Cow Magnets
stanfordmagnets.com
stanfordmagnets.com
There are two primary ways steel gets into the feed supply. A silage chopper can pick it up and cut it into fine bits or a hay baler picks up a stray end of wire and running large bales into a tub grinder to more easily mix feed stocks into a total mixed ration will chop the stray wire (and other parts) into moderately short bits.
Many feed wagons have strong magnets under the discharge chute and grinder/mixers (used to grind grain and supplements) have likewise strong magnets just before the material enters the hammer mill. Despite that some bits will slip by due to the volume of material passing over the magnets as it comes out of the feed wagon.
We do have the vets administer magnets to the heifers we keep at around 9 months of age. One has to watch to be sure they don't work them back up and spit them out! A couple of years ago we had some that did that.
Symptoms of hardware is usually a cow "off feed" meaning she is not coming to the bunk to eat with the rest but usually stands apart and in acute cases will become hunched back. A veterinarian can usually diagnose it with a stethoscope as I think the breathing becomes labored in more acute cases.
Your parents wouldn’t let you swallow neodymium magnets?
OTOH, I did destroy a couple of old radios to get the speaker magnets. If I could go back in time I'd grab those old radios before I'd have a chance to destroy them. Back then they were just that--old radios--with no value and certainly not worth fixing. Sigh...
Even though I understand it's 1/r^2 this summoned a vision of a cow magnetically stuck to the discharge tube at her neck, with the head pushed up and mooing unhappily.
The magnetic field is proportional to 1/r^3. But the linear force is not proportional to it. (Rotations are.)
Where one object is a permanent magnet and the other is some unmagnetized ferromagnetic/paramagnetic piece metal, then the dipole moment of that piece of metal also depends on the distance. Assuming it's proportional to the magnetic field of the other dipole (~1/r^3) then the force is going to be ~1/r^7 for this pair of objects.
But magnetization is famously path-dependent, so now I'm tending to believe the force will be closer to 1/r^7 when moving on the direction of the magnet, but 1/r^4 when moving away. And not exactly any of those functions.
I'm guessing that the answer is "not much" since deer lineup too and they (probably) don't have magnets in their stomachs.
I still think this deserves the Mythbusters treatment, right?
https://www.npr.org/2009/03/16/101945271/power-lines-upset-c...
> Furthermore, there was no correlation between the position of roe deer and the time of day when the observation took place, meaning that the position of the sun had no influence on deer orientation.
Although I'm not sure how credible this information is given that they studied google images where who knows what time of day they are taking images at. Maybe there was a correlation.
From what I've seen, they tend to align themselves into the most pleasant direction depending on the weather conditions of the moment.
- Cold but sunny: Broadside towards the sun
- Wind or rain: back-side towards the direction of origin, heads hung low. So they stand with their butts in the wind to shield their heads against the worst of it.
- Very hot: Butts toward the sun, heads hung low. Often they'll arrange themselves in lines in order to hide in one another's shade.
I've never witnessed them being aligned north-south in a way that can't be explained by the immediate weather conditions.
This was in the southern hemisphere.
'Nails cause problems when they pass through a bovine digestive tract.'
'Well, let's keep them from passing by feeding cows a magnet.'
Problem practically solved.
“Kill the patient”
Problem practically solved?
Much more affordable, sure, but not better in any other measure.
There's always a cost-benefit calculation, and the answer should never be 'Whatever the cost.'
You think like an insurance company: completely detached from reality.
At some point during this process it became clear to me that a "whatever the cost" approach is understandable but wrong. We're all going to die. If an intervention can restore somebody to health, to give them years of a good life, that's great. But an awful lot of money is spent on what seemed to me like prolonging the misery. That's not something I want for myself, and it's definitely not something my mom wanted. So as long as there was some hope of more good time, we fought and fought hard. But when hope ran out, we were off to hospice with no regrets. She died peacefully, surrounded by loved ones. It was a much better death than having a lot of futile last-minute interventions.
Speaking of which, if this makes sense to you, make sure your loved ones know your preferences. We had all done living wills years before, and it was such a balm to know exactly what she wanted. I've used Five Wishes for this, and I'm told there are other, possibly better options now too.
It's easy to say that sort of thing, so everyone does. It makes plenty of sense.
People don't want to die in the hospital or go through hell in their last days or weeks.
But nobody wants to die right now, ever. No matter what they said before or what papers they signed.
The standard picture, the logic, makes perfect crystalline sense up until there is a choice between going to the hospital right now and living an undefined amount of time, maybe only a day or a week, but longer than the next few minutes.
> But nobody wants to die right now, ever. No matter what they said before or what papers they signed.
Plenty of people recognize when it's time. When my mom was diagnosed with glioblastoma, her surgeon said, "This is what you will die from." That's hard to hear, but people can definitely take it on board. To realize that it's not a choice of whether, just how. Take, Brittany Maynard, who had the same thing my mom did: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittany_Maynard
I can go as far as agreeing that American culture has a lot of collective anxiety about death, and a consequent refusal to deal with is calmly. But there are plenty of other approaches to that. Like the European movement known as Death Cafe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_Cafe
Or the (sadly now defunct) Zen Hospice here in SF: https://www.businessinsider.com/photos-of-zen-hospice-projec...
