
Cow Magnets - corndoge
http://www.magnetsource.com/Solutions_Pages/cowmags.html
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larsmak
Grew up on a farm in Scandinavia and have witness a few of these up close. The
amount of debris they can accumulate is staggering - mostly nails, and
corroded clumps of metal (probably from old farming equipment). There was
nothing particular about the fields where their food came from, in fact it
would be considered very clean, almost ecological. But hundreds of years of
harvesting will leave a footprint. Also, in the earlier days when renovation
was not set in system they used to bury their trash (what else could they do
really).

~~~
louithethrid
My father always explained that interest for rusty metall with the cows
attempt to balance out a iron-deficiency. Could be wrong though.

Found there behaviour always fascinating. They internal groom-group
friendships and the one or two weakest cows they would trash up to feed them
too any predator(yes, they have a social life in that way).

Not happy how dairy farming selective breeding has crippled them. If you have
to inject a hormon into a creature for milking, else it gets sick, you have
overstreched it to the point of crippeling.

still like farmers though and without them cows would go the way of everything
wild in that juicebox that is earth.

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tgb
Cows are hard to kill. My mother is a veterinarian and a professor of hers
once told this story: He was on a farm treating a cow for calcium deficiency
(common for dairy cows), which is easy to treat, you just pump a bunch of
nutrients directly into the cow and they'll go from being more or less
incapacitated to healthy in a short span. So there he was, IV into the cow and
hooks up the bottle to it and empties it into the cow while talking to farm.
Finishes up and goes to disconnect the bottle from the IV, looks at it, turns
to the farmer and says, "I think I just bought your cow." It wasn't calcium
replacement, it was Lysol that he had just dumped a liter of into the cow!

The cow lived, barely seemed to notice.

~~~
comrh
Why did he have Lysol in an IV though?! Also
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannulated_cow](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannulated_cow)

~~~
deelowe
Wondering the same thing. How would lysol end up in an IV?

~~~
brianwawok
I assume it's a fill your own bag solution not a sterile bag that said medical
grade lysol.

~~~
jsprogrammer
He filled up his own IV bag with Lysol?

Makes no sense.

~~~
lfowles
Perhaps generic Lysol. Generic white bottle with lots of text is common on
ranches.

~~~
jsprogrammer
Gross negligence at best?

~~~
louithethrid
Vetrinarys - those that treat cows and big animals are rare. And always on the
job. As in really always. Knew four, 2 had cancer, one had a burn out, one
gave the big animals up for the pet-doctoring.

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DanBC
Rather than putting magnets in every cow why not clean the fields of injury
causing debris?

[http://extension.missouri.edu/p/G7700](http://extension.missouri.edu/p/G7700)

> From 55 to 75 percent of the cattle slaughtered in the eastern United States
> have been found to have hardware in the reticulum. However, no damage or
> perforations of the reticulum was evident.

[...]

> The magnet simply keeps foreign metallic objects adhered together in a ball,
> reducing the chances of penetrating the reticulum. Of course, the best
> preventive measure is keeping feed bunks, pastures, cow lots, etc., free of
> potentially hazardous objects.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
Easier said than done. I live on a small farm with horses. Even after all
these years, we still find barbed wire (very dangerous for prey animals whose
response to danger is to bolt away at high speed) in the ground, or in trees,
miscellaneous bits of farm equipment debris that's decades old, and all sorts
of metal embedded in the ground. All of this stuff was from before we moved
here, it's just extremely difficult to detect until you are literally standing
over it.

~~~
JulianMorrison
Drive around with a generator and an electromagnet?

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
Most of the stuff is not just lying on the surface; it's partly buried or
covered. I've gone to cut down tree branches and found sections of barbed wire
6 feet off the ground because it rose as the tree grew and snapped off when it
was pulled too taut.

Not to mention that the ground isn't flat like a nice suburban lawn. There are
creeks to cross, rocks (that we are constantly removing as water exposes
them), fallen dead trees, tree stumps, wild grape vines, channels dug into the
ground by rain. Obstacles galore!

You won't find many people more in favor of automation than me, but even I
know when to stop.

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D-Coder
Who else was expecting an article on a new way to collect cows into one spot?

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timthorn
There are a couple of solutions taking the standard bolus and turning it into
a connected pH sensor to monitor cattle health:

[https://connect.innovateuk.org/documents/3285671/6079410/Sma...](https://connect.innovateuk.org/documents/3285671/6079410/Smart+Sensor+to+Improve+Cow+Health.pdf/7a583c15-2d62-4916-b830-f84c7eb57ffc)

[http://www.cambridgewireless.co.uk/Presentation/ConnectedDev...](http://www.cambridgewireless.co.uk/Presentation/ConnectedDevices_22.01.13_DavidTegerdine_TTP-
WellCow.pdf)

[http://www.wellcow.co.uk](http://www.wellcow.co.uk)

[http://www.ecow.co.uk](http://www.ecow.co.uk)

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omginternets
You think that's weird? Wait until you read about cannulated cows:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannulated_cow](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannulated_cow)

There are a bunch of these grazing around my hometown university's ag
department.

