[HN Gopher] Cow Magnets
___________________________________________________________________
Cow Magnets
Author : Tomte
Score : 416 points
Date : 2024-04-09 17:45 UTC (1 days 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.
| vba616 wrote:
| >Plenty of people recognize when it's time.
|
| Thank you for being relatively polite.
|
| All of the replies to my original comment have veered off
| from what I tried to express with the phrase "right now".
|
| I was alluding to a situation with rapid terminal cancer
| much later than diagnosis, but earlier than morphine +
| the end of communication. The fentanyl or oxycontin
| stage, as I recall it.
|
| I think most likely if you are ever so slightly insulated
| from such a situation, you might not realize it.
|
| Having a parent die of cancer when you are ~7 may not
| prepare you for having a parent die of cancer when you
| are ~37. That is how I see it now.
| sojournerc wrote:
| My mom (and my brothers and I) chose hospice (cancer)
| during COVID so she could be with her friends and family
| in her dying days.
|
| She stopped eating and drinking because she knew it was
| time. That was a sort of last gift, not having to see her
| languish for weeks.(although I will never stop being
| bitter about being unable to have a proper funeral and
| memorial service).
| PawgerZ wrote:
| > But nobody wants to die right now, ever
|
| The current suicide rates say otherwise
| kortilla wrote:
| This is completely false. You've clearly not been around
| dying people with really painful diseases.
|
| I've witnessed two elderly people in my family with
| cancer in severe pain just ride a morphine drip waiting
| in anticipation for death. The only reason they didn't
| euthanize is because it isn't legal.
| vba616 wrote:
| The "right now" whereof I spoke is basically any crisis
| during a quickly progressing terminal cancer after the
| oxycontin starts and before the morphine.
|
| When a person can speak, and change their mind, and
| everyone involved in care isn't present at a particular
| instant or on the same page with what to do.
|
| If that clarifies.
| 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.
| refurb wrote:
| I work in healthcare economics and this is false.
|
| There are no healthcare system in the world where the
| budget is "high enough to be virtually infinite".
|
| All health systems are all heavily, heavily constrained
| by budget. The US system is the least constrained (i.e.
| if you want the latest cancer care paid for, the US is
| the place with the highest probability it'll happen), but
| since there are thousands of insurance plans it's not
| even and any two patients may have plans that make
| different trade offs.
|
| And governments do the _very similar math_ as the
| insurance companies when it comes to cost-benefit
| analyses - that's how they design their benefit
| offerings.
|
| The difference between systems like Canada (with
| universal care) and the US is that in Canada the end user
| doesnt see how the sausage is made.
|
| That's because the trade offs are the same for everyone
| and doctors know a given trade off has been made and the
| technology that is not paid for is just not even brought
| up to the patient.
| 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.
| GlenTheMachine wrote:
| Yes, and also the human owners are increasingly crazy. As
| in, they want the same kind of unlimited care a human
| would get, but don't want to pay for it and take it out
| on the vet when presented with the bill.
|
| You never really been Karened until you've been crazy cat
| lady Karened.
| plowjockey wrote:
| I wonder if this occurs more with small animal vets--"pet
| vets"?
|
| I know of a number of large animal vets that retired and
| enjoyed many years of retirement. Perhaps being in the
| large animal practice where decisions are made on
| economics and not emotions helps them survive. Those vets
| also did small animals but it was probably more of a
| sideline for them.
| defrost wrote:
| There's some crazy in equine vet work - the racing side
| can be a bit brutal with some exposure to criminal
| elements (not extensive but in places it can be hard to
| avoid) and the crazy horse lady types can drive vets to
| drink; these are people that love horses, collect horses,
| but can't afford to feed them or bear to see them put
| down, etc.
|
| In general though large animal rural vet work is smoother
| sailing than the small stuff (from conversations I've had
| thanks to a farm background and to having developed a bit
| of animal history recording software for agistment | stud
| records some decades back).
| d1sxeyes wrote:
| They can't really self-prescribe though, they are not
| allowed to prescribe drugs to humans. In fact, in many
| jurisdictions, doctors are legally allowed to self-
| prescribe.
|
| Perhaps the difference is that vets can both prescribe
| and dispense drugs, while human doctors often need to
| have a pharmacist dispense the drugs.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| not entirely coincidentally, Corb Lund _also_ has a song
| about off-label use:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5geefvMDjME
| _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.
| non-chalad wrote:
| Might we interest you in M.A.I.D? (1)
|
| 1. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/06/canad
| a-...
