Living next to a cow pasture, I have lots of bovine adventures.

One morning, a concerned citizen rang my doorbell to inform me that a cow was out of the pen.

It was standing next to the road, fighting another cow on the inside of the pasture fence.

I laughed because I knew cows don’t fight.

I stepped out of the house to discover 2 bulls fighting.

Lots of wrangling and help from police and others finally diffused the “bullying” situation.

Many times I have found cow hoof prints in my back yard. They lead me to the escape artist, who thought the grass tasted better in my yard.

Did you know cows can jump?

One juvenile heifer escape artist easily jumped over the fence into the pasture.

When my professor mentioned in class that he dewormed his cows, I realized I knew almost nothing about my bovine neighbors, and wanted to learn more.

On the ‘moove’

How did cows get here?

The journalofdiaryscience.org said in 1566, horses, cows, hogs, goats, and a few sheep were brought from Spain to their Florida colonies.

The Dutch brought cattle, horses, hay sheep, pigs, plows, and wagons in ships to present-day New York in 1626.

Captain John Smith mentioned 150 head of cattle, horses, mares, and goats all arrived via ship in 1629 to Salem.

I wonder what livestock stories passengers could have told when sailing across the ocean with farm animals as fellow passengers.

When immigrants arrived in Charleston in the 1750s, each family received a grown cow to help start life in the “backwoods of the Carolina Colony.”

Worth their salt

Cows were the milk and meat staples for families. Most everyone could milk the cow, and families worked together for butchering. Leather was used to make shoes, saddles, and more.

Tanning hides were an ordinary skill in the old days. There was a road in the Chapin area formerly named “Stinking Creek.” Why? It was because the remains of cows after butchering and tanning were dumped in that area, and it smelled!

I wonder if the people in the subdivision on the former “Stinking Creek” road know the real name of their road.

Cattle were not only used for milk and meat, but in the ancient world, but were used as money and bartering. It is said that the man that actually owned the large hill on Little Mountain sold it for a cow.

Statista.com says Americans drank 98.8 million metric tons of milk in 2018, and per capita eats 40 pounds of cheese a year.

It is estimated that Americans eat 1.5 billion cows a year. The leather industry likes those statistics.

Cows do have some strange tendencies. According to livescience.com, and the article Moo North on npr.org, satellite images revealed that herds of cattle tend to orient themselves the north-south direction of Earth’s magnetic lines.

The good ol’ days are not complete without cows. There are many stories of early morning milkings, mending pasture fences, gathering manure for the garden, and harvesting hay. Cows are an unspoken intricate part of our world and history.

I like my bovine neighbors, but I still keep my eye out for those adventurous cows that love my grass on the other side of their fence.