Many things in our lives can be scary. But we can shape our relationships to them. And given that death comes to all of us, I think it's worth taking the time to get on good terms with it.
Thank you for being relatively polite.
All of the replies to my original comment have veered off from what I tried to express with the phrase "right now".
I was alluding to a situation with rapid terminal cancer much later than diagnosis, but earlier than morphine + the end of communication. The fentanyl or oxycontin stage, as I recall it.
I think most likely if you are ever so slightly insulated from such a situation, you might not realize it.
Having a parent die of cancer when you are ~7 may not prepare you for having a parent die of cancer when you are ~37. That is how I see it now.
She stopped eating and drinking because she knew it was time. That was a sort of last gift, not having to see her languish for weeks.(although I will never stop being bitter about being unable to have a proper funeral and memorial service).
The current suicide rates say otherwise
I’ve witnessed two elderly people in my family with cancer in severe pain just ride a morphine drip waiting in anticipation for death. The only reason they didn’t euthanize is because it isn’t legal.
When a person can speak, and change their mind, and everyone involved in care isn't present at a particular instant or on the same page with what to do.
If that clarifies.
I can see going for a more costly treatment seeming more appealing psychologically though.
Healthcare budget is not infinite but in most countries, it’s high enough per operation that, for a given individual, it’s virtually infinite.
Insurance companies don’t care about the benefit, they just want the cost to be low, it’s not the same thing.
Also underappreciated, at the end of the day:
{insurance premiums} >= {average cost of care}
If cost of care increases, premiums must increase as well.
There are no healthcare system in the world where the budget is “high enough to be virtually infinite”.
All health systems are all heavily, heavily constrained by budget. The US system is the least constrained (i.e. if you want the latest cancer care paid for, the US is the place with the highest probability it’ll happen), but since there are thousands of insurance plans it’s not even and any two patients may have plans that make different trade offs.
And governments do the very similar math as the insurance companies when it comes to cost-benefit analyses - that’s how they design their benefit offerings.
The difference between systems like Canada (with universal care) and the US is that in Canada the end user doesnt see how the sausage is made.
That’s because the trade offs are the same for everyone and doctors know a given trade off has been made and the technology that is not paid for is just not even brought up to the patient.
Tripling the amount you pay the vet does not increase the final profit margin of the animal, so you simply do not. If basic treatment costs more than the animal will generate in its life, you don't treat the animal.
Thinking that any random farm animal is worth infinite medical resources is completely detached from reality. The animal is not worth it. There's not one single reason to pay more to maintain an animal than the money you get out of it. Not in this context.
- they can self-prescribe
- they commonly use, unlike human doctors, euthanasia to end suffering
- they became vets because they really like animals, but many owners seem more concerned with their pocketbooks
Lagniappe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JChwFoCxVC8
Social isolation + a business where the business often runs counter to your moral preferences = a tough life for both
The "maybe next year" line gets me every time: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRDaPEaDJ7E
It's literally a medical science degree with a speciality. The same degree that can get you a very highly paid jobs elsewhere yet it doesn't pay that well. You'll likely end up in a poorly paid 24hour live-in clinic with horrible pay and hours surrounded by euthanasia and the associated grief non-stop all the while with those same drugs sitting there. The mortality rate is so horrific that news of another suicide from the graduating year becomes a 'we've lost yet another one' type of statistic.
It's not often you ask someone to give a late teen thoughts on their upcoming career choice and have them rightfully say 'Don't! It's not worth it!' but this literally happened with vet science in my family.
You never really been Karened until you’ve been crazy cat lady Karened.
I know of a number of large animal vets that retired and enjoyed many years of retirement. Perhaps being in the large animal practice where decisions are made on economics and not emotions helps them survive. Those vets also did small animals but it was probably more of a sideline for them.
In general though large animal rural vet work is smoother sailing than the small stuff (from conversations I've had thanks to a farm background and to having developed a bit of animal history recording software for agistment | stud records some decades back).
Perhaps the difference is that vets can both prescribe and dispense drugs, while human doctors often need to have a pharmacist dispense the drugs.
A more apt comparison here would be vets throwing pharmaceuticals and radiation at cows who ingested metals rather than a more simple solution intervention.
1. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/06/canada-...
There's something weird about letting people who are happy with life (read: society) choose to force someone who isn't to continue living, against their wishes.
"Bankrupt and undignify the patient and their family with needless, hopeless treatment."
Humane, functional american healthcare.
A medical doctor.
While the joke is there, there are single species veterinary practices.
Animals often have relatively short lifespans. For cows its about 2 years for beef and 6 years for dairy. Would these methods work for animals that live more than a decade?
Yet for people medicine that's anathema.