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Full-disclosure: personally I'm a big supporter of an
| individual's right to choose to end their own life in a
| medically-facilitated manner.
|
| There's something weird about letting people who are happy
| with life (read: society) choose to force someone who isn't
| to continue living, against their wishes.
| non-chalad wrote:
| Governmemt should not be involved in ending someone's
| life; Not at their own choosing, nor at forcing them to
| continue living.
| ninjanomnom wrote:
| The alternatives then are self service, or private
| businesses providing assistance? If we want to endorse
| the former then educating people on the best way to
| painlessly end their life might be a good idea, the
| latter though seems like a bad idea with some very badly
| aligned incentives.
| hoseja wrote:
| "Cancer is terminal."
|
| "Bankrupt and undignify the patient and their family with
| needless, hopeless treatment."
|
| Humane, functional american healthcare.
| nrml_amnt wrote:
| Make an appointment at a VA clinic
| non-chalad wrote:
| Wrong kind of vet.
| apitman wrote:
| What do you call a veterinarian that only treats a single
| species?
|
| A medical doctor.
| shagie wrote:
| The vet that I went to _only_ handled cats. Every vet in that
| practice was a cat specialist, every room was designed with
| cats in mind, and everyone who worked the front desk was a
| cat lover themselves.
|
| While the joke is there, there are single species veterinary
| practices.
|
| https://catcareclinic.net
|
| https://citydogvet.com
| Ichthypresbyter wrote:
| Plus of course all of the horse specialists, particularly
| around the racing industry.
| kstenerud wrote:
| And no one can talk to a horse, of course.
| defrost wrote:
| hmm, but there _are_ whisperers.
| 48864w6ui wrote:
| Wait, what? Have you actually seen Mr Ed on a broadcast
| medium?
| 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?
| saalweachter wrote:
| What, he couldn't get an old dairy cow or something for his
| stock pot?
| tedunangst wrote:
| USDA graded beef is 30-42 months. 3 years +/- 0.5.
| jaredhallen wrote:
| A note on terminology. Where I come from, at leat, a "cow" is
| a mature female breeding animal. We'd expect at least ten
| years out of such an animal, barring any unforeseen
| circumstances. A young, immature female would be referred to
| as a heifer. When the "cows" "calve" each year, obviously
| some of the calves are male and some are female. Most of the
| males will be castrated at a young age, for the purpose of
| preventing testosterone from negatively impacting the
| musculature in relation to meat quality. A castrated bull is
| referred to as a steer. A steer will almost certainly be
| raised for slaughter, and for that particular animal, an
| 18-24 month lifespan is a good estimate. A heifer may either
| be raised for slaughter, or may be added to the breeding
| herd. So their lifespan depends. Then there are bulls, who
| are males who are left intact. These are relatively rare, and
| their lifespans are shorter than a "cow," because their main
| purpose is breeding and they become less effective at that
| job over time. But longer than an animal that's sent to
| slaughter. Maybe 6 years or so. But the bulls probably don't
| affect the average too much.
| julian_t wrote:
| Veterinary models also assume that the subject can't sue you.
| ajuc wrote:
| Human healthcare is pretty affordable when it's not absurdly
| misinsentivized and mismanaged.
| non-chalad wrote:
| Is it too much to ask for that I want to be the customer
| paying the treatment, instead of the insurance agency? Put
| the incentives where they count.
| pjc50 wrote:
| You can, if you can afford it. Few can afford emergencies.
