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Cow Tipping

T

Tyger_Lily

Gone But Not Forgotten
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May 21, 2002
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Has anyone ever succeeded in doing this or is it another UL in the same vein as penguin toppling?

Would a cow not lay down to sleep like most mammals?
 
Not strictly OT but I couldn't help but share this with you:

Some years ago a friend and I were travelling from Sheffield to Barnsley when the train ground to a halt. The guard explained there was a cow on the line. My friend asked the guard, why it couldn't just be picked up and thrown over the hedge, which earned him an odd look. "Are you a farmer?" asked the guard. "No, I'm a graphic designer. What's that got to do with anything?" retorted my friend.

He was getting some very strange looks from other passengers. "They don't move by themselves," continued my friend, who has always had a bit of a warped sense of humour. He was soon locked in an exchange with an elderly lady who took issue with this statement.

All of a sudden we heard an almighty bang and a train coming the other way thundered past, having smashed into the cow. "Brilliant," says my friend, "I hope that knocked the stuffing out it." His heartlessness really irritated other passengers and when we finally got to Barnsley two ladies gave him a dressing down. As we walked to the pub, I said I hope it didn't suffer too much. "What suffered?" he asked. "The cow on the line," I said. "A cow! It was a cow!" he shouted. He looked mortified with embarrassment. "For God's sake, I thought he said couch!"
Steve Bruce
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3057141.stm
 
I always tip.

10% is respectable gratuity don't you think?

Never tipped a cow 'though I've never been served by one... ;)
 
It is real... unfortunately.

Some cows sort of sleep kneeling, moreso than laying down. They usually sleep standing.

When we were kids we used to believe you could tell the weather by what percentage were kneeling/laying or standing.

Yes, if you quickly grab their legs and ram your shoulder into their sides, they WILL fall down, although you are just as likely to get a well deserved kick in the pants for your troubles.

As a semi-professional sociopath, I enjoy the company of animals more than the company of Man, so when my drunk hick friends would go about this particularly nasty business, I would be waiting in the car/truck, practising my "eye roll" or my " deeply dissappointed sigh."


Trace Mann
 
When I was a kid this was all the rage. I would go with the "big boys" (ooh er, missus) and be the look out in case the farmer appeared down the road. They would then go into the field and presumably tip the cows.


BUT... I never saw them do it and still wonder if it is an UL or whether you can do it? (Insert cow tip smiley here)
 
link disabled cos I've merged them - stu

Yes, i've heard the tales, no i don't know of it ever happening.
 
Did it not get featured in the film Heathers, when the drunk frat boys were trying to impress Winona Ryder?

Might have spawned some actual events, although I personally wouldn't want an irate fresian chasing me accross a field in the middle of the night.
 
I heard this too when I was at high school in the states circa 1989. It always struck me as a bit weird and I was never quite sure if I believed it. The rest of my school years were in the UK near a lot of diary farming and I never heard about it here.
 
Sardan said:
I heard this too when I was at high school in the states circa 1989. It always struck me as a bit weird and I was never quite sure if I believed it. The rest of my school years were in the UK near a lot of diary farming and I never heard about it here.
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This is the same situation where I first learned about cow tipping. At university, in a medium-sized town, with rural areas around it.

I wonder if this might be some sort of suburbanite agrarian misconception, and that's why you don't hear these sort of stories from people who actually live around farms.
 
<<Sheds lurkers cloak and emerges into first post>>

There is no way one or two people could topple a cow- it would take a group of 5 or six people and theven then it would be difficult as the animal would definatly be aware of a group of pranksters trying to sneak up on it. A bit like trying to push a large table over directly from the side without lifting it at all.

At certain times dairy cows suffer with Hypocalcaemia, typicallyafter calving and in this very weakend state someone may be able to force them to topple. This could have been the basis for the UL if you ask me

Robbery
 
Hi Robbery. Welcome. :hello:

I have heard of cow-tipping being told by rural folk as a joke on ignorant urbanites. Didn't find anything on Snopes about it.
 
This is nonsense, I have worked with cattle for years and have never seen a sleeping bovine, with the exception of very young calves who sleep for most of the first 2 weeks. Even going out to check cattle at night they are always awake. I am sure they do sleep sometime, but they sense intrusion and are awake by the time you get close. I have heard students go on about 'cow tipping' and it is always suburban kids, I doubt they have the slightest clue about cattle.
 
From what I know (which isn't much) it is possible to tip a cow over. It used to be a popular, beer chugging, midnight event. Now there are laws to protect the cows. In fact, it is a felony offense in most US states, as cows are usually injured when tipped over.

How is it possible to tip a cow? Well.... you can only tip a cow that is found sleeping. Remember, cows sleep while standing up. They are also awkward and clumsy animals. So... while the cow is sleeping... two or more people sneak up on the cow and charge into the cow as hard as they can.

And NO... I do not have any first hand experiences in cow tipping. But I do have a brother. ;)
 
Whidbey said:
And NO... I do not have any first hand experiences in cow tipping. But I do have a brother. ;)
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Your brother is a cow and you've tipped him? :shock:
 
How is it possible to tip a cow? Well.... you can only tip a cow that is found sleeping. Remember, cows sleep while standing up.
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One problem- cows don't sleep standing up, Horses do apparently. Try tipping one of those and get kicked into orbit for your trouble
Robbery
 
This seems a huge point of contention. Do cows sleep standing up? Or rather, CAN cows sleep standing up? It may be that it is unusual for them to sleep standing up but surely it isn't physiologically impossible. Isn't that the trick, to find one standing up?

