Newsprint is 98% pure cellulose -- something cows (unlike us) can easily digest and enzymatically hydrolyze into sugars. Cattle (and most ungulates) prefer about 30% browse (twigs and small branches, loaded with lignin) to richer food or grass and will clean a forest or patch of woods of every thing within their reach, give pastured woods a clean parklike appearance (except you have to watch your step.) When I was a kid, I thought it grossly unfair that my grandfather fed the pigs with the household slops, buttermilk, and corn (on the cob) while the cows only got ground cobs and dry, brown mouldy smelling plant scraps. My grandfather explained that you can't always get what you want to, but if you try real hard, you just might find that get what you need. He also explained that by eating such dry matter (which the pigs and people couldn't digest) you didn't have to live with or compete with the pigs (or people). It had the added advantage I later learned that cows get their tits pulled every day, all through the winter, while pigs get slaughtered in the fall.
Mankind's wide and long-time association with cattle depends in part on the complementarity of our diets. Cows can digest things we can't, and we can digest them and their milk (many of us). It turns out to be a terrible idea to feed cattle nerve tissue (or sheep) to cows. It may turn out to be a bad idea to feed cow's milk to babies (type I diabetes could be caused by immune reaction to bovine proteins). Many people would be far healhier if they stopped eating beef. It is a very old domestic and economic partnership at least for Africans, Indians, and Europeans. Even if we don't eat them, cattle make wonderful and loving pets and perfectly reasonable gods (Apis in Egypt, and in India are divine). Milking cows every day makes for strong and supple hands and highly contented cows. There is little more touching in the world today than seeing a proud 4H kid win the prize for the finest heifer and to have it auctioned off to help pay for the kid's education so he or she can leave the farm or ranch forever. Unlike (usually) the prize steers, barrows, and wethers, the prize heifers and gilts may be bought for breeding. |
