[HN Gopher] Cow Magnets
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Cow Magnets
Author : Tomte
Score : 210 points
Date : 2024-04-09 17:45 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.stanfordmagnets.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.stanfordmagnets.com)
| pfdietz wrote:
| I assume they're recovered, cleaned and sterilized, and offered
| for sale after slaughter.
| rottencupcakes wrote:
| https://www.ebay.com/itm/295122032671
|
| For your enjoyment.
| neilv wrote:
| I'm happy to say that the cow magnets I saw as a kid were
| more shiny, and (I hope) not used.
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| I'm getting flashbacks to "drop & run"
| bap wrote:
| My father owned a rural feed store until I was 6 or 7 years old
| (the early 80's.)
|
| Other than incubators full of chicks and ducklings, and bottle
| feeding young livestock fresh from auction - swiping cow
| magnets off the shelf to play with was a favorite pass-time. :)
|
| In those days I can't imagine anyone really cared what happened
| to the magnets after they went into the cow.
|
| Perhaps something happens in the slaughter house to clear out
| whatever has gotten into the gut and stomachs - for the sake of
| meat grinding machinery?
| pfdietz wrote:
| I mean, you don't want the magnets, or any nails or what not
| they've picked up, to go into any separated products. And
| separating them from the guts shouldn't be too hard -- they'd
| be attracted to metal, after all. The question would be how
| rapidly they degrade.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| I think tripe is the only use an industrial abattoir would
| have for the stomach and that's likely to be handled by a
| human. My guess is that they have a bucket or something that
| they put foreign material into.
|
| Hmmm, but I wasn't thinking of pet food: that would probably
| be ground.
| kokanator wrote:
| My father worked in a slaughterhouse. The magnets were often
| recovered in the gut room ( the place where they process guts
| and hides for the rendering house ). As a result I had/have a
| pile of these magnets. They actually come in several different
| forms. I had a few that were covered with some type of plastic
| and a few others that simply looked like the rough magnets you
| might find on the back of a fridge magnet just larger. My guess
| is the farmer would use whatever was actually cheap and
| available regardless of whether they were "cow magnets".
| Wistar wrote:
| I lived in a rural area growing up and it was not uncommon to
| come across the cow magnets in fields, sides-of-road, and so on.
| I think I still have a couple of them stowed away somewhere in my
| pack-ratty shelves. I recall that they were not very strong
| magnets.
| zikduruqe wrote:
| I used to play with them like Rattle Magnets.
|
| https://www.poundfun.com/cdn/shop/files/RattleMagnets.png?v=...
|
| They weren't as fun, but same principle.
| rlonstein wrote:
| A great-uncle had a dairy farm. We played with the magnets too.
| ortusdux wrote:
| My local co-op had them as impulse items at the checkstand. I
| seem to remember them costing as much as a candy bar, and my
| parents giving in and getting me a few. IIRC, they were
| slightly stronger than ceramic magnets, and much less brittle.
| lardo wrote:
| Some of my fondest childhood memories are summer visits to my
| great uncles farm. Playing with a cow magnet in the dirt under
| the bench grinder in the tractor barn is one of them. I
| remember them being strong, but I was 10.
| 542458 wrote:
| > I recall that they were not very strong magnets.
|
| I have one on my desk right now, and it's pretty strong!
| They're historically made from Alnico alloys, which were the
| strongest type of permanent magnet until rare earth magnets
| were discovered.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Human healthcare would be much more affordable if it operated on
| the veterinary model.
|
| 'Nails cause problems when they pass through a bovine digestive
| tract.'
|
| 'Well, let's keep them from passing by feeding cows a magnet.'
|
| Problem practically solved.
| naikrovek wrote:
| "Cancer treatment is expensive."
|
| "Kill the patient"
|
| Problem practically solved?
|
| Much more affordable, sure, but not better in any other
| measure.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Vets don't put down animals needlessly, but they do practice
| medicine closer to engineering.