Instead, we hide the cruel economic reality behind intermediaries (insurance companies, public hospitals, etc.) and then are shocked when it still leaks out.
No country without infinite money can afford to spend whatever it takes, on everyone, forever.
Auguste Escoffier said that 2 years was much too young; you couldn't make good beef stock from such young bones. He said that you had to go to France to get 5-year-old stock bones, the British slaughtered them too young. This was in the early 20thC.
XYZ develop more disease -> don't allow reproduction
And it's not a boolean switch, we could definitely eat less meat of better quality and achieve better "results" on a planetary scale
That doesn't tell the whole story. Felines become ill on vegetarian diet, humans can definitely thrive on vegetarian diets.
Also there is such a wide spectrum between modern animal factories insanity and sustainable meat eating, you can't throw them both in the same box and rationalize everything by saying "OOMAN EAT MEAT! OOMAN NEED MEAT!"
Sort of. Humans would die on a paleo vegetarian diet. We need modern supplements and/or cultured bacteria. The same is true of cats; they can survive on a vegetarian diet but only with supplements (although it's much, much harder to do this right with cats than it is for humans).
I grew up on a (small) farm and we liked them and were fond of them and they seemed to be the same.
Yes, they were absolutely overjoyed when I took them to the pasture at the start of the summer, but no, they didn't seem to bother extremely much when I collected the after the summer.
Even when there were several pages of blueprint stapled together a few cow magnets tended to hold them in place. You just had to be sure to orient them such that they didn’t roll down the door.
1: https://amazingmagnets.com/product-category/large-pawn-magne...
2: https://amazingmagnets.com/product-category/WB-Series-Whiteb...
I also use male-threaded magnets and wingnuts to hold my cable-management pegboard to the bottom of my desk. There I went extra strong because I don't expect them to ever be moved.
Other times they try to eat things they shouldn't like "hedge apples" which are the "fruit" of Osage Orange, a.k.a. hedge trees. These apples will start falling to the ground during late summer and early fall and for whatever reason cattle like to eat them. After they lay for a while they get mushy and there is usually no problem but early on they're hard and can get lodged on the way down or on the way back up when they chew their cud. Usually it takes a stiff hose to clear the blockage and after a day or so things are fine.
Cow Magnets - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10176652 - Sept 2015 (71 comments)
https://www.poundfun.com/cdn/shop/files/RattleMagnets.png?v=...
They weren't as fun, but same principle.
I have one on my desk right now, and it’s pretty strong! They’re historically made from Alnico alloys, which were the strongest type of permanent magnet until rare earth magnets were discovered.
At the time, one livestoct mgmt strategy was to add tags to ears. Then add readers to the thresholds cows move thru. Alas, a semi common failure mode is sometimes those ear tags get ripped out. So some cows don't get tracked.
Apart from the challenges of using RFID (eg cost, range, interference), any new tag would require support by the livestock mgmt stack. Vendor lock-in and all that. Or create our stack. Which I was not inclined to do.
I'm not going to link to them (Facebook <spit>), but you can search for "Northants magnet fishers".
They all seem to use the same magnets, which look as if they're about 3" diameter, 2" tall cylinders. It seems to require a fair bit of muscle to separate the dredged iron from the magnet. I don't know where they get these magnets.
Are they cleaned up, dissolved in acid, have the accumulated lots of bits of wire and nails?
Mention was made of processing silage, ferrous objects could be removed at that stage.
For human children, swallowing a single magnet is a nuisance, but swallowing more than one is a medical emergency, for exactly that reason.
For your enjoyment.
Other than incubators full of chicks and ducklings, and bottle feeding young livestock fresh from auction - swiping cow magnets off the shelf to play with was a favorite pass-time. :)
In those days I can't imagine anyone really cared what happened to the magnets after they went into the cow.
Perhaps something happens in the slaughter house to clear out whatever has gotten into the gut and stomachs - for the sake of meat grinding machinery?
Hmmm, but I wasn't thinking of pet food: that would probably be ground.
[1]: https://www.stanfordmagnets.com/alnico-cow-magnets.html
https://www.magnetsource.com/collections/cow-magnets-ru-mast...
I'm neither a veterinarian nor a cow, so I don't know how fit for purpose they are, but to me they seem well made.
I have a background in farming and there has been cases of cows ingesting rather weird things absolutely on their own.
One case I remember hearing about was a cow eating a pack of leftover bolts from construction teams.
Hah, "bonivial meta-colon" does not even resemble any real combination of words. Sure, cows have multiple stomachs, but come on. Now I'm wondering how many joke sentences are mixed in. And I almost believed the bonivial meta-colon because "Stanford" is in the domain name :)
Young guys spend a fortune on their "chick magnet", presumably to indicate that they could spend a fortune on potential girlfriends. The desired outcome often fails to eventuate - many "chick magnets" are only driven up and down the main street occupied by the single owner and his single friends ;)
Then again, it's content marketing. It's written for search engines, not humans.
What are you referring to? I just see two words in the title: "Cow Magnets"