Moo’s Clues…
Most of us remember, or have heard of, the cartoon and interactive learning television program for young children called Blue’s Clues. Due to a recent Animal Science homework assignment, however, I have reinvented the wheel with a new name that has a little more potential within the beef industry. My Animal Science class at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo has helped me work towards completing the coursework required to attain a concentration in animal science. Of course, like any other class, when there is any opportunity for me to include cattle, I do!! My class grade depends solely on the weekly quizzes that are given, the three midterms, and the final. This leaves little to no wiggle room for mistakes in the learning process. In order to give us more points for our overall grade, my professor also assigns one homework assignment during the animal behavior section. We first were lectured on the types of animal behavior and how they affect the animals and then we were faced with this homework assignment. The assignment: create an observation report of a livestock specie, including the ethology of the group as well as an individual, of which I naturally titled: Moo’s Clues! We had several choices such as hogs, lambs, horses, and even pink flamingos and lemurs from the zoo, but I bet you can guess which specie I observed–CATTLE! Being away from my family’s ranch while at college, I also love any opportunity that I can get my hands on to visit cattle, anytime, anywhere! I had no idea that the observation was going to be as exciting as it was. To any normal person, sitting near by a herd of cattle doesn’t exactly define fun, but it definitely defined my Saturday afternoon with more meaning than I could ever imagine!
While writing down observations of allelomimetic behavior (a follow-the-leader-type of behavior), care giving, ingestive, investigative, etc., something very captivating happened in the herd. I looked down at my paper for a second, and when I looked back up, something was running through the cattle–and it wasn’t a calf. To my great surprise, right there in front of me was a coyote running through the pasture. What happened next almost brought a tear to my eye. I sat dumbfounded at what was happening in front of me, but the cattle wasted no time at all mooooving into action. The mothers with calves at their sides quickly stood in between them and the coyote. One cow took it upon herself to begin chasing the coyote, and the others quickly joined in her action. Suddenly they were all up and mooing while working together as a team to chase this coyote away, leaving him with no satisfaction from their herd. The cows successfully exiled the coyote from their quiet little pasture, and soon everything went back to normal. I was literally amazed.
I will only write a few sentences about the symbolism that I see in this. The herd of cows represent the members of our industry, the calves our operations that we so lovingly care for every day. The coyote: anti-animal agriculture activist groups like HSUS. We saw what happened when HSUS ran through our herd recently with the Yellow Tail and Pilot Travel Center issues. We successfully ‘chased the coyote out of our quiet pasture’ rather quickly working together as a team on online social networking sources to fix the problem. For now, everything is back to normal; however, we must continue to work together as a team and prepare for when the coyote will run through our herd again. Next time, it may bring some friends, so we must continue to work together like we are, collectively producing Moo’s Clues!
Sin-steer-ly,
Malorie