Lauren
As weird as this may sound, I mean literally reach in and touch the inside of the cow!
In case you didn’t know animals can live perfectly well with a permanent hole in their stomachs. Scientists call these surgically made holes, fistulas, which are covered by a canulla, a sort of cover from the outside world. They are used to test the digestibility of various cattle food, the cows are fed and as the food passes through her stomachs, scientist can just reach in and see how it is processed. As brutal as it might look, this doesn’t hurt the animals at all, it actually prolongs their life, in case of stomach disease, they can receive helping medicine directly in there.
The one thing I don’t approve of is people sticking their hand in animals just out of curiosity, like the kid in our photo. Sure it’s not something you’d call ordinary, but turning a medical procedure into a circus isn’t very ethical.
March 20, 2008
How is it un-ethical? The cows dont seem upset by it, and it is promoting our curiosity. You never know, maybe it will inspire the kid,and he will end up saving loads of cows.
Does the hole just go to one stomach, though?
March 20, 2008
What the fuck?
March 20, 2008
hmmm. I wonder if you can pour marinade in there jus fill em right up an off to the bbQ
March 20, 2008
Cows have only 1 stomach, but 4 parts to it: the rumen, the reticulum, the omasum, and the abomasum. Most of the digestion takes place in the biggest compartment, the rumen, which is where I’m assuming this hole goes to.
March 20, 2008
These are called cannulated cows. It doesn’t upset the cow and has provided us with so much information on the rumen digestive system. That said, a cow (ruminant) only has 1 stomach, with 4 compartments. Rumen, Reticulum, Abomasum, and Omasum. As for the kid, he might one day become the vet or scientist that cures bovine spongiform encephalitis (BSE) which is known to the rest of the world as mad cow disease.
March 20, 2008
Aggies!
March 20, 2008
what kind of mental retard do you have to be? are those real cows??
March 20, 2008
Even though it doesn’t hurt the animal there is just something really horrible about this….
March 20, 2008
Are you like retarded, putting a whole in an animal just so stupid fucks can stick their hands in it for ‘fun’? Saving loads of cows from sticking his hand in it? Maybe you should go smoke some more crack fucktard.
March 20, 2008
I think I’ve been there as a child. I remember being awestruck/grossed-out by the whole thing. It’s located on a Mississippi State University farm. Hence the shirts and hat.
March 20, 2008
fucking disgusting
March 20, 2008
Possibly a smart way to cut down on methaine emmissions. If the stomach is processing with ventalation, perhaps it is also producing less gas emmissions? Would this make these bovine environmentally friendly?
March 20, 2008
Gross.
March 20, 2008
You can’t “save” cows by not eating meat. They are born with the purpose to provide meat and milk and even milk cows are eaten at the end of their life. If you want to save a cow you have to buy a cow. I bet you’d be thinking about making it into hamburger after you had to pay to feed it for a while. These animals eat like a…like a freaking COW!
Having said all that it’s not cool to be mean to animals or not provide them with proper care.
Dale
March 20, 2008
HOLY COW.
March 20, 2008
Someone should drill a hole in your stomach yous sick twisted fuck
March 20, 2008
haha stupid cow has no idea whats going on
its wierd looking and quite gross
March 20, 2008
Is this where the get hole milk from?
March 20, 2008
“As brutal as it might look, this doesn’t hurt the animals at all, it actually prolongs their life”
Not buying it.
Why not just make the cow throw up.. ?
March 20, 2008
Stupid RI
>_>
<_<
March 20, 2008
this is so fucked up. how do people get away with this shit? animals should not have permanent hole in their stomachs.
March 20, 2008
In all fairness now. that kid might be….. un-ethical as you say. but so are you, blacks, chinks and americans. its said that kid is not nice, showing a bit of curiosity. well like pete said he could grow up to be a vet. and whats the deal with the insults by posting this crap here your promoting it as hella funny. now personally i think this is wrong, cows deserve the comfortable solitude my stomach can grant it. not some farm for studies….. HIPPIES!!!
March 20, 2008
I don’t see why people freak out over this. We eat steak right ? We wear leather? Unless you’re a vegan, you’ve got to place complaining about the treatment of animals which are more than likely battery farmed.
March 20, 2008
lol…. id drill a hole in my stomach… if it didnt hurt or spill out… then again… cows dont have to worry about pickn up chicks…. on a side note… for the right price i could get a chick to have sex with a cow.
