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Cow magnet


Alpo

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https://www.sciplus.com/3-cow-magnet-58339-p

 

Once you feed it to the cow, does it stay in there for the rest of the cow's life, gathering extraneous bits of ferrous metal? Or does it pass through the digestive system, gathering ferrous metal in all four stomachs, and exiting the natural way to lay in a cow flop?

 

Inquiring minds want to know.

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Actually, the cow passes them.  Used to find ‘em stuck to the bush hog or haying equipment now and then, sometimes with wierd stuff stuck to the magnets!!

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In Veterinary College, we had cows with portholes surgically installed in their sides.  You could unscrew the 6” diameter cap and pass your arm directly into the cow’s rumen (main stomach).  One reason for doing this was to remove rumen content (Ingesta) from a healthy cow and transplant it into the rumen of a sick cow to improve digestion.  Kinda like eating probiotics to clear up a digestive problem.

 

The other reason was to give veterinary students the opportunity to become familiar with the anatomy of a cow’s stomach.  One student would “pill” the cow (force feed it) a magnet while another student would attempt to catch the magnet as it entered the cow’s stomach.  Pitch and catch.

 

Fun times!

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They  must pass, found a couple in piles of well-decomposed  pucky many years ago. Now wondering if I still have them -- and if so -- and where they are.

 

My understqanding is they presupposed to collect bits of metal like  nails and bits of barbed wire so they do not injure the cattle. There were some small bits of iron on the ones I found.

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Cows consume metal trash as they graze; nails, staples, bits of barbed wire, etc.  Those metal objects can penetrate the rumen and diaphragm and the pericardium, which is immediately opposite the diaphragm. causing pericarditis, which is fatal.  Magnets are administered to keep the metal in the stomach, away from the heart.  Google “bovine traumatic pericarditis” or “hardware disease” for more detail.

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There is a site which cites many odd facts. One of those facts is that cow herds often orient themselves with the animals facing either north-south or south-north.

 

i was left wondering if it was the magnets in their stomachs just made that more comfortable.

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9 minutes ago, Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984 said:

There is a site which cites many odd facts. One of those facts is that cow herds often orient themselves with the animals facing either north-south or south-north.

 

i was left wondering if it was the magnets in their stomachs just made that more comfortable.

If you put a cow on a leaf and set it in a still pool of water water you have a makeshift compass...oh wait. I am mixing something up here...:P

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4 hours ago, Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984 said:

There is a site which cites many odd facts. One of those facts is that cow herds often orient themselves with the animals facing either north-south or south-north.

 

i was left wondering if it was the magnets in their stomachs just made that more comfortable.

Like boats in a harbor.

kR

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4 hours ago, Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984 said:

There is a site which cites many odd facts. One of those facts is that cow herds often orient themselves with the animals facing either north-south or south-north.

 

i was left wondering if it was the magnets in their stomachs just made that more comfortable.

 

Cow herds do sometimes all face the same direction. Sometimes it's not by choice . . . 

 

Feller lived just down the road back up in the hills developed a breed of cow with shorter legs on one side, especially for grazing in the Ozarks.

 

It didn't work though, cause most of 'em just wound up getting to the fence on the far side of the pasture and starving. If they turned around, they'd fall down the hill.

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Sidebar: back in the '70s a local auto shop was selling these magnets to install in carburetors.  The sales pitch was that the magnet pre-magnetized gasoline making it vaporize better.  :wacko:

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I was once told that if cows are all lying down fishing will be terrible. If standing, fishing would be great. Through careful study and lots of fishing experimentation I found this to be untrue. ;)

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5 hours ago, Edward R S Canby, SASS#59971 said:

Sidebar: back in the '70s a local auto shop was selling these magnets to install in carburetors.  The sales pitch was that the magnet pre-magnetized gasoline making it vaporize better.  :wacko:


Ha! I vaguely remember something about that back then, when every crackpot had a solution for gas mileage. Although it wasn’t specific to cow magnets, just magnets in general. 

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I you are in Oklahoma and all of the cows are laying down a tornado has just passed.

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