Why are cows so dirty?

Interviewer: Why are cows so dirty?

CowboyBenWade: What if you had to live in the dirt all the time without taking a shower? What if you were barefoot and had to drink out of a trough? When you go to sleep, you have to lie down in the dirt or a grassy area if you could find one. You would live your whole life without ever getting to take a shower. You couldn't even wipe your own butt. You would be pretty dirty too.

Interviewer: I guess your right, but wild animals look pretty clean to me. It seems like cows could be cleaner.

CowboyBenWade: Wild animals are good at cleaning themselves, and they can get in a river if they want to. Cows are held in a pen all day, and they usually don't have access to large bodies of water that they could bathe in.

Interviewer: Have you ever given your cow a bath?

CowboyBenWade: Never. We do not bathe cows on this farm. We consider it a waste of time. They don't like bathes anyway. I'm not sure if they know they are so dirty; it's kind of like when you smell bad you don't know it. Maybe if I were to scrub one of them with soap, the other cows would think something was wrong. The heard wouldn't be used to a clean cow, so there is no telling how they would react.

Interviewer: What about the flies?

CowboyBenWade: That's another thing most people don't think about...the flies. Especially in the summertime, they are all over you. And if you're in a pen that you're not allowed to get out of, you can't get away from them. It's a miserable existence - those things just bit you all day, and there are thousands of them. Sometimes you can swing your tail up and swat a few of them away for a second or two, but they always come back. Without fail, there always seems to be enough flies for all the cows, it's not like you can not for be noticed for a day or so.

Interviewer: That's rough.

CowboyBenWade: Yes, they get eaten while they are alive then they get eaten again after they are dead. This mosquito problem is why grazing animals like mud. If you throw yourself down into the mud and get it all over your back, the flies have a harder time reaching you with their little mouth. It might seem gross, but mud is a wonderful thing under these circumstances. It's a simple solution that even a cow can understand.

Interviewer: In spite of all this, do cows smell bad to humans?

CowboyBenWade: Surprisingly not really - cows have a pleasant odor, an earthy smell with a tinge of dung. Their dung has a distinct smell. And the cows just sort of smell like cows and dung mixed together. It's not bad at all - not like dung from other animals that eat other things besides grass.

I got a feeling that if you stayed in the field all day, drank out of a slimy bucket, never took a shower, didn't wear any clothes, and slept in the dirt, you would smell a lot worse than a cow does. And remember, you'd have to take a dump, and then walk around in it all day and never clean up. That's what they do, they walk around in their poop.

Interviewer: I can't imagine...