|
| There's always a cost-benefit calculation, and the answer
| should never be 'Whatever the cost.'
| naikrovek wrote:
| > There's always a cost-benefit calculation, and the answer
| should never be 'Whatever the cost.'
|
| You think like an insurance company: completely detached
| from reality.
| dgacmu wrote:
| No, there literally is always a tradeoff, even in human
| medicine. I was at my doctor's office yesterday because
| I'm an idiot and injured myself. I asked about the
| diagnostic advantages of getting an MRI vs an x-ray for
| the injury (sciatic pain, probably from an injury to my
| piriformis; don't snowboard on the east coast). The MRI
| might have provided better diagnostics, but the x-ray
| (much faster, at lower cost, but at some radiation
| exposure to me) ruled out the really serious stuff, and
| the treatment plan was the same regardless. So: Tradeoff.
| It was, IMO, both financially and ethically better to use
| the low-resource diagnostic modality instead of tying up
| the rare and expensive one, even though it gave me a bit
| of radiation that in an ideal case I wouldn't have had.
| wpietri wrote:
| For sure. During my mom's cancer treatment, these things
| came up too. E.g., In going through some options, her
| neuro-oncologist mentioned one drug, Avastin I think,
| which would have been something like $100k. In his
| estimation was unlikely to make any difference in her
| prognosis, and at best would have been a difference of
| days of lifespan. She was on Medicare, so it was no cost
| to us either way, but we all felt like it would have been
| a waste of money.
|
| At some point during this process it became clear to me
| that a "whatever the cost" approach is understandable but
| wrong. We're all going to die. If an intervention can
| restore somebody to health, to give them years of a good
| life, that's great. But an awful lot of money is spent on
| what seemed to me like prolonging the misery. That's not
| something I want for myself, and it's definitely not
| something my mom wanted. So as long as there was some
| hope of more good time, we fought and fought hard. But
| when hope ran out, we were off to hospice with no
| regrets. She died peacefully, surrounded by loved ones.
| It was a much better death than having a lot of futile
| last-minute interventions.
|
| Speaking of which, if this makes sense to you, _make
| sure_ your loved ones know your preferences. We had all
| done living wills years before, and it was such a balm to
| know exactly what she wanted. I 've used Five Wishes for
| this, and I'm told there are other, possibly better
| options now too.
| vba616 wrote:
| >It was a much better death than having a lot of futile
| last-minute interventions.
|
| It's easy to say that sort of thing, so everyone does. It
| makes plenty of sense.
|
| People don't want to die in the hospital or go through
| hell in their last days or weeks.
|
| But nobody wants to die _right now_ , ever. No matter
| what they said before or what papers they signed.
|
| The standard picture, the logic, makes perfect
| crystalline sense up until there is a choice between
| going to the hospital right now and living an undefined
| amount of time, maybe only a day or a week, but longer
| than the next few minutes.
| wpietri wrote:
| Sorry, but this is incorrect:
|
| > But nobody wants to die right now, ever. No matter what
| they said before or what papers they signed.
|
| Plenty of people recognize when it's time. When my mom
| was diagnosed with glioblastoma, her surgeon said, "This
| is what you will die from." That's hard to hear, but
| people can definitely take it on board. To realize that
| it's not a choice of whether, just how. Take, Brittany
| Maynard, who had the same thing my mom did:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittany_Maynard
|
| I can go as far as agreeing that American culture has a
| lot of collective anxiety about death, and a consequent
| refusal to deal with is calmly. But there are plenty of
| other approaches to that. Like the European movement
| known as Death Cafe:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_Cafe
|
| Or the (sadly now defunct) Zen Hospice here in SF:
| https://www.businessinsider.com/photos-of-zen-hospice-
| projec...
|
| Many things in our lives can be scary. But we can shape
| our relationships to them. And given that death comes to
| all of us, I think it's worth taking the time to get on
| good terms with it.