| non-chalad wrote:
| I mean, insurance should pay the patient, so the doctors
| are incentivized to serve the patient.
| gosub100 wrote:
| Golly Gump swallowed a fly
| 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.
| drpixie wrote:
| In Australia, a "chick magnet" is a large attention seeking
| car owned by a young guy. It is intended to attract girls
| (chicks). It always has a serious stereo, and probably has
| a modified exhaust.
|
| Young guys spend a fortune on their "chick magnet",
| presumably to indicate that they could spend a fortune on
| potential girlfriends. The desired outcome often fails to
| eventuate - many "chick magnets" are only driven up and
| down the main street occupied by the single owner and his
| single friends ;)
| aidenn0 wrote:
| In the US a "chick magnet" usually refers to a person who
| can attract women, but it can also refer to an accessory
| (including a car) with such a desired purpose.
| ec109685 wrote:
| As well as hardware disease.
| 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
| saagarjha wrote:
| It's fine if you swallow one. If you swallow two or more then
| you should probably go to the ER immediately.
| plowjockey wrote:
| I probably didn't state that all that well. If I had really
| wanted one I'm sure I would have been provided one. It's
| equally quite possible that since they had to be obtained
| from a veterinarian that it never occurred to me to ask for
| one.
|
| OTOH, I did destroy a couple of old radios to get the speaker
| magnets. If I could go back in time I'd grab those old radios
| before I'd have a chance to destroy them. Back then they were
| just that--old radios--with no value and certainly not worth
| fixing. Sigh...
| 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.)
| planede wrote:
| It's 1/r^4 for magnetic dipoles, where both have fixed a
| fixed dipole moment. So it's 1/r^4 between two permanent
| magnets.
|
| Where one object is a permanent magnet and the other is
| some unmagnetized ferromagnetic/paramagnetic piece metal,
| then the dipole moment of that piece of metal also depends
| on the distance. Assuming it's proportional to the magnetic
| field of the other dipole (~1/r^3) then the force is going
| to be ~1/r^7 for this pair of objects.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Oh, that's right.
|
| But magnetization is famously path-dependent, so now I'm
| tending to believe the force will be closer to 1/r^7 when
| moving on the direction of the magnet, but 1/r^4 when
| moving away. And not exactly any of those functions.
| planede wrote:
| Do you mean that the ferromagnetic material gets
| magnetized and retains some magnetization while moving
| away?
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Yes.
| 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...
| wyclif wrote:
| Alnico magnets are the same type of magnets used in vintage
| electric guitar pickups.
| 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...
| djmips wrote:
| I feel like in an argumentive mood. I like very strong fridge
| magnets. They can hold thicker items.
| hoseja wrote:
| Why do you want to affix thick articles to your fridge
| door.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Oh, I have a few for just such a reason. I just don't want
| to unconditionally recommend them to someone without also
| saying that they are probably overkill.
|
| I also use male-threaded magnets and wingnuts to hold my
| cable-management pegboard to the bottom of my desk. There I
| went extra strong because I don't expect them to ever be
| moved.
| 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 Wikipedia talk page
| for this topic 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.
| flysand7 wrote:
| I found the relevant research:
| https://www.pnas.org/doi/pdf/10.1073/pnas.0803650105
|
| > Furthermore, there was no correlation between the position
| of roe deer and the time of day when the observation took
| place, meaning that the position of the sun had no influence
| on deer orientation.
|
| Although I'm not sure how credible this information is given
| that they studied google images where who knows what time of
| day they are taking images at. Maybe there was a correlation.
| Bob_LaBLahh wrote:
| Thank you! My curious but busy/lazy ass wanted to know the
| answer but wasn't gonna do the legwork.
| d1sxeyes wrote:
| It should be fairly possible to determine the time an
| aerial photograph was taken by studying the angle cast by
| shadows in the photograph.
