A farmyard cow in Poland has chosen freedom this winter, roaming with a herd of bison for three months after escaping its pen.They don't have any of these in Poland?
The reddish brown cow has been spotted following bison across corn and rapeseed fields bordering the Bialowieza Forest in eastern Poland as they forage for abandoned corn cobs and other food.
...
But scientists will want to remove the cow from the herd by summer to prevent the risk of mating, though [bison expert Rafal] Kowalczyk said that won't be an easy operation.
Or these??
I know, I know. There will be an international uproar if they whack the cow.
13 comments:
Cliven Bundy has really extended the range of his herd.
You can make a lot of perogies from one cow, that’s all I’m sayin.......
The way I remember it, they used a .22 on our cows when they slaughtered them...
-Doug in Oakland
If you can get that close. They'll have to nail that heifer at a distance.
Too many unanswered questions here.
• What the heck is a herd of wild bison, native to North America, doing in Poland?
• How did they get there? They didn't swim the Atlantic, I presume.
• "Beefalo" is a delicacy here in the U.S. Leaner and tastier than beef. More chewable than buffalo. Sp what's the big deal if the cow and bison interbreed?
• Is Poland supporting racial purity for cows, or racial purity for bison?
• Since the bison seem out of place and in the wrong habitat, wouldn't it make sense to shoot all the bison instead of the poor cow?
Yours crankily,
The New York Crank
Dear NY Crank: These are wild European bisons, not the American buffalo.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_bison
European bison were hunted to extinction in the wild in the early 20th century, with the last wild animals of the B. b. bonasus subspecies being shot in the Białowieża Forest (on the Belarus-Poland border) in 1921, and the last of B. b. caucasus in the northwestern Caucasus in 1927.[6] B. b. hungarorum was hunted to extinction in the mid-1800s. The Białowieża or lowland European bison was kept alive in captivity, and has since been reintroduced into several countries in Europe. They are now forest-dwelling. The species has had few recent predators besides humans, with only scattered reports from the 19th century of wolf and bear predation. European bison were first scientifically described by Carl Linnaeus in 1758. Some later descriptions treat the European bison as conspecific with the American bison. It is not to be confused with the aurochs, the extinct ancestor of domestic cattle.
Avenger, there's an effort underway to resurrect the aurochs using selective breeding guided by DNA from bone fragments.
Avenger and Deadstick,
Thanks for the info, but you've raised yet more questions. Just a sampler:
•If the species were extinct, how could they have been kept alive? Extinction implies already dead.
• Why would a cow prefer the bitter cold of the Polish winter running unprotected through the icy forest, when she could have chosen to stay in a nice warm barn? What does this tell us about barn conditions on Polish farms? Should there be an investigation?
• Is it true love? Has a cow lost her heart to a forest buffalo, in whose presence she feels secure and loved as she never did in some smelly barn filled with manure and a rather disagreeable bull who was at least twice her age? And if so, where's the outrage? Shouldn't there be demonstrations in Warsaw, with people waving signs saying things like, "Leave them alone!" and "Buffalos have emotions, too" and "Moo, not murder!"
• Or is this a rebellious adolescent cow, running with a bunch of hairy buffalo because she knows it will really piss off her parents and the farmer?
I don't know about you, but I think there's a movie in all of this somewhere.
Yours crankily,
The New York Crank
NY Crank, there's some sloppy reporting. The Euro-bisons were preserved in zoos, but there weren't any in the wild. Basically, German soldiers during the Great War killed all but a few left in the wild. Poachers took care of the rest.
The efforts to restore sort of started soon afterwards, but didn't get underway until after World War Two.
Just went to Google and called up pictures of European bison. I dunno, they look an awful lot like buffalos to me.https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1b/European_Bison.JPG/1200px-European_Bison.JPG
But what do I know? Aside from an occasional coyote or raccoon that saunters into Central Park (from God-knows-where) and has to be deported back to where he came from, the biggest wildlife I regularly encounter in this town are squirrels and Norway rats. Somehow I don't think a Norway rat mating with a squirrel (assuming it's possible) whould attract much sympathetic attention.
On the other hand, you never know. Take, for example, Pizza Rat, who I think lives on the subway (unless he commutes on it) and ventures out to obtain pizza somewhere, same as me and (I'm assuming here) you. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPXUG8q4jKU
Gotta go now. It's lunch hour. Maybe I'll get some pizza.
Yours crankily,
The New York Crank
Although superficially similar, a number of physical and behavioural differences are seen between the European bison and the American bison. The European bison has 14 pairs of ribs, while the American bison has 15.[32] Adult European bison are (on average) taller than American bison, and have longer legs.[33] European bison tend to browse more, and graze less than their American relatives, due to their necks being set differently. Compared to the American bison, the nose of the European bison is set further forward than the forehead when the neck is in a neutral position.
The body of the European bison is less hairy, though its tail is hairier than that of the American species. The horns of the European bison point forward through the plane of their faces, making them more adept at fighting through the interlocking of horns in the same manner as domestic cattle, unlike the American bison, which favours charging.[34] European bison are less tameable than the American ones, and breed with domestic cattle less readily.[35]
Yeah, you're right. Briana says that on her ranch they used a 30-06.
This does remind me a little of a scandal that happened when I was a kid: Some attorneys from Eureka got drunk and drove up to Kneeland, where someone was keeping some bison in a barnyard, and shot them. I think there were three. They just left them there and didn't tell anyone, so the bison weren't usable when they were discovered.
My dad, who had been hunting and eating deer since he was a little kid, thought slaughtering a cow would be like dressing out a deer, so he tried to do the first cow himself. By the time he was done with that one, he made a deal with the butcher he took it to for the rest of the herd: they came out with their special truck, slaughtered the cow (that's when I saw them use the .22) took it back to the shop, and then delivered half of it back to our freezer, cut and packaged.
I ate like a goddamn king when I was a kid...
-Doug in Oakland
My father had a friend who ran some cattle on rented land, so he would buy half a steer and we’d bring back the frozen pieces. My mother made great beef curry with grass-fed meat.
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