Today, I give you a story, in pictures and video.

I like cows.  Cows are wonderful creatures.

They are also not exactly intelligent creatures, though I know some breeds are smarter than others.

I was sitting in my office when I started to hear the sound of cows, mooing nearby.  I realize the renter has cycled his cows back to our quarter section, and they are nearby.  Happily, I go outside to see them.

The cows are spread out around the barn, including some in the old hay yard.

The hay yard is now cluttered with a number of abandoned vehicles and equipment.  Including several old snowmobiles, I’m told are being kept for their parts.

Hearing an odd sound, I look in between various items.

Can you see the cow’s nose in there?

It took me a few moments to see that the noise I was hearing was of that cow, trying to eat the snowmobile.

To be more specific, the remains of the seat on the snowmobile.

I ended up going through the barn to the hay yard, to get them away from the snowmobiles.  Which turned out to be a good thing, since I found the door to the lean to was open.  There is a tree growing near it that blocks us from seeing it from the house, so who knows how long it was open!

This is what the cow was chewing on and licking.  In the second video, you could see the cow going for something on the far side of the seat, too.  That would likely be the foam from the seat that it was trying to get at.

Afterwards, I went out the back door of the barn.  Some cows were around where an old shed had collapsed, and I could hear them getting into the metal roofing material that’s in there, so I wanted to check on things.

This is what greeted me out the back door.

Most of the cows and their calves avoided me, but these two were curious enough to stick around.

I then made my way over to the junk pile, starting to pick up and move over sheets of metal that had been blown over by the winds we’ve been having in the last while.  As I get around the back side of the collapsed shed, I see…

Yeah.  That black cow with its butt facing me is right on the junk.  There is no grass or weeds there, so I have no idea what she’s after.

I really look forward to when we can get rid of this pile of junk!!

I continue around, which convinces the one cow to get off the junk.  Some move away from me, while others come closer to check me out.  I pick up and re-stack some of the sheets of metal siding, finding things to put on top of the pile to hopefully keep it from blowing over again, and make my way around between the pile and the shed.

One of the cows is braver than the others, and starts coming closer to me, watching what I’m doing.

I quickly realized that she was not chewing on grass, nor her cud.

She was chewing on a foreign object.

You might need to turn your volume up to hear this…

Now, this is concerning, because as far as I can tell, based on what’s lying around, she might be chewing on either wood or metal.

I tried to come closer to her, little by little, hoping to be able to see what she’s chewing on.

That’s one heck of a side-eye she’s giving me!

I kept trying to move around and get closer, without chasing her away, still trying to look into her mouth and see what she’s chewing on.

After a while, I start getting really concerned, because she’s got foam around her mouth from the chewing, and every now and then looked to be in some discomfort.

Then the object fell out of her mouth.

That, my dear friends, is a bone.

A beef bone.

I can’t say I was all that surprised.  This is not the first time I’ve seen a cow chewing on a beef bone.  When I was a kid, I remember walking past one of our cows and seeing her chewing with her head extended weirdly.  She was familiar enough with me that I could walk up to her and reach into her mouth, where I pulled out one of the dogs’ beef bones.  It was not as thoroughly chewed up as this one, though!

I have no idea where she found it, but I wouldn’t let her pick it up again.

She was displeased with that.

Ooh, this girl had attitude!

I proceed to kick the piece of bone away until I got it to the junk pile.

Once I was away, she started looking for it.

She wanted that bone back!  She just kept snuffling and snuffling the area.

At this point, I decided it was time to head out and went back around the junk pile to go to the barn.  Where I found…

This was not here, the last time I tried to clean up around the pile.  In fact, I don’t remember seeing it just a few minutes before, when I went past here to go around the pile and found the cow standing right on the junk.

It is, I believe, from one of the snowmobiles.

I took it into the barn when I went in and closed up the doors again.

As I come out the front doors of the barn, I look back and see…

Can you believe it?  That cow, with company, actually found where I’d kicked the piece of bone!

I’m hoping she wasn’t able to get it out, but she seems quite determined!

I know it’s a running joke that goats will eat anything.

So will cows.

Including the remains of other cows.

Herbivore fail!

The Re-Farmer