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| My first though would be a wind, which you can't measure
| with photos.
| plowjockey wrote:
| I admit that I've never noticed that. They seem to lay whatever
| direction seems comfortable. In winter time the will lay east-
| west to catch the most warmth and will often roll on their side
| to really catch some rays.
| djmips wrote:
| Why would a cow magnet settle in the rumen any particular cow
| related orientation?
| beAbU wrote:
| I've not read up any studies or papers on this matter. I've
| lived around farm animals for a large part of my life so I have
| some anecdotal observations.
|
| From what I've seen, they tend to align themselves into the
| _most pleasant_ direction depending on the weather conditions
| of the moment.
|
| - Cold but sunny: Broadside towards the sun
|
| - Wind or rain: back-side towards the direction of origin,
| heads hung low. So they stand with their butts in the wind to
| shield their heads against the worst of it.
|
| - Very hot: Butts toward the sun, heads hung low. Often they'll
| arrange themselves in lines in order to hide in one another's
| shade.
|
| I've never witnessed them being aligned north-south in a way
| that can't be explained by the immediate weather conditions.
|
| This was in the southern hemisphere.
| dixie_land wrote:
| This reminds me of the study that concludes dogs shit on north-
| south orientation (that's why they circle)
| connectsnk wrote:
| Am I the only one who is thinking that cows must feel terrible
| their whole lives.
| ornornor wrote:
| That's one of the reasons why many of us refuse to eat them (or
| any other animal)
| saagarjha wrote:
| By eating them you shorten the length of time they stay
| miserable.
| caditinpiscinam wrote:
| "a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food"
| albrewer wrote:
| By eating them you contribute to the overall demand for new
| beef, thereby perpetuating the cycle of bovine misery.
| cryptonector wrote:
| Humans are carnivores. Like felines, canines, etc. But it is
| tough, yes, to be a carnivore when these animals are so
| lovable and loving. As a beekeeper it's hard to to steal my
| bees' honey. But... I still do it.
| ornornor wrote:
| Doesn't have to be this way though. We're not obligate
| carnivores, you can eat no animal product for decades and
| be just fine.
| cryptonector wrote:
| I don't think this is true. I mean, yes, we can not eat
| meat, but I don't believe that not eating animal protein
| produces equivalent results to eating animal protein.
| ornornor wrote:
| I disagree on that point, I think it's totally possible
| to live healthily without eating anything that comes from
| an animal.
| ornornor wrote:
| Maybe this will be of your interest:
| https://youtu.be/iSpglxHTJVM
| eitland wrote:
| I think it varies a lot fromncow to cow (and from farm to
| farm).
|
| I grew up on a (small) farm and we liked them and were fond of
| them and they seemed to be the same.
|
| Yes, they were absolutely overjoyed when I took them to the
| pasture at the start of the summer, but no, they didn't seem to
| bother extremely much when I collected the after the summer.
| brewtide wrote:
| Letting them out in the spring and seeing these large,
| generally "lumbering" animals run, hop, and frolic in
| enjoyment is a scene one never forgets.
| cwillu wrote:
| This is why cow tools aren't made of metal.
| kazinator wrote:
| Maybe we've been wrong all along about toddlers swallowing
| magnets? ;)
| rzzzt wrote:
| Unfortunately not, some arrangements can pinch together
| sections of the gut as they pass through and that's a very big
| problem. No reticulum in toddlers. Rumination is preserved for
| thoughts only when they get bigger.
| BrandonMarc wrote:
| ... and for _that_ kind of rumination, we have therapists to
| help out.
| deepspace wrote:
| Specifically, swallowing ONE magnet is probably fine, since
| children do not tend to eat metal frequently. Swallowing
| multiple strong magnets brings the risk of pinching (and
| necrotizing) sections of the gut.
| repiret wrote:
| Incidentally, you often put magnets in a hydraulic sump for much
| the same reason.
| userbinator wrote:
| That's what this reminded me of too. Very common to have one in
| the oil pan, transmission pan, and rear axle, often built into
| the drain plug, to catch metal debris.
| block_dagger wrote:
| How we treat these animals is horrific. We force feed them
| magnets to counteract the effects of our domination over them.