March 20, 2008
yeah right, very poor photoshop job there
hahaha
March 20, 2008
As usual there is a happy medium. In-vitro meat. Cell cultured beef muscle cells.
March 20, 2008
what the fuck is the point of that.
March 20, 2008
Has to be photo shop, shit like this really couldn’t be true
March 20, 2008
Someone should kill those bastards
March 20, 2008
I’m with Cagemonkey
March 20, 2008
Seen this before. Nothing wrong with it. And why not let the kid do that, it’s educational. No reason to be uptight about it.
March 20, 2008
This is just wrong on so many levels.. I’d rather live a few years shorter than having a big hole in my stomach.
March 20, 2008
wtf checky it out
March 20, 2008
wtf mate?
March 20, 2008
you’d have serious problems if someone drilled into your stomach, the only reason it can be done on cows is because of the type of stomach they have….and it’s done not to save cows but generally used for research purposes….w
March 20, 2008
It’s unethical because we’re putting a hole where it’s not supposed to go and doing things to the animal that aren’t meant to happen to it. How would you like a hole in your stomach where people put things in and pull things out on a regular basis?
March 21, 2008
That’s why I love talking to animal rights activists, the conversation always stays at such a high level. Boy that fistula sure is creepy though.
March 21, 2008
I’m on the fence with this… It doesn’t hurt the cows and it actually promotes better health for them but at the same time tourist shouldn’t be able to just stick their hands in them outta curiosity either..
March 21, 2008
Awesome. It’s good for the cows. It’s good for the scientists. It’s good for the kids. Nothing wrong here. Just makes my hamburgers taste better.
March 21, 2008
i would love to stick more than my hand into that cows stomach.
March 21, 2008
UNGGGGH THIS IS WRONG BECAUSE IT LOOKS UNNATURAL!!!!!!
March 21, 2008
“what kind of mental retard do you have to be? are those real cows??”
“what kind of mental retard”
“mental retard”
WTF, anon, you’re supposed to be smarter than feeling the need to specify mental.
March 21, 2008
My favorite is monkeys without skulls. You can play with their brains.
March 21, 2008
Oh man, where do I sign up?
I would totally use this to pick up chicks.
March 21, 2008
You stupid tree hugging hippies. It it went for research on animals you all would of died a long time ago.
GO HUMANE ANIMAL REASEARCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
March 21, 2008
My dad is a professor and researcher in forage (cow feed) development and I have had hands on experiences with these fistulated/cannulated cows. It doesn’t hurt the animal at all.
The holes are used to extract rumen fluid which is filled with digestive bacteria. Researchers use the fluid to figure out what feed mixtures are best digested for maximum energy utilization of the feed. With this type of research, they can determine what percentage of grasses, alfalfa, clover, etc. a pasture should have.
By having access to the rumen fluid, and figuring out these mixtures, they actually help the cow produce more without giving it unnecessary nutrients that could damage it. Farmers also waste fewer resources on unneeded seed and the energy that goes into establishing it.
It’s gross, it smells bad, but it doesn’t hurt the animal. If you drink milk, the reason it doesn’t cost way more than it does is because of continuing research on cows like these.
Also, because of the cost of adding a fistula, those cows are treated like rock stars. They get the best feed, the best medicine, and the best care. They live in research facilities set up to provide the ideal living environment for a cow.
March 21, 2008
We have these things at the university of idaho. We’ve always called them port hole cows. Chill out people the cows don’t give a shit and it is for legitimate research at a state university. The kid is probably one of the researchers kids not a tourist. One of my friends who’s dad runs the WSU ag. department got to artificially inseminated cows for a school project.
March 21, 2008
You guys can’t seriously be that upset with this. This has been going on for quite some time now. Most agricultural universities have these.
March 21, 2008
This looks like Virginia Tech to me. Its a Vet and Agr school. I am guessing VT because of the maroon clothing.
Its common knowledge in Blacksburg about the ‘cows with a hole in their stomach.’ Its very humane and is used for research and edu purposes only.
