@izzythepush,
Ive learned a lot about this "preference for melons that "cows" have"
The newspaper article was actually written because it was an uncommon occurence by a farmer whose beef cattle were almost starving due to drought.
I was talking to aneighbor who has been a cattleman for nearly 50 years and has NEVER been forced to feed weird **** (like melons gourds or pumpkins) to his steers. PIGS will eat all sorts of stuff and wid hogs will seek out gardens and farms and destroy crops in an evenings browsing. Pigs will eat melons becaue they have carnivore teeth and can opn a melon with a few chomps, while a cow will have to have it cut or theyve been known to step on pumpkins to break them open or break them into bite size chunks. Farmers grow lots of melons in our area and pumpkins. They will grow them in 10 to 20 acre plots and usually theyll be next to alfalfa plots or high N orchardgrasses an Trefoil. Cows will graze on grain plants but will usually leave corn alone if theres good pqsture about. Theres an Amish farmer who is milking 200 Holsteins and he has their pasture right aside some cabbage fields and a melon and pumpkin field. The cows did break out one year and ate themselves sick on cabbage but left melons and pumpkins alone. Maybe they werenet ripe yet an the cows could smell em, but I think they really dont have a taste for melon is theres good pasture available.
When theres a drought in Australia and (As I recall) cattle are starving, the Farmers out west were quick to collect and send hunreds of thousands of bales of hay for feed. Its a major rule for protecting the health of any ruminant (WHICH A COW IS,) that we dont make sudden changes in their ration makeup. If we are graining them, we dont switch to hay or vice versa.This "introduction" of foreign foods is generally to be done gradually because the ruminants rumen needs to change in its internal physical structures To avoid foundering or worse.
We had a bunch of clever sheep get loose once and they heqded for a neighbors broccoli rabe patch (The guy was a market farmer pcializing in Italian tyle veggies). The heep ate themselves silly and we lot 3 or 4 from gas buildup in one of their stomachs. We actually had to uuse a wide needle called a trochanter which we used to puncture their stomach to relieve the gas pressure. We then shot a mix of dishwasher detergent and water down their mouths and watched and waited until they started foaming at the mouth as the detergent created an emulsion of detergent and stomach fluids in which the gas bubbles made the sheep look like they had AMISH beards of foam going down their mouths and chests. We lost a few from being too late with the trochanting but we saved about 20 or do others who spent the next few weeks not wanting to eat anything other than dry hay and water and salt kibbles.
If a cow wre to jump a fence and had for a patch of pumpkins or rip sweet melons, Id worry that the damn thing will die unless we take quick action.
I dont think the guy in Autralia was going to jut dump watermelons in a pile and let his cattle roam and eat(If they figured out how to open the damn things). They could have been dying of thirst also so the amount of water in a melon may have staved off total dehydration.
I wonder how many cows he may have lost .
Ive never really learned anything good about sheep handling from Australian practices, I think ours are better, so Im totally uninformed about cattle handling and will not judge , but Id like to red something from an ag news source (not the poplar ppress) about how the farmer prepped his cattle to eat those melons and not get bloat or go foundering.
