Cow Spoofs and Climate Change

 Krayton Kerns
12.26.07

This is a very delicate subject.  If my grandmothers were alive I wouldn’t be writing this column.  I couldn’t slip it past Mom either until I figured a way to euphemistically address bovine flatulence (cow farts).  Let’s change the “f” word to ‘spoof’, such as “when the pony spooked, she ‘spoofed’ and jumped over the fence.”  ‘Spoof’ is okay because it is not on the “bad word list” plus it is short so it fits better than flatulence. Okay Mom, here we go.

 The United Nation Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (UN IPCC) met in Bali Indonesia last week and, among other things, they are targeting cow ‘spoofs’ as a major source of greenhouse gases. Thus cows need regulation and the UN needs your money. Before you pay this carbon-tax there is something you should know… cows don’t ‘spoof’.  Most ranchers know this but there are many Montanans who don’t so here is a synopsis of digestive physiology.

 Cows, sheep, deer, elk, bison, goats, llamas, alpacas, and antelope are all ‘spoof-less’.  This is not because they are polite it is because they are ruminants and it is practically impossible for them to release significant amounts of intestinal gas as ‘spoofs’ because the gas is formed at the front of the digestive system. Instead, they belch.

 These critters are a huge fermentation vat that can turn non-digestible fiber into highly desirable food items.  For example, open a cow, dump in old fence posts, sage brush, brussel sprouts, fruitcake and water.  Chase her around the pasture with a blue heeler and voila; out comes a prime rib.  (Okay, I skipped a few steps for brevity.) 

 During the process of digesting the fruitcake, an enormous quantity of methane and CO2 is produced.  Ironically this gives the IPCC gas pains.  Let’s leave them to their misery for a few moments while I address the second point of this column.  Unlike cows, horses do in fact, ‘spoof’.  Horses ferment their forage in the large intestine and they produce an enormous quantity of gas that is ‘spoofed’.  None is belched.

 Let’s visit my imaginary feedlot to demonstrate this digestive difference. 

 Pen #1 contains fat steers.  Walk to the bunk and send your heeler in to stir the herd.  As the steers buck and run you will hear a very light cough.  This is not pneumonia it is just a reflex action triggered by methane gas escaping up the esophagus and irritating the larynx. 

 Pen #2 contains the pen rider’s horses. Your heeler charges in and the ponies buck, kick and ‘spoof’ all across the pen.  Horses are called posterior fermentors; all their gas is hiding right under their tails.

 Pen #3 contains jack rabbits.  (Remember, I said it was an imaginary feedlot.)  Your heeler charges in and bunnies scatter everywhere.  Rabbits, like horses, are also posterior fermentors and if you can hear them ‘spoof’ you are wound and little too tight and you should put your coffee down and not operate heavy machinery for a few days.    

 To summarize: What difference does it make if a cow releases its greenhouse gases by belching and horses by ‘spoofing’?  It makes no difference at all, but that is not my point.   Dr. Vincent Gray, a climate researcher and IPCC reviewer from New Zealand, has served on the committee since its inception in 1990.  After studying the data for 17 years he states “there is no evidence that carbon dioxide increases are having any affect whatsoever on the climate.”    If you want to blindly cast your loyalties behind Al Gore, a fellow who doesn’t know which end of a cow the gas comes out of, be my guest. But, I agree with Dr. Gray, it is all a ‘spoof’.