March 21, 2008
“he might one day become the vet or scientist that cures bovine spongiform encephalitis (BSE)”
We already know how to prevent this disease… DON’T FEED COWS MEAT FROM OTHER COWS! We already know what cows digest best, grass. This another attempt by humans to fuck with natures perfect system so that you can have cheap steaks. There is a reason the US has a 32.2% obesity rate, 21% have diabetes, and 36.3 percent of all deaths are from cardiovascular disease. EAT LESS COW!
March 21, 2008
Are we eating these animals, after they served their usefulness?
March 21, 2008
Poor kid… likely to be traumatized for life
March 21, 2008
that is horrifying
March 21, 2008
Cows are too stupid to be respected. This is why we don’t care about the rights of cows, or minorities.
March 21, 2008
we have these at the university of guelph as well.
March 21, 2008
Are you kidding me? You think that the surgical procedure and subsequent recovery required to “install” these holes didn’t bother the cow at all??? If your abdominal muscles and stomach wall were cut into and/or removed like this, I think it would be quite bothersome!
March 21, 2008
You can sure tell the mental age and intelligence of some of these posters by their loose grasp of the complexities of the English language and the excessive use of expletives. And for those of you mental midgets expletives are cuss words. Long live scientific research.
March 21, 2008
there is just something unnerving about that. . .
March 21, 2008
To all of you who say it can’t be real, it must be hurting the cow, or the cow couldn’t really survive, etc. Check your history. There is a famous HUMAN, named Alexis St. Martin, who had such a hole put into him with a shotgun in 1822 (accidentally, of course.) He survuved, but the wound healed into a permanent opening into his stomach. The physician who treated him, William Beaumont saw the opportunity to study digestion. He studied St. Martin off and on until 1833. Almost everything we know about the physiology of digestionn comes from his research on St. Martin. Interestingly, St. Martin lived to the ripe old age of 86, dying in 1880, and outliving Beaumont by 27 years.
I am not attempting to pass any sort of moral judgement here, just saying that this isn’t impossible or even improbable, and that it is quite likely that this does in fact not bother the cows at all, or affect their quality of life.
There are a tremendous number of things that are done in agriculture and animal husbandry that urban and suburban folks would find incredibly surprising or distasteful. We are very disconnected from our food supplies. We like to interact with our food in neat little packages, and only have the vaguest abstract concept of how a cow gets turned into a steak.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexis_St._Martin
March 21, 2008
I grew up on a dairy farm and we had three fistulated cows. They lived with the cows that had just calved, so they were very well cared for and got excellent feed. We used the fistulas to transfer some stomach fauna to other cows that had stomach aches from an imbalance in their microbe population.
I took a sample of the stomach fluid once and put it under a microscope. It was so exciting to see all the little microorganisms swimming around in the little drop of water. I showed it to each of the technicians that treat our cows when they’re sick, and they were excited about it too.
I personally helped our vet put a fistula into one of our cows. We cleaned her thoroughly, gave her a strong local anesthetic and operated with sterilized instruments, just like with every operation. The whole operation took an hour. Right after the procedure she went straight to the feed bunk and ate to her heart’s content. And that’s what she did every day for the next several years of her life. Eating is a cow’s favorite activity, and she did a lot more of it than most without adverse effects because we harvested part of her stomach contents every day to help other cows.
March 21, 2008
Just curious - can you put ground up food in through the hole and the cow will never have to eat again? Also, what happens if someone goes cow-tipping and rolls the cow on the side with the hole. Can all the food spill out?
March 21, 2008
The shocking thing to me is the look into the minds of the commenter’s, and realizing this is a cross section of the minds of the future. Besides, I’ve stuck my hand in a girl and she didn’t mind it one bit. As a matter of fact, she enjoyed it !
March 21, 2008
If you let the cows eat what they naturally eat we’d all be better off and you wouldn’t need to do this
March 21, 2008
A US Army Doctor named William Beaumont had a patient with a fistula caused by a bullet, if I recall correctly. This allowed him to study the human stomach in action. The William Beaumont Army Medical Center in El Paso is named for him…and the mess hall is named for his stomach patient…appropriately.
March 21, 2008
I’m not saying its wrong or not, just freakin creepy…
March 21, 2008
It reminds me of the canned cat. Nice PS job, by the way.
March 21, 2008
Really? No one? Holey Cow!
March 21, 2008
Cows are tasty. The holes are real. Don’t like it? Too bad. Go eat tree bark, but don’t drive to the forest, there’s part of a cow in those tires of yours…
March 21, 2008
It may prolong cow’s lives and cow research, but these cows are VERY, VERY prone to the dangers of cowtipping.