Come on vets, give us some scientific input. If we're lacking in vets, we must have a bovine specialist, no message board is complete without one!
 
Whidbey--your link is an example of why no engineer should be allowed anywhere near a good urban legend.
 
Have merged the new Cow Tipping thread with the old Cow Tipping thread. We now have one Cow Tipping thread, for everybody's convenience :).
 
I asked a ex-cowherd last night.

He says that cows lie down to sleep unless they are wedged in by bars, bales, other cows, walls or something similar. Sometimes they have to be suspended in a kind of sling for veterinary treatment. So preumably they also sleep hanging from the celing :)

He came back a little later and asked very suspiciously if I was thinking about going cow tipping.

M
 
Morrigan said:
I asked a ex-cowherd last night.

He says that cows lie down to sleep unless they are wedged in by bars, bales, other cows, walls or something similar. Sometimes they have to be suspended in a kind of sling for veterinary treatment. So preumably they also sleep hanging from the celing
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Catching a cow off guard, whether sleeping or not, it is possible to tip it over. I too asked a friend, last night, if they'd ever gone cow tipping. They said that they had been on cow tipping jaunts and had seen it done. However, he said it was a lot more fun to pop an unsuspecting cow in the arse with a BB gun. :shock: Poor cows.

Morrigan said:
He came back a little later and asked very suspiciously if I was thinking about going cow tipping.
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hehe. :D
 
i know that the ou*(?) in milton kenyes has concrete cows. but i dont know if any of the students when visisting to do exams have tryed to tip the cows


*open unversity a home study course
 
Back in my high school days (mid to late 70s) in the midwest, it was pretty common for groups of guys to go out purportedly cow tipping. The actual event (if it ever even happened) probably consisted of several drunk teenagers rushing a heifer en masse. I doubt they won the contest. Cows are pretty massive and they go where they want to, more or less. We did hear reports of cows injured by tipping, but that could have been hype. *chuckle*

When I was a senior, our class prank was to steal a cast iron cow from a local burger joint and put it in the courtyard, with a big pile of real cow flop under the back end. Harhar. :roll:
 
Re: It is real... unfortunately.

ZPumpkinEscobar said:
When we were kids we used to believe you could tell the weather by what percentage were kneeling/laying or standing.

Trace Mann
Click to expand...

there seems to be another UL in here...

I used to drive my mother crazy when I was a kid by announcing that it was going to rain whenever I saw a heap of cows laying down. She eventually challenged me as to what it meant if only one or two cows were lying down, and this spawned a debate as to the meterological capabilities of cows, which lasted several years until we moved to the drought stricken outback and I was forced to concede that possibly a lying down cow didn't ALWAYS mean rain.

Anyway, I know that I fervently believed this when I was a kid, but I can't remember where I heard it...but the mention of it above suggests that it wasn't just me and I didn't make it up

so, anyone else ever hear this UL, if indeed it is a UL?
 
Yup. My mum used to say cows lying down meant rain, and we live in the north of England, not Australia. It could have spread to Oz from England I suppose. Never saw any proof of it though.

Apparently seaguls flying inland means the same thing.
 
Anybody that tells you they have tipped a cow is more than likely making it up. I grew up in a small Missouri farming town (prime spot for tipping candidates). We were surrounded by corn fields and cow pastures.

I even had to, on several occasions, have to get out of my car to coax cows off of the road to stop them from blocking traffic.

Anyway, I too had grown up hearing about cow tipping. When the time came (when I was old enough to drive and my friends and I were drunk enough to think it was a good idea) we had to try it.

What these stories don't explain is that cows are big. Not just tall but wide. Cows sleep laying down (not so much laying as setting like a sphynx with a drooping head). They may take naps standing up but they sleep laying down.

If a cow is standing up it's pretty much guaranteed to know that you are near. When a cow is standing up I highly recommend not running full bore at said cow. I would compare the feeling to running into a brick wall however you don't get scraped by the cow. I would however compare it to running full bore into a hide-a-bed couch setting on a pair of saw-horses.

The cow was more annoyed than anything. I was in quite a bit of pain. When the sky stopped spinning and I had partaken in a couple of more beverages we decided that running at it was out of the question and that we had a better chance if we all (there were six of us mostly big corn-fed farmboys) pushed at once. We lined up down one side of the cow and on the word GO we started pushing.

In our excitement of pushing over a cow we overlooked a very important aspect. COWS HAVE LEGS!!! If a cow feels something pushing against it it will move (we had all herded cows in the past and knew that all you had to do was shove a cow in the direction you wanted it to go).

Needless to say the cow sidestepped and turned towards us. The ones pushing near the hips fell face first and as the cow turned, those of us at the front of said cow were pushed by her head and shoulders on top of the ones that had already fallen.

The cow was now confused. She stared at us as we stumbled to get back up and then she walked away to join the rest of the herd.
 
I have vague memories of somebody saying that the shock of being pushed over could sometimes kill a cow, heartattack and all that! Maybe I'm too gullible? (Is that how you spell it? It isn't in the dictionary). :?
 
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