CALF_News_April_May_2019

44 CALF News • April | May 2019 • www.calfnews.net  CALF HUMOR On the Edge of Common Sense With Baxter Black Pull My Finger Why Do You Read CALF News ?  Tell us why you read CALF News ! Go to our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/calfnews Bill Harmon Sandy Foley Garden City, Kan. “We read CALF News because because we've known Betty Jo Gigot for many years. It's a very good magazine and always informative about important matters in the cattle industry.” ATTN: THIS IS ADDRESSED TO TEEN- AGERS , tuba players and grownups in the news media who have gotten great giggles out of the story that cow flatu- lence is a danger to mankind! It can be expected from those who have the atten- tion span of a Bartlett pear, but tuba players should know better. Cows do not flatulate. Allow me to give you a lesson in bovine physiology. Cows are herbivores, vegetar- ians. They live on grass. Cows are big – 1,000 lbs. Cows eat a lot of grass. They have four stomachs, the biggest is the rumen. The rumen’s job is to prepare grass and roughage to make it digestible by the other stomachs and the alimentary track. This is done by bacterial digestion and fermentation, and physical maceration. Now, cows lead a fairly boring life. They graze and chew their cud. The cud is a baseball-size wad of chewed, swal- lowed, re-chewed, regurgitated, chewed and swallowed grass, ad infinitum. This cud is part of a magnificent digestive mechanism that allows cows and other ruminants to utilize fibrous vegetative material that is otherwise completely indigestible by simple-stomached animals like … people. For instance, cows can derive nutritional benefit from lettuce! Who’d a thunk it! People eat lettuce because it is the next best thing to eating nothing. If you wanna lose weight, the best way is to eat …(?). No, not lettuce, nothing! But nobody wants to eat nothing, so they eat lettuce, which is the next best thing. This whole issue involves greenhouse gasses emitted into the atmosphere. There are three – carbon dioxide (CO 2 ), methane and nitrous oxide. METHANE comes from fermenta- tion of organic breakdowns – com- post in your flower garden, garbage dumps, rice paddies, wetlands, domestic and wild ruminants, and alcoholic beverages. Agriculture pro- duces 5.8 percent of all greenhouse gasses. CARBON DIOXIDE comes from fossil fuels like coal, oil and natural gas, their energy production, transportation and use. CO 2 accounts for 86.3 percent of all greenhouse gasses. Transportation (cars and trucks) amount to 33 percent of all fossil fuels used. What do we do with all this informa- tion? Eliminate non-essential herbivores, starting with elephants, buffalo, goats, horses, prairie dogs and termites. Next, they begin to regulate our diet – no sugar, no organic food (too inefficient) and how about trees? They absorb CO 2 and produce oxygen, but what if we have too many trees and they won’t let you cut them down? I can picture an army of bureaucrats regulating the use of gasoline, diesel, electricity, construction …Wait a minute! They already do! Back to cow“flatulations.” The meth- ane that cows emit comes directly from the rumen. They belch it up. Not as funny, but at least now you know. In the U.S., 30 million cows emit more methane than all the cars. 125 million cars produce more total greenhouse gasses than cows.Which is worse for our environment? Hard to say which is more essential – agriculture or transportation? How long can you live without driving?  clipground.com