CowToilet, a Toilet for Cows

https://www.hanskamp.nl/en/cowtoilet

by Someone • 7 years ago

402 196 7 years ago

hanskamp.nl

therein• 7 years ago

I thought it was going to turn out to be a new copy-on-write zero-day given the name.

grenoire2• 7 years ago

The vulgar cousin of Heartbleed and Meltdown.

uhtred• 7 years ago

"cow friendly" whilst showing a picture of a cow in a cage. Fuck dairy.

openbasic• 7 years ago

Not just a cage, but one that barely fits them. Fuck dairy.

nostromo• 7 years ago

Watch the video.

The cow enters the cage voluntarily when it wants to eat. When it's done it leaves the cage.

The cage is just there to position the cow correctly over the toilet.

soperj• 7 years ago

Wow. See what you want to see. There's no cage. It's a voluntary system for cows.

hirundo• 7 years ago

I control all of your food, and only give you access to it at 3pm. When you come to eat at 3pm I also remove your bodily fluids for resale. You can deny me your bodily fluids only by not eating. Would you describe that as a voluntary arrangement?

oh_sigh2• 7 years ago

The cow voluntarily goes into the cage to get fed. Then it goes back out into the field. It's not like this cow lives it's life in that cage

grenoire2• 7 years ago

How else do you suggest you align the cow onto the toilet itself? Cows are not potty-trained.

ct0• 7 years ago

Personally I don't do dairy products, but this is going to be great news for fertilizers containing manure.

skrebbel3• 7 years ago

Picture any human on a toilet and it'll effectively also be a "human in a cage". What's the difference?

floatingatoll• 7 years ago

To an outsider, the metal bars remind of both human jails and stacked chicken cages.

It’s not easy to realize that they have to look like jail cell bars in order to avoid being damaged by the cow, and it’s not well-known that cows are taught to enter metal frames for food and such to let human work on and around them occur more safely.

Humans don’t as often need metal bars to avoid knocking the bathroom walls down, but when we need metal bars for support (ADA bathrooms), they look a lot like the cow bars.

lwb• 7 years ago

Wait why is this here?

ocdtrekkie• 7 years ago

It's a new invention/technology, it has potential impact on our environment, and it's interesting.

t3rabytes• 7 years ago

This is such a shitty product. (/s)

Edit: okay, clearly someone didn't get the pun.

PunksATawnyFill• 7 years ago

They’re just being pissy.

LifeLiverTransp• 7 years ago

urinit to deep

benj111• 7 years ago

Now now, don't be cowed.

We should really steer this conversation somewhere else, before your karma goes down the toilet.

hsnewman• 7 years ago

Is there a bull toilet?

gatherhunterer3• 7 years ago

“Cow” includes bulls, heifers and steer.

bunderbunder4• 7 years ago

That might be something that varies regionally.

In the usage I'm familiar with, "cow" specifically means a female who has given birth. As opposed to heifers, who haven't. The general term for any member of the species would be cattle (both singular and plural). You might use "cows" to more generally mean any female cattle, but using it to include males of the species, too, would be understood as humorous.

totallysnowman• 7 years ago

No it does not in agriculture. The toilet is not for bulls, simply because the bulls are already steaks. Farmers keep only a few of them. Just enough to fertilize the females.

ddebernardy2• 7 years ago

In the video, the farmer demonstrates how petting the vulva gives the cow a pissing reflex. That's not exactly applicable to bulls -- and if it were in a similar male area I'd spitball that you might end up with semen instead.

fbelzile• 7 years ago

I really like the design of the product logo: https://www.hanskamp.nl/uploads/webshop/products/2019/jan/ha...

For some reason, it's oddly satisfying to see two concepts merge into one cohesive logo.

mbel• 7 years ago

I have the exact opposite feeling. Connecting head with toilet feels somehow wrong and I don't really feel comfortable looking at the logo. Also the "recycling-ears" feels like unnecessary addition to main concept of unholy merge of cow with toilet.

sxates• 7 years ago

a "golden cow" so to speak?

lainga• 7 years ago

It looks a bit like the robot from The Day the Earth Stood Still.

mc32• 7 years ago

I think they used the wrong graphic. They don’t poo, they pee in this thing so they should have converged a urinal and cow head. Also called it a cow urinal.

londons_explore• 7 years ago

If the urine goes on the field, then the farmer gets to dispose of it for free.

