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Wondergirl · Dec 13, 2013, 10:42 PM

Are holiday shopping and crowds irritating you? Or maybe a coworker is too cheerful or your supervisor micromanages? The cold and the snow are getting me down, so I had an idea.

Come into my kitchen and sit down at the table. I made a pot of tea and put an assortment of Christmas cookies on a plate. Let's relax and sip some tea and munch on a few cookies. I've invited my friend Tim Zweber, a 4th generation dairy farmer and general fan of bovines, to sit with us and to tell us about that most placid of beasts, the dairy cow. Maybe we can get a few tips to make our own lives less stressful.

WG: Tim, what do cows think about?

TIM: Not being a cow it's hard to tell exactly what goes through their heads but having worked with them my whole life I'd say I have as good of a chance of knowing as anyone. That said there are probably a lot of old cowboys and others out there who may claim to know more to which I say add on to my answer! : )

1. Cows seem to mostly think about food: where is it, where is the best food, how can I get the most of it, etc.

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If you ate around 100lbs of food per day you'd probably spend a lot of time thinking about it too. By the way they also spend 10-12 hours of their day laying around digesting their food too. They have to taste it twice when they regurgitate and rechew it so best to not eat something nasty you might regret the second time around.

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Each bolus of could they regurgitate is chewed around 55 times before swallowing again so its not a short chomp chomp and back down the hatch.

2. Cows think about social interactions. Cows have fairly complex social orders with different breeds preferring to hang out together, relatives hanging out together, herd grooming, reproductive displays, and many different layers of dominance among herd members. I have seen cows stand around for a long time waiting for another cow to move from a spot so they could go where they wanted for a drink or food.

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3. Cows think about their offspring. Many are very good mothers and spend lots of time encouraging their babies to get up, to nurse, to follow them somewhere, to eat the right things.

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Separating a calf and cow after they have bonded well is not an easy thing to do. However, if there is food involved and they know no one is harming the other it gets a lot easier.

4. Cows think about recreation. Cows like to play with stuff and explore. I love watching a group of heifers chase a turkey across a pasture, it is a very funny scene to watch a 15lb. turkey run for its life from some curious 600lb. heifers who have no intention of harming it. Curiosity can get cattle in trouble especially getting their heads stuck in things like gates, fences, trees, etc. while trying to see or eat something better. One thing my cattle like to do for recreation is get out of their fences and eat the apparently greener grass on the other side of the fence. I'm pretty sure they laugh at me as I run around trying to get them back where they belong.

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There are more things like pooping, predators, and paint colors cows think about but I'll leave the list here and others with cattle experience can add their two cents.

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Tim's bio -- I run our 107 year old dairy farm with my wife and parents near the town of Elko MN. We also raise and sell beef, pork, and chickens for direct sale to local customers. My other interests beyond everything to do with agriculture & food are woodworking, music, and science. I'd love to chat with you on twitter @zweberfarms and our farm blog at Welcome to Our Family Farm has some awesome food recipes if you're interested.

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