Have you ever wondered what it was like to be a cow?

Photo by Bob Hammerstrom

Let’s see…

Every morning you are awakened before daylight, stand in line up to your knees in bovine excrement, and get herded into a cold milking parlor to get a set of suction cups stuck to your udder side. Sound pleasing yet? Then, when you’re done, ya get pushed back into the cold barn with a herd of your friends, to a meal of hay, silage and other grains. Yummy huh?

While you were getting the milk sucked out of ya, the farmer scrapes the …. off your concrete bed and throws down some fresh sawdust for you to lay on. Comfy!

Now it’s time for a nap until the process starts up again around supper time. Oh, the life of a cow… And did I mention, when your udder dries up and you stop milking, you become the next quarter pounder at McDonalds.

Humor aside, you can check out an audio slideshow this weekend on www.nashuatelegraph.comto see how Kevin Pomeroy of Mont Vernon, N.H., has made things easier for the dairy farmer, installing an automated and elevated platforms to milk his cows right in his milking parlor.

-Bob Hammerstrom