| eitland wrote:
| The thing is cows eat metal while grazing freely too.
|
| I have a background in farming and there has been cases of cows
| ingesting rather weird things absolutely on their own.
|
| One case I remember hearing about was a cow eating a pack of
| leftover bolts from construction teams.
| block_dagger wrote:
| Part of the domination I speak of is the pollution of
| hardware we carelessly leave for other species to suffer
| from.
| bsza wrote:
| How we treat these animals is a blessing compared to how Mother
| Nature would treat them. We protect them from parasites,
| bacterial infections, malnutrition, rabies, predators, the
| weather, physical injuries and yes, ingesting things they're
| not supposed to.
| 6bb32646d83d wrote:
| I don't know. I feel like a cow without humans is most likely
| to end up being slowly tear apart by a predator
| destitude wrote:
| This isn't just about the feed. I once saw the remains of some
| cattle that got hit by a train and was dumbfounded by the amount
| of trash they had eaten. You'd be surprised by what they will eat
| and if the farm is pretty "trashy" that ends up in the cattle as
| well.
| plowjockey wrote:
| They are very curious. As they can't just pick something up to
| examine it, they do the next thing which is to sniff it and
| then taste it. At that point it's on a one way trip down the
| gullet!
|
| Other times they try to eat things they shouldn't like "hedge
| apples" which are the "fruit" of Osage Orange, a.k.a. hedge
| trees. These apples will start falling to the ground during
| late summer and early fall and for whatever reason cattle like
| to eat them. After they lay for a while they get mushy and
| there is usually no problem but early on they're hard and can
| get lodged on the way down or on the way back up when they chew
| their cud. Usually it takes a stiff hose to clear the blockage
| and after a day or so things are fine.
| notfed wrote:
| Isn't this dangerous? I'm imagining guts getting punched between
| a magnet and some metal...
| deepspace wrote:
| I was thinking that as well, but I think the shape of the
| magnets have something to do with it.
|
| For human children, swallowing a single magnet is a nuisance,
| but swallowing more than one is a medical emergency, for
| exactly that reason.
| djmips wrote:
| More than one with some (unknown to me) period between. If
| swallowed one after the other, I presume they would just
| stick together without much issue.
| el_snark wrote:
| This is incidentally why cows can't travel on planes. They always
| get stopped at the body scanner.
| onemoresoop wrote:
| They don't fit through or they can't raise their hands up?
| waterhouse wrote:
| An implication is that, of the metallic debris a cow might
| ingest, a large fraction of it is magnetizable--otherwise there'd
| be little point. I wonder, does this feed back into the decisions
| that are made? Do people deliberately choose magnetizable metals
| for things that might get broken up in a cow's environment?
| nicbou wrote:
| This is an unnecessarily verbose way of saying "cows eat random
| things including metal bits that can kill them, so we have them
| eat a magnet to catch them".
|
| Then again, it's content marketing. It's written for search
| engines, not humans.
| screamingninja wrote:
| > unnecessarily verbose way
|
| What are you referring to? I just see two words in the title:
| "Cow Magnets"
| nicbou wrote:
| I refer to the article's contents
| Zebfross wrote:
| I had a pair of these growing up, and they're super fun to play
| with. They have great interactions and make interesting sounds.
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| Dad sold veterinary supplies. We had lots of these to play with.
| They were the strongest magnets around before modern rare earth
| magnets came along. Sometimes we used them to clamp steel pieces
| together prior to welding etc. Lots of uses.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| I live by The Thames; for the last few days, we've had magnet
| fishers on the bank. I gather this crew have fished up a cannon
| and a sawn-off shotgun, as well as stuff like jewelry.
|
| I'm not going to link to them (Facebook <spit>), but you can
| search for "Northants magnet fishers".
|
| They all seem to use the same magnets, which look as if they're
| about 3" diameter, 2" tall cylinders. It seems to require a fair
| bit of muscle to separate the dredged iron from the magnet. I
| don't know where they get these magnets.
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