| pjerem wrote:
| You are interpreting this wrongly. It's not because there
| is a cost-benefit that the cost for a high benefit can't
| be high.
|
| Healthcare budget is not infinite but in most countries,
| it's high enough per operation that, for a given
| individual, it's virtually infinite.
|
| Insurance companies don't care about the benefit, they
| just want the cost to be low, it's not the same thing.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| > _Insurance companies don't care about the benefit, they
| just want the cost to be low, it's not the same thing._
|
| Also underappreciated, at the end of the day:
| {insurance premiums} >= {average cost of care}
|
| The actuarial calculations don't change because they're
| concealed behind group-blended risk.
|
| If cost of care increases, premiums must increase as
| well.
| neon5077 wrote:
| No, the reality is that an animal is usually an asset. It
| costs X to feed and maintain an animal over its life to
| achieve Y amount of profit from its sale or the sale of
| its products. If X plus medical costs is greater than Y,
| you're losing money on this animal.
|
| Tripling the amount you pay the vet does not increase the
| final profit margin of the animal, so you simply do not.
| If basic treatment costs more than the animal will
| generate in its life, you don't treat the animal.
|
| Thinking that any random farm animal is worth infinite
| medical resources is completely detached from reality.
| The animal is _not_ worth it. There 's not one single
| reason to pay more to maintain an animal than the money
| you get out of it. Not in this context.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| Vets have an elevated suicide rate, which I ascribe to
| three factors:
|
| - they can self-prescribe
|
| - they commonly use, unlike human doctors, euthanasia to
| end suffering
|
| - they became vets because they really like animals, but
| many owners seem more concerned with their pocketbooks
|
| Lagniappe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JChwFoCxVC8
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Self-prescription is definitely part of it, but farmers
| have brutal suicide rates too.
|
| Social isolation + a business where the business often
| runs counter to your moral preferences = a tough life for
| both
|
| The "maybe next year" line gets me every time:
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRDaPEaDJ7E
| AnotherGoodName wrote:
| From experience with a vet in the family it's very much a
| 'who the fuck in their right mind would do this?!' type
| of career to anyone that has the ability to ask a vet
| their honest opinion about their career choice.
|
| It's literally a medical science degree with a
| speciality. The same degree that can get you a very
| highly paid jobs elsewhere yet it doesn't pay that well.
| You'll likely end up in a poorly paid 24hour live-in
| clinic with horrible pay and hours surrounded by
| euthanasia and the associated grief non-stop all the
| while with those same drugs sitting there. The mortality
| rate is so horrific that news of another suicide from the
| graduating year becomes a 'we've lost yet another one'
| type of statistic.
|
| It's not often you ask someone to give a late teen
| thoughts on their upcoming career choice and have them
| rightfully say 'Don't! It's not worth it!' but this
| literally happened with vet science in my family.
| peterleiser wrote:
| I had the same experience when doing a career report in
| junior highschool. I spoke to a vet who had graduated
| from UC Davis a few years prior and they did everything
| in their power to talk me out of becoming one.
| _heimdall wrote:
| That's not a great analogy. There are plenty of alternative
| treatments for cancer, and speaking of cattle there were
| actually Mayo Clinic doctors in the early 1900s using raw
| milk diets to treat serious conditions including cancer.
|
| A more apt comparison here would be vets throwing
| pharmaceuticals and radiation at cows who ingested metals
| rather than a more simple solution intervention.
| nrml_amnt wrote:
| Make an appointment at a VA clinic
| apitman wrote:
| What do you call a veterinarian that only treats a single
| species?
|
| A medical doctor.
| dexwiz wrote:
| Veterinary models assume fairly limited lifespans and are
| economically focused, especially for large animals. If we
| followed that model it would probably assume no issues past 65
| matters, because death and retirement would be the same. Also
| any issue that costs more to treat than the remaining economic
| output of that person would result in a trip to the glue
| factory.
