I live across from a farmer who has a free-range cow farm, so I get to watch them and listen to them regularly. They’re perfectly nice cows who graze and relax and lie in the sun from time to time. They’re not very interactive or even very friendly, really, and when I’ve made an effort to connect with them they tend to be quite skittish.
There are many farm animal rescue organizations that I love to support and I follow them on social media, seeing their photos and videos of the farm animals they’ve saved from slaughter. It’s really wonderful to see cows playing and to see sheep or goats or chickens or turkeys interacting with humans, just like pets.
The more I’ve watched videos of rescued farm animals enjoying themselves with their rescuers, I began to wonder why the cows near my home don’t behave that way. The only time I’ve seen cows play in the field here is when the babies are born and get big enough to run around. They love to kick their legs up behind them and scamper about, playing and goofing off. But the adult cows have never done that.
The more I watched them, I was able to realize why they behave so differently. They behave just like you would expect a worker to behave. They act just like anything that’s treated as property would act. The farmer never interacts with them except to feed them and birth their calves; and then when the calves are old enough, he takes them away from their mothers. The mothers cry and cry, pacing back and forth, trying to get to their babies. These babies used to play and frolic, but soon they are loaded into a truck and sold to a feedlot to be auctioned off to be slaughtered. So they, too, will stop playing, just like their mamas, as they experience the fear and trauma of being taken from their mothers and shipped off to be killed.
And it struck me why the cows on this meat farm don’t act like the rescued cows… they aren’t treated with respect, or dignity or even as if they matter. They are treated like animal slaves, animal workers, and each year as their babies are ripped from them, they shut down more and more. Now these cows that I see every day just wander around like zombies, because they are enslaved. They have shut down because nobody interacts with them or treats them with dignity. They are treated like cattle so they behave like cattle. They are simply a number and someone’s property. They’ve never been invited to play or connect, so their personalities just kind of disappear behind their checked out eyes.
Humans do this, too, if treated badly enough. When humans experience trauma they shut down as well. And these cows are no different. People have come to expect cows to just behave like cattle, to just be dumbed-down and checked out, without realizing that it’s because of how they are treated and the trauma that they experience. If treated like a pet and shown kindness, caring and love, they would be open and loving, just like a dog. Cows are very friendly and have really wonderful, individual personalities. But anything that is treated like property and consistently traumatized will eventually shut down and become numb.
I look forward to the day when humans wake up to how we treat animals. Our treatment of animals is a huge indicator of how we will treat each other, and we have been programmed to simply see animals as property, as food, and not to see them as the sentient beings that they are.