March 21, 2008
woow…. thats sooooo cool. like the one poster said, wonder if you could put some marinade in there. that would be sweet. start marinading them when their just calves and once their at the right age after many years of marinading, im betting they would taste so dam great.
March 21, 2008
Someone should drill a hole in your stomach you sick twisted fuck…..HAAA! ROFL! Gotta love tree huggers. Cry me a river!
March 21, 2008
Well, this might be a good thing just connect a hose and take care of all evil methangas
March 21, 2008
How come I don’t have one?!
March 21, 2008
I grew up on a dairy farm and went to one of New Englands best Ag colleges. I spent hours in the Nut Lab (Dairy Nutrition Lab) and worked on taking car of the fistulated cows. They spent their days in the general population on pasture or in the free stall. They got the same if not better care and were the better for it.
It smells gross and creepy. It is interesting to look at the contents and to catch the fresh plugs when first swallowed.
Learning and curiosity are part of human nature and this is an extension of our thirst for knowledge.
March 21, 2008
OMFG, i can’t believe you idiots, photoshop???? really???? So because you have never seen it in real life it MUST be photoshopped right??? Listen you tree hugging, animal rights prooding, naturalistic assholes, this is VERY true, its done for medicinal purposes for the friggen cow. Being born and raised on a farm, I am always amazed at how the city dwellers are so non-believing of what it takes to make your “daily bread”. quit being naive and grow up. these aren’t photoshopped pics asshats, but then again i don’t suppose you have ever seen how they artificially inseminate a cow either. I guess an arm up a cows vagina would be “photoshopped” too huh? Quit posting on blogs and start reading real life books not the sci-fi crap you seem to love so much. Life is gruesome, get over yourselves and your god almighty “this is wrong” outlooks. Children in adult bodies………
March 21, 2008
Its not A&M or Virginia Tech, its Mississippi State.
March 21, 2008
Wow you guys. People get shot everyday and no one bats an eye to it. But have a hole in a cow that doesn’t know its even there is sick and terrible. How do you morons think drugs and medical treatments are tested? On animals!
March 21, 2008
But we do! We drill permanent holes in our earlobes, navels, tongues, nostrils, eyebrows, chins, labia etc and stick things in them. Not to mention chop off the foreskins off our penises.
March 21, 2008
This is just twisted shit, something inherently wrong about that.
Leave the poor bloody cows alone.
March 22, 2008
This is so wrong on so many levels. The people that have committed this and the morons, present and future, that think this is ok, and attack people that are against this can all rot in hell for this. This is the meaning of unethical.
March 22, 2008
Thats pretty fucked up. But whatever
March 22, 2008
it is against the nature of things, in the way God established it!
March 22, 2008
I thought God put man above all living things to rule the earth as he likes. This is no more unnatural than keeping cat as a pet. Cat belongs to nature…
March 22, 2008
Take the red pill and watch the critically-acclaimed, award-winning first episode of The Meatrix Trilogy. http://www.themeatrix1.com
March 22, 2008
dude i would totally fuck that
March 22, 2008
This is just a “gut feeling” “butt” nothing’s at “steak” here.
March 22, 2008
Hmm….nice hole for a penis
March 22, 2008
Just a quick response to Dale:
The idea of not eating cow Dale basically means to remove one more person from the grocery line that is demanding meat. If that happens enough, then the cows will stop being produced for consumption. The company or farm that was producing cows for meat will analyze the market for what the consumer is buying and produce that, or go out of business. Supply and demand man, plain and simple.
March 22, 2008
very weird
March 23, 2008
Honestly, let’s pumb her full of some A1 and toss that on the fire. Grab some bear, some music and it’s a party.
March 23, 2008
like ana said, people put holes in places all over their bodies and its not unethical. they know about it, yes, but the cows have no idea whats going on. and those that say that the cows should just be fed natural stuff, have you not read any comments from people who actually know what they are talking about that mention the fact that the research finds out what the farmers should plant so that the cows get the most energy from it. it is done to find out how to save everyone money, the farmers and the consumers. yup, genocide still going on in africa is fine and no one gets their panties in a bunch over that, but animals are “mistreated” and everyone becomes some kind of activist…….awesome….