|
| Animals often have relatively short lifespans. For cows its
| about 2 years for beef and 6 years for dairy. Would these
| methods work for animals that live more than a decade?
| ethbr1 wrote:
| There's also an acceptance in the veterinary profession,
| partly because of the economics that you describe, that 75%
| effectiveness at 25% of the cost is a good deal.
|
| Yet for people medicine that's anathema.
|
| Instead, we hide the cruel economic reality behind
| intermediaries (insurance companies, public hospitals, etc.)
| and then are shocked when it still leaks out.
|
| No country without infinite money can afford to spend
| whatever it takes, on everyone, forever.
| bborud wrote:
| For livestock, yes. For pets, not so much. People spend
| stupid amounts of money on their pets and expect results.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > For cows its about 2 years for beef
|
| Auguste Escoffier said that 2 years was much too young; you
| couldn't make good beef stock from such young bones. He said
| that you had to go to France to get 5-year-old stock bones,
| the British slaughtered them too young. This was in the early
| 20thC.
| tedunangst wrote:
| And what influence has the esteemed M. Escoffier's treatise
| had on the modern ranching industry?
| tedunangst wrote:
| USDA graded beef is 30-42 months. 3 years +/- 0.5.
| ajuc wrote:
| Human healthcare is pretty affordable when it's not absurdly
| misinsentivized and mismanaged.
| deanresin wrote:
| I now know what a cow magnet is.
| praptak wrote:
| Disappointingly, it's not a magnet that attracts cows.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I've tried so hard to not make a joke about magnets fed to
| baby chickens, but you pushed me over the edge.
| plowjockey wrote:
| While we had vets put magnets down cows over the years, my
| parents were too frugal to let me have one!
|
| There are two primary ways steel gets into the feed supply. A
| silage chopper can pick it up and cut it into fine bits or a hay
| baler picks up a stray end of wire and running large bales into a
| tub grinder to more easily mix feed stocks into a total mixed
| ration will chop the stray wire (and other parts) into moderately
| short bits.
|
| Many feed wagons have strong magnets under the discharge chute
| and grinder/mixers (used to grind grain and supplements) have
| likewise strong magnets just before the material enters the
| hammer mill. Despite that some bits will slip by due to the
| volume of material passing over the magnets as it comes out of
| the feed wagon.
|
| We do have the vets administer magnets to the heifers we keep at
| around 9 months of age. One has to watch to be sure they don't
| work them back up and spit them out! A couple of years ago we had
| some that did that.
|
| Symptoms of hardware is usually a cow "off feed" meaning she is
| not coming to the bunk to eat with the rest but usually stands
| apart and in acute cases will become hunched back. A veterinarian
| can usually diagnose it with a stethoscope as I think the
| breathing becomes labored in more acute cases.
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| > my parents were too frugal to let me have one!
|
| Your parents wouldn't let you swallow neodymium magnets?
| 0xdeadbeefbabe wrote:
| Frugality first safety second
| throw_a_grenade wrote:
| Now that you have come of age, you can proceed to ingest the
| damn magnet. Free yourself from the chains _(sic)_ of the
| patriarchate!
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| Honestly it looks fun
| gumby wrote:
| > Many feed wagons have strong magnets under the discharge
| chute..
|
| Even though I understand it's 1/r^2 this summoned a vision of a
| cow magnetically stuck to the discharge tube at her neck, with
| the head pushed up and mooing unhappily.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| I think the force is actually 1/r^4.
|
| The magnetic field is proportional to 1/r^3. But the linear
| force is not proportional to it. (Rotations are.)
