alive, every single person on this farm gave their everything to make the lives of these animals as comfortable as possible. Known to many as the agricultural adviser to BBC Radio 4’s The Archers, Harvey explores the world of grass from every possible perspective, revealing the astonishing universe that lies beneath our feet, and upon which we depend in more ways than we can possibly imagine. The book explains the vital importance of grass as a carbon store, and carbon’s role as the basis of the healthy soil needed for sustainable food production. linguistically attempting to highlight the overall message of how individual ALL animals are (if given a chance to develop) and

Scientists are currently trying to alter the genetic makeup of the basic cow, in an attempt to lower the amount of methane gas they produce during digestion. [2]This book had one of our four-year-olds laughing hysterically. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen her laugh so hard from listening to a story before. In the book, there is a cow who says “oink” and all the animals on the farm laugh at her but then she finds a pig who says “moo” and they teach each other their sounds. As they are learning, they mistakenly say the wrong sounds which makes the book even funnier. Cows do not have teeth on the upper front part of their mouths; they cut grass by pressing their bottom teeth against their hard top palate. [5] This is a wonderful little book, and a breeze to read. Young has a deep respect and affection for the animals in her charge, and a great knowledge of sustainable and ethical organic farming. Her years of experience tending to animals is a fitting testament (if you still needed it) to the fact that all creatures, including cows, have their own unique personhoods - thoughts, feelings, imaginations, desires - just like humans do.

Our children love stories with animals in them, especially because there are so many amazing authors and illustrators who bring the animal characters to life through their writing and illustrations. These books are no exception. The children and I enjoyed all of these fiction picture books with cow characters in them and there are a couple of good non-fiction cow books in the mix too. A lovely, thoughtful little book about the intelligence of cows.” —James Rebanks, New York Times bestselling author of The Shepherd’s Life The Faber reissue comes with a very short foreword written by Alan Bennett. He comments: 'It's a delightful book, though insofar as it reveals that cows (and indeed sheep and even hens) have far more awareness and know-how than they have ever been given credit for, it could also be thought deeply depressing, as it means entirely revising one's view of the world.' He goes on to add: 'It's a book that alters the way one sees things and passing a field of cows nowadays I find myself wondering about their friendships and their outlook, notions that before reading Young's book I would have thought comical, even daft.'

14 Amusing Books About Cows

At her famous Kite’s Nest Farm in Worcestershire, England, the cows (as well as sheep, hens, and pigs) all roam free. They make their own choices about rearing, grazing, and housing. Left to be themselves, the cows exhibit temperaments and interests as diverse as our own. “Fat Hat” prefers men to women; “Chippy Minton” refuses to sleep with muddy legs and always reports to the barn for grooming before bed; “Jake” has a thing for sniffing the carbon monoxide fumes of the Land Rover exhaust pipe; and “Gemima” greets all humans with an angry shake of the head and is fiercely independent. I’m vegetarian myself, but I don’t have an issue with others eating meat. I just think everyone should take a minute to think about what they’re consuming and make better choices. Try and buy locally and organic etc. This is something I thought this book might touch on a little, as the author herself owns a farm, but it was far more about what cows are like as animals, which was totally fine! Until she started anthropomorphising them to the extreme! In photographic and written form this book follows Clarabelle the cow through the process of birthing her calf, eating and milking. The book also talks about how the farm uses the manure to provide bedding for the cows, create electricity and fertilizer for the soil. Our four-year-olds really enjoyed looking at the photographs in this book. However, they had the glazed-eye look as we read certain parts of the book but our seven-year-old loved all the information.