~~~
jamessb
In the 19th Centrury, everal experiments on human digestion were conducted on
someone with a gunshot wound that left a fistula providing access to the
stomach, somewhat like those cannula:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Beaumont#Experiments_w...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Beaumont#Experiments_with_St._Martin)

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bborud
My parents are vets (in Norway). The magnets I remember them using about 30
years ago were about 10cm long rods with a elongated plastic cage around them
-- to offset the sharp ands of nails etc to protect the tissue.

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schoen
There was a lot of trouble around the Buckyball magnets a few years ago, with
the U.S. CPSC saying that they were unsafe for children because if a child
swallowed _two_ , they might attract one another from different locations
within the child's digestive system and cause injury. (The manufacturer of
Buckyballs was apparently very upset about the outcome.) It's interesting to
think that swallowing magnets was seen as a serious threat to human digestive
systems, but here is used to protect cows' digestive systems.

Is the difference just in the cows' anatomy and the size of the magnet, so
that this magnet is guaranteed to stay in the first stomach and not go any
further, while human anatomy doesn't work that way?

It seems like having cows swallow very small magnets (that can advance beyond
the first stomach) would also tend to injure them, because those magnets could
attract metal objects from one part of the digestive system toward another, as
the CPSC feared with the Buckyballs.

~~~
tired_man
The cow are gets a single capsule (either a single alnico magnet or a plastic
capsule with smaller ferrite magnets in it, but the same size) about the size
of your thumb. It never passes from the first chamber.

The Buckyball magnets are rare earth and much stronger than cow magnets. A kid
who swallowed one might follow it up with another, or some bit of metal, after
the first magnet entered the intestinal track and those two might snap
together and cause damage.

I think the problem is there whether it is a buckyball magnet or a stack of
discs for some craft or hobby. Kids love those kinds of things. You just need
to watch them like hawks and be careful what you leave laying around.

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Roboprog
Sorry, but I had to laugh about this a little. Depending on where you grew up
(and perhaps when), this article may or may not be news.

Not that it isn't an interesting treatment idea the first time you see it.

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hackaflocka
What about non-magnetic metal debris?

~~~
sitharus
Not very common on a farm, nails and wire are always steel. Non-ferrous metals
wouldn't be strong enough.

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reitanqild
Remember my dad mentioned these from time to time.

Also I heard that local slaughterhouse staff were not allowed to tell when
there was an emergency job as otherwise everyone would gather to see what this
cow had eaten. (As mentioned nails and screws were common but i heard about
one of them, not ours, eating a bunch of huge galvanized bolts. Investigation
found out they were left behind by high voltage powerline technicians I
think.)

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rowbear
[https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14590-and-on-that-
far...](https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14590-and-on-that-farm-the-
cows-face-north--says-google/)

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Zigurd
Has this been taken into account regarding the magnetically aligned cow
theory?

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ezequiel-garzon
What's the procedure to "deliver" the magnet? Surgery? Sedation?

~~~
userbinator
Let the cow eat it, like it would the other things the magnet is supposed to
protect against.

~~~
ezequiel-garzon
Thanks for your answer. I imagine you must control this, no? Too many magnets
would probably be harmful. Also, they may be fairly larger than what cows
usually eats. Do you know for a fact it's done like this?

~~~
bborud
I can confirm this is how it is done. (I've done it a few times myself)

The one I used looks a bit like this one:

[http://www.kruuse.com/en/ecom/Hest_produktionsdyr/Vommagnete...](http://www.kruuse.com/en/ecom/Hest_produktionsdyr/Vommagneter_indgiver/prod_142070.aspx)

~~~
louithethrid
There was a drencher for calves i had to use. On the instruction diagram on
the side, everyone smiled, the farmer, the calf, a happy little world of
forced feeding.

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jkot
One marwel super-hero has similar magnets inside him. Cowmen or something.

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jff
Used to play with these a lot as a kid. User "__bb" must have also spent some
time on a cattle farm because everything (s)he's said about the magnets has
been spot on.

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late2part
I wonder if these magnets would work in spherical cows.

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VonGuard
Does this mean I can stick things like refrigerator magnets to cows?

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toabi
This makes me sad.

~~~
seunosewa
Why? It seems to prevent a really bad condition.

~~~
toabi
Well. On one hand, it does. But on the other... maybe we should improve the
conditions.

