Dream Bigger
A question to ruminate
I had one specific question for Dr. Barry Lambert, head of the department of animal science at Tarleton State University and expert in ruminant nutrition. But because it’s silly to have an hour with a man of achievement and ask only one question, I learned lots of other things as I worked my way toward it.
Dr. Barry Lambert and a cow at the AgriLife Research Center
Here’s one example: Until yesterday, I had no idea what a “ruminant” is. Now I know. It’s any animal with a cloven hoof which chews its cud — cows, for instance, but also goats, sheep, giraffes, yaks, buffalo and antelope, among others. Moses was all about ruminants. He declared that if the hoof was split and its cud was chewed, it was suitable for eating. But Lambert isn’t focused on what we eat. He’s focused on what the ruminants eat —specifically, the diets of cows and goats. He obsesses over their food like the hovering mother of a child with a delicate stomach.
That’s important because there are 65,000 dairy cows in Erath County alone, far more than the 36,000 humans estimated by the Census Bureau to also live here. And those cows are money makers. Erath is the state’s leading dairy producer, providing Texas with 27 percent of its milk. Also, goats are the fastest growing sector of animal agriculture in the state. (I told you I learned lots.) That means Lambert is in the center of the action in the ruminant nutrition world. It’s the major leagues, baby.
After listening to Lambert talk a while, I wondered if any child, while his buddies are pondering whether to be an astronaut, fireman or baseball player when they grow up, ever says, “Well, I’d like to study cloven-hoofed, cud-chewing animals, with a special emphasis on the quality of their forage.” Lambert didn’t. But he grew up in Toler, up the road a few miles from Stephenville, and there were always animals around. When he came to Tarleton for undergraduate study, he opted for animal science (as natural a choice at Tarleton as studying Shakespeare is at Oxford). Three degrees later, including a Ph.D from Kansas State University, and after a stint as a researcher in Houston, Lambert came back to Tarleton because he was a homeboy and his wife was a homegirl, herself having grown up in the area. But also because there are many, many cows here.
Back to my original question, though, which is why I tracked down Lambert in the first place. It was, “Do cows dream?”
“I don’t know,” Lambert said after a moment. “I don’t know that anybody knows that. They certainly sleep quite a lot. We like those cows to be lying around as much as they will.” (That’s because no cattleman or dairy operator wants trim, well-exercised cows.)
Lambert pointed out it’s widely accepted that dogs dream. After all, they often chase rabbits in their sleep. But you don’t see cows running from coyotes in their sleep. So Lambert’s considered opinion is that cows are dreamless.
Then again, when you consider that a cow’s two sole jobs in life are to (1) eat a lot, and (2) lie around as much as possible, it’s clear that they’re living the dream.
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