While I could write a full academic paper on how I view Cows as a critique on current social structure, not all would agree with me. John Connell’s book begins in the middle of the night during one of the wettest winters on record. He is delivering a calf by himself for the first time: “There is blood on my arms and face, but it is a pleasing blood, the blood of life.” It’s a moment of responsibility when Connell needs to prove to himself and his father that he is capable of managing the farm his family has owned for 30 years. The delivery is successful – “he is a fine wee bull” – and Connell passes the test: “Manhood is an important thing in this land. Farming gives us our sense of it, our understanding of ourselves.” The word is out that Cows is every bit as dark and deranged as Iain Banks' classic The Wasp Factory. It's not: it's even more so. Possibly the most visceral novel ever written." What we want to do is not put these guys out of business, but make them play by the rules of nature rather than the rules of the market. I read this in one sitting and boy was it a wild freakin ride. Yes I gagged and screamed too many times to count, but it's a horror that made me feel something so that's all I ask for. When you separate the gross parts from the underlying story, it's truly a good narrative about the repercussions of abuse and channeling anger to unhealthy outlets, to say the least. Definitely look up trigger warnings and definitely don't eat until you're at least aware of what's going on in this book lol.

You know who she reminded me of while reading this book? If you are familiar with Pink Floyd's "The Wall".....and the song "Mother".....yup...that's her - without the maternal loving.....her words to Steven is to call him "cunt" and serve him raw sheep stomach while walking around with her menstrual stains.....yeah - gets pretty descriptive. We love dogs and eat cows not because dogs and cows are fundamentally different--cows, like dogs, have feelings, preferences, and consciousness--but because our perception of them is different.” Alas despite the decent treatment and freedom these creatures get, they still end up being butchered. Simone (svelte, but nobody’s fool) : You got to be joking, pal. In our world you’re famous. Can’t write a book like Cows and not get noticed by us actual cows. We’re not cultural ignoramuses like sheep – they just watch daytime TV. But we like our Andy Warhol wallpaper and we appreciate the cover art on Pink Floyd’s under-appreciated Atom heart Mother album. Although side two is very self-indulgent, it’s true. I have a vinyl copy. Det er ikke kun køernes intelligens, Young kommer omkring. Det er også deres sociale samvær, deres evne til at knytte bånd og drage omsorg for hinanden. Vi lærer, hvordan de kommunikerer på forskellig vis og om deres evne til at huske og genkende. Hun tilbyder kun få videnskabelige forklaringer, men bruger i stedet egne erfaringer og konkrete eksempler fra livet på gården til at bakke op om hendes teser omkring køers indre liv. De få konkrete fakta rammer dog som en knytnæve, når hun trækker på undersøgelser, der har kunne påvise indskrænkning af køers hjernekapacitet på baggrund af pladsmangel og forkert foder.Rosamund Young is a farmer who runs Kite's Nest Farm in the Cotswolds. She writes of her observations of cows and how they are intelligent animals with personalities as diverse as our own. She shares anecdotes about her interactions with her animals and their behaviours. I think it’s interesting that you’re not suggesting we stop eating them—just that we need to radically rethink how we treat them.

Our small-group adventures are inspired by our Atlas of the world's most fascinating places, the stories behind them, and the people who bring them to life. Christine (a bespectacled cow with a chic French look) : You know, I hate to say this, but he’s not entirely wrong. It’s pretty simplistic to see this guy’s novel either as a cry of protest against modern urban debovinisation or on the other hand as an Eating Animals Safran Foer- style polemic. In fact, it’s neither. I so enjoyed (and learned so much from) this enchanting and informative look at the secret lives of cows, pigs, hens and sheep. Young is a good storyteller and educator as well. A cow named “Vaccination”. Coloured aquatint by M. Dubourg, 1810. Wellcome Collection. Wikimedia Commons.

One of the species of megafauna that humans wiped out, of course, were ancestors of our modern-day cows. What happened to the aurochs ?

Rosamund Young driver Kite’s Nest Farm i Gloucestershire i England. Gården er kendt for at producere bæredygtige fødevarer, og den drives ud fra grundprincipper om god dyrevelfærd – og mere til. Hendes forældre startede som selvstændige landmænd på Kite’s Nest Farm I 1953, og her begav de sig ud i at drive et økologisk landbrug, før begrebet ’økologi’ overhovedet var opfundet. COWS’ has become a cult classic, much in the way ‘A Serbian Tale’ has for the movie watching community. I’d been recommended this a few times by different people. I’m not sure if it was because they wanted to see my thoughts on it or if they wanted to know if I had the fortitude to dive past the garbage that floated at the top of the water and see the story that lay on the ocean floor, but either way, I finally realized I wanted to dive in and truthfully, while this book is DEFINITELY not for everyone, I was stunned with the story Stokoe delivered.Christine : That’s right, you tell him! Listen, soon-to-be-trampled author-boy, in the first part of your opus you have your extreme-horror slaughterhouse fun with us cows, and then in the second part, you turn us into a fatuous allegory about fascism, where once again we play the mindless puppets. At every turn you debovinise us! We’re just your fodder! Man : How would you know what I – Matthew Stokoe looks like? There’s no pictures of me – him – anywhere! Not on the internet, not anywhere! Steven recognizes this is insane – yet the reality of a “normal life” is too much of a draw for him. Instead of getting her help, which I believe he is cognizant enough to have done, he draws her deeper into his vision of familial life and blames her when the seeds he’s painstakingly planted bare no fruit. The book opens, rather charmingly I thought, with a cow family tree. This by no means covers every cow whom Young writes about, but it does give an idea of the number of generations who live on the farm. Some lovely details have been included here; for instance, Bonnet is 'passionate about apples', Blue Devil is 'remarkably bossy', and the Duke of York drinks water like a cat. There is a brief section at the end of the book which includes twenty facts which Young feels one should know about cows, hens, pigs, and sheep respectively.