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Cow Magnets

magnetsource.com

21–30 of 72 posts

Re: Cow Magnets

#22

What's the procedure to "deliver" the magnet? Surgery? Sedation?

Let the cow eat it, like it would the other things the magnet is supposed to protect against.

Thanks for your answer. I imagine you must control this, no? Too many magnets would probably be harmful. Also, they may be fairly larger than what cows usually eats. Do you know for a fact it's done like this?

Re: Cow Magnets

#23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems was a polite way of saying is . Even with a modestly-robust drone, there will be: - breakdowns - fuel costs (electrical or otherwise) - the need to run the task repeatedly , dealing with varying terrain and grazing cattle I'm as big a fan of drones and automation as the next guy, but it really is much simpler to just stick a magnet in every cow.

...it really is much simpler to just stick a magnet in every cow. Is it though? If you have twenty cows, sure, I can believe that twenty magnets are simple and cheap - but what about 200? 2,000? And what happens when one of your cows turns out to have a larger than usual pyloric sphincter, and the magnet gets into its intestines? Or a wider than standard trachea, leading to it regurgitating the magnet when it tries t…

Now do the math for the drones required to sweep the land for 200 cows, say, once a month.

A spare wheel probably costs as much as a magnet.

And don't forget that the metal being ingested isn't just sitting on the surface of the grass. In many cases, it's probably buried in the first 2 or 3 cm of topsoil and being turned up as the cattle uproot the grass. Is your drone going to handle this? Is it really handling all this at a price of sub-$20 per head over 10 years? I'd have to see it to believe it.

Re: Cow Magnets

#24
My parents are vets (in Norway). The magnets I remember them using about 30 years ago were about 10cm long rods with a elongated plastic cage around them -- to offset the sharp ands of nails etc to protect the tissue.

Re: Cow Magnets

#25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know, I'll use a drone! Now the cows are eating drone parts too!

Perhaps we can build a drone that also self-assembles a protective carapace of grass around itself while it browses around for metal. Alternatively, it could maybe shout "GO AWAY COWS" at random intervals.

And all this is still cheaper than buying magnets!

Re: Cow Magnets

#26

What's the procedure to "deliver" the magnet? Surgery? Sedation?

It's a sort of plastic plunger. You load the caged magnet into the plunger and stick it in the back of the cows mouth. Press the plunger and the cow swallows it.

Kind of like giving your pet a tablet, but bigger.

Re: Cow Magnets

#27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems was a polite way of saying is . Even with a modestly-robust drone, there will be: - breakdowns - fuel costs (electrical or otherwise) - the need to run the task repeatedly , dealing with varying terrain and grazing cattle I'm as big a fan of drones and automation as the next guy, but it really is much simpler to just stick a magnet in every cow.

...it really is much simpler to just stick a magnet in every cow. Is it though? If you have twenty cows, sure, I can believe that twenty magnets are simple and cheap - but what about 200? 2,000? And what happens when one of your cows turns out to have a larger than usual pyloric sphincter, and the magnet gets into its intestines? Or a wider than standard trachea, leading to it regurgitating the magnet when it tries t…

Fortunately this is knowable because sticking magnets in cows is something that we've done for many, many years. So we know what it costs and how effective it is.

Whereas a robot to solve the problem doesn't yet exist. And the important bit here is to realize what the word "solve" means here.

I'm not saying a workable solution will never exist, but in order to be as effective it would need to be orders of magnitude better at its job than a roomba is at its job. And what the roomba does isn't very hard to begin with. You would have to cover a very large area of sometimes pretty rough terrain every N days, and you would need to have a very high success rate at both detection and removal for the solution to be able to compete with the established practices.

To understand the problem I can only recommend spending some time on a farm where they keep grazing cattle.

Re: Cow Magnets

#28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let the cow eat it, like it would the other things the magnet is supposed to protect against.

Thanks for your answer. I imagine you must control this, no? Too many magnets would probably be harmful. Also, they may be fairly larger than what cows usually eats. Do you know for a fact it's done like this?

I can confirm this is how it is done. (I've done it a few times myself)

The one I used looks a bit like this one:

http://www.kruuse.com/en/ecom/Hest_produktionsdyr/Vommagnete...

Re: Cow Magnets

#29
post #5

Rather than putting magnets in every cow why not clean the fields of injury causing debris? http://extension.missouri.edu/p/G7700 > From 55 to 75 percent of the cattle slaughtered in the eastern United States have been found to have hardware in the reticulum. However, no damage or perforations of the reticulum was evident. [...] > The magnet simply keeps foreign metallic objects adhered together in a ball, reducing t…

Some of the debris is intentional, like barb wire which those magnets accumulate a fair amount of.

Re: Cow Magnets

#30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let the cow eat it, like it would the other things the magnet is supposed to protect against.

Thanks for your answer. I imagine you must control this, no? Too many magnets would probably be harmful. Also, they may be fairly larger than what cows usually eats. Do you know for a fact it's done like this?

For scale: http://media-channel.nationalgeographic.com/media/uploads/ph...
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