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| Got one once. Nice strong magnet with an odd shape....you can
| just imagine it going down the gullet.
| peterleiser wrote:
| That's too bad. My parents were farmers and my dad brought some
| home one day, even though we no longer had cattle when we lived
| on our ranch. He thought I'd like to play with them, and he was
| right! Even my friends who weren't from farm families thought
| they were cool. I'm going to order some for my kids. These were
| the classic ones in the 1980's:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardware_disease#/media/File...
| unwind wrote:
| I guess I still can't read, because I couldn't find the link to
| their actual products, they are a magnet vendor after all. Very
| confusing. I had to search for it, but [1] must be linked to
| somewhere in the article, right?
|
| [1]: https://www.stanfordmagnets.com/alnico-cow-magnets.html
| blowski wrote:
| I don't imagine it's an industry that sees much opportunity in
| converting impulse buyers.
| wpietri wrote:
| I learned about these accidentally last year and thought they
| were hilarious, so I bought some here:
|
| https://www.magnetsource.com/collections/cow-magnets-ru-mast...
|
| I'm neither a veterinarian nor a cow, so I don't know how fit
| for purpose they are, but to me they seem well made.
| mhuffman wrote:
| Cow magnets are great refrigerator magnets! Very cheap, can be
| used at different angles, and stronger than pretty much any other
| refrigerator magnet.
| mgerdts wrote:
| A few decades back I fabricated and wired industrial controls.
| While wiring, we used cow magnets to attach the blueprints to
| the open cabinet doors so that they were always within sight
| was we strung wires between PLCs, terminal blocks, relays,
| buttons, etc.
|
| Even when there were several pages of blueprint stapled
| together a few cow magnets tended to hold them in place. You
| just had to be sure to orient them such that they didn't roll
| down the door.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| The magnets designed for glass whiteboards are arguably too
| powerful for working as a refrigerator magnet. I was able to
| pin a 100 page paperback book to the fridge with one of
| these[1]. For fridges I recommend these[2], which are $8-15 for
| a ten-pack and plenty strong (plus the shape makes them easy to
| grab).
|
| 1: https://amazingmagnets.com/product-category/large-pawn-
| magne...
|
| 2: https://amazingmagnets.com/product-category/WB-Series-
| Whiteb...
| pierrec wrote:
| " _Cow magnets cannot be passed through a cow's 4th bonivial
| meta-colon_ "
|
| Hah, "bonivial meta-colon" does not even _resemble_ any real
| combination of words. Sure, cows have multiple stomachs, but come
| on. Now I 'm wondering how many joke sentences are mixed in. And
| I almost believed the bonivial meta-colon because "Stanford" is
| in the domain name :)
| wzdd wrote:
| Apparently it's been there for a while: the talk page has
| someone pointing this out in 2009.
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Cow Magnets_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10176652 -
| Sept 2015 (71 comments)
| gumby wrote:
| Administer no more than an odd number less than 2!
| inasio wrote:
| Our local hackspace occasionally gets donations from Amazon,
| often very random things. One time we got a box full of these cow
| magnets. They're pretty strong, have mostly been used as fridge
| magnets though
| Bob_LaBLahh wrote:
| I wonder if there is any correlation between cattle containing
| cow magnets and the strange phenomena of cattle tending to align
| themselves on a north/south axis.
|
| I'm guessing that the answer is "not much" since deer lineup too
| and they (probably) don't have magnets in their stomachs.
|
| I still think this deserves the Mythbusters treatment, right?
|
| https://www.npr.org/2009/03/16/101945271/power-lines-upset-c...
| AnotherGoodName wrote:
| I wonder if it's as simple as wanting to catch the most sun
| hence a north south orientation to expose the flanks and the
| shadows from high voltage towers interfere with this hence the
| difference under those towers.
| RoyalHenOil wrote:
| This sounds like the likely explanation. Crop rows and
| greenhouses are generally aligned North-South for the same
| reason: to maximize direct sun exposure.
| connectsnk wrote:
| Am I the only one who is thinking that cows must feel terrible
| their whole lives.
| cwillu wrote:
| This is why cow tools aren't made of metal.
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