Cows don't have horns..Or do they??You live and learn

[PeteMorris 10]

Yet another random thread.....

 

Well...It started on Sunday afternoon....I'd been to Wentworth Antiques Emporium and bought a new (old) butter dish. For a while I've been searching for a butter dish with a deep base, and a shallow top...Rather than the seemingly standard shallow base and deep top (I think they're messy)...Anyway, I found one which was cute, amusing and fitted my criteria. It was in the shape of a bathtub, and the lid was a cow sitting in the bath. Perfect.

 

Well I took it home, and my partner decided she wanted a name for him/her...And we couldn't make our minds up, if it was a him or a her, due to the 'cow' having horns....AND udders....Now I had always assumed cows didn't have horns (I'm talking bog standard dairy cows here)...I had thought, that only bulls have horns...

 

A quick google shattered my notions. It transpires that cows do indeed have horns, but they're removed by the farmers, as there's no need for them in a dairy herd, and saves injury and any jostling that might happen.

 

I had no idea...I just assumed that because you never see dairy cows with horns that they didn't have any.

 

It's almost embarrassing to reach my age in life and not know this...But hey-ho...That's life...You can't know everything there is to know about everything can you?

 

So is there anything you have inadvertently discovered about something, that maybe in hindsight, you feel you ought to have known? Or are you too embarrassed or arrogant to admit?

[Bizzy_Lizzy 10]

I come from a farming family ( beef farm) so i knew cows had horns however i was deadly embarrassed that i didnt realise pigs lived in fields until i reached 25! To make things worse i actually argued my point for a good hour before driving past a field full of them! I thought they were kept in concrete houses like stables.

[cuttingedge 10]

And now I will tell you about father christmas

[Petit Chou 10]

yep they DO. i remember my brother gettin ridiculed as a kid for suggesting that they do... that was 40 years ago

[ANGELFIRE1 10]

Jeeze, thank God I live in the sticks where you can have a walk and find a cows nest and bring a couple of bottles of milk home.

 

Angel1.

[Plain Talker 11]

Their horns don't work.

That's why they have bells!

[GLASGOWOODS 10]

Their horns don't work.

That's why they have bells!

 

Phew!!

 

Glad your last word is a typo.

[Bottletop 10]

I've never been much of a fan of gardening and knowing stuff about plants. But in my 30's I found out for the first time that an evergreen means a plant is green all year round!

 

Perennials, hardy perennials, bi-hardy perennials... (any more!?) still confuse the hell out of me though!

[PeteMorris 10]

Jeeze, thank God I live in the sticks where you can have a walk and find a cows nest and bring a couple of bottles of milk home.

 

Angel1.

 

Good grief!....They nest too?..

 

I didn't know that.....As I said...You live and learn

[Moonbird 10]

Up until recently my partner thought that cows only had milk because they ate grass, that caused much hilarity...rotten aren't I?

[PeteMorris 10]

Up until recently my partner thought that cows only had milk because they ate grass, that caused much hilarity...rotten aren't I?

 

I bet there's loads of instances where people have made clangers that others knew all along.

 

I remember when I was a child, my mother slapped me because I used the phrase "tit-for-tat"....She'd obviously never heard of the phrase and I got a slap for being coarse....

[L00b 441]

I've never been much of a fan of gardening and knowing stuff about plants. But in my 30's I found out for the first time that an evergreen means a plant is green all year round!

 

Perennials, hardy perennials, bi-hardy perennials... (any more!?) still confuse the hell out of me though!

We visited Alnwick's poison garden a couple of weekends ago.

 

You wouldn't believe the number of common, everyday plants which are actually deadly to humans. Some within a matter of hours Useful rule of thumb: be wary of anything with blue flowers.

 

On-topic: of course cows have horns. But dehorning has long (long, long, long) been a very common practice for economic and safety reasons. So if you've only or mostly ever seen dehorned ones, this may explain the confusion.

Edited July 8, 2015 by L00b