Cow Magnets are not just for the fridge anymore!

[billymach4 Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close billymach4]

Question - Why are cow magnets used? What happens once the cow has swallowed the magnet?
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Great question!

Everyone thinks of the great scene of cows out grazing in a beautiful pasture. Cows eat grass
and have a really amazing multicompartmental stomach that allows them to be productive on this
food source. The bottom front part of this stomach lies against the diaphragm and the heart.

Unfortunately, sometimes these beautiful pastures, or the barns where cows also live, can have
old pieces of wire fences, nails, bits of discarded cans, etc.

In her grazing, a cow might accidently ingest a piece of metal. This drops to the bottom front
of her stomach. Through all the powerful churning of her digestive system as the grass is
digested, these pieces of metal can work themselves through the wall of the stomach and into
her lungs or heart. Leaking digestive juices can cause infections that can be fatal to the
cow.

But for scores of years, veterinarians and farmers have known that if you have a cow swallow a
large smooth magnet, the magnet will also fall to the bottom front of her stomach. It will
remain here, often for years, and attract the pieces of metal so that they do not penetrate
the stomach wall. It is not foolproof, so it is also important to make sure that there is
not a lot of metal lying around. But having seen old magnets taken from cows that died of
other things, there is sometimes an amazing number of dangerous looking metal objects trapped
on the magnet.

Laura Hungerford, DVM, MPH, PhD
Associate Professor
Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine

[zdxlc9p6 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close zdxlc9p6]

Motorcycles often don't have enough metal to be read by the sensors at stoplights, so I have three of these stuck my motorcycle to activate the sensors. (Heard this at the motorcycle safety class).

[lawren2 Malibu Beach Barbie & A Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close lawren2]

Oh this sounds SO like my friend MB <this is the second time in less than a week that I have thought of her....I MUST CALL>

and it also a strange little factoid that will lodge in my brain. Taking up a chunk of RAM that I can ill afford and will never defrag onto any other random memory.....

Gee thanks.

[tonyg Goomba & Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close tonyg]

There must be a lot of magnets in my home town. But this is one thing I've never heard of.

[dboy1 Junior Member Find all posts View Profile Close dboy1]

I was raised on a farm and we used cow magnets a couple times . we used to have one our fridge-- they are really strong.

[bevvy5 Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close bevvy5]

I guess being a kid on the farm, you learn some stuff. My father always slipped a magnet down the gullet of a new milk cown on the farm as they grazed in pasture that might have some metal laying around. Never worried about the cattle in the feedlot, they were pretty protected.

[StressCadet Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close StressCadet]

I learned about cow magnets just recently. We used one to extract iron from iron fortified cereal for a kids science project. It worked!
While I had never heard of a cow magnet-I knew just where to buy one here in my town. I went to the Vet supply store and the sales clerk pulled one off the refrigerator used to store vaccines! LOL!