If the urine gets collected in tanks, suddenly it's hazardous liquid waste and very expensive to dispose of. The farmer couldn't just dump it in a river!

Unless a commercial use for cow urine can be found, or laws changed, I can't imagine this product going anywhere.

gadders• 7 years ago

Maybe they use it to make DEF/BlueTec, the diesel emissions additive. That is 30+% urea.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_exhaust_fluid

harpastum• 7 years ago

If there is a clear benefit of collecting and disposing the urine somewhere else, this seems like a good use of regulation/taxation/credits. Have a credit/tax that captures the value of not having the cow urine in the fields.

ddebernardy2• 7 years ago

Watch the video. Besides it being interesting, towards the end he explicitly invites startups to come up with an idea on how to put the cow urine to good use.

loceng2• 7 years ago

Yup, finding efficiencies to create a market for the urine will make the economies of collecting it work better. I've never had interest in cow waste products until now..

rmason• 7 years ago

If it works the end result is that larger and larger farms will be able to coexist with their non-farm neighbors.

Then new research with adding red algae (a seaweed variety) to their diet could cure the cow flatulence problem. Whole lot easier than Alexandria Ocasio Cortez's proposed solution and less expensive too!

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612452/how-seaweed-could-...

Here's an entire industry using technology to cure their environmental problems - or at least trying.

b_tterc_p• 7 years ago

Crowd dispersal spray

djsumdog3• 7 years ago

Although funny, it's probably not as effective or economical (or ethical/sanitary) as pepper spray.

cwkoss2• 7 years ago

The idea that technology will allow us to keep cows happy and healthy in cramped prison-like conditions seems like incredible hubris.

It seems like a much better solution to this 'problem' is let cows live outdoors and graze on grass.

FDA should mandate that all cows raised in confinement conditions get labeled as "prison beef'.

vlan03• 7 years ago

It seems like a much better solution to this 'problem' is let cows live outdoors and graze on grass.

With the number of cattle on this planet, this would require an insane amount of land.

FDA should mandate that all cows raised in confinement conditions get labeled as "prison beef'.

I'm sure people would consume less if the simply put slaughter pictures on each piece of meat they buy. Rather than outsource the killing to a third party, which keeps people emotionally detached from the killing of billions of animals every year.

evolve2k2• 7 years ago

When I visited a friends dairy farm in New Zealand that was not my experience. In conventional farming the cows do live outdoors and are free to graze in large paddocks. Twice a day though the cows are full of milk and will be in pain if not milked. The cows are milked in the dairy twice a day and this is where this innovation applies. When out and about they go wherever, when in the dairy though the urine mixing with the poo seems to be an environmental problem.

A conventional dairy farm does not confine the animals it just collects their milk each day and the cows know the routine.

mikepurvis• 7 years ago

"prison beef"

It's funny the dissonance of having the video cut between shots of the entrepreneur pitching the product while walking through an open green field, and shots of the cows in standing-room-only stalls.

makerofspoons• 7 years ago

A much better solution is to introduce products to the market that make cows an unnecessary part of the process, such as lab grown meats and meat substitutes.

reaperducer2• 7 years ago

It seems like a much better solution to this 'problem' is let cows live outdoors and graze on grass.

People raise cattle in Alaska.

DFHippie• 7 years ago

The urine is a valuable resource, actually: http://richearthinstitute.org/

14• 7 years ago

Well after reading the article I found that it discussed the economical advantages this system could bring. " To limit ammonia emissions from the agricultural sector, dairy farmers have to pay high fees to meet ammonia emission and manure disposal requirements. Therefore, ammonia reduction is a high priority for many dairy farmers.

usrusr• 7 years ago

If the cows just graze on a field, their population density is so low that their urine isn't much of a problem. But when a number of tightly packed cows much higher than what the surrounding fields could ever support is converting huge amounts of imported fodder into their various outputs, then yes, everything but the milk quickly reaches environmental hazard concentrations. They tele-graze, but they don't tele-defecate. It's a real problem and it does not come as a surprise that the partial solution is from the Dutch who are taking high density agriculture to extremes like few others.

srean• 7 years ago

unless a commercial use for cow urine can be found, or laws changed, I can't imagine this product going anywhere.

I believe you havent heard from the ruling party of India and their ilk.

https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/cow-urine-cleaner-to-r...

DonHopkins5• 7 years ago

You can buy urine online -- "We offer FREE SHIPPING to ALL orders to the US!":

https://www.thepeemart.com/

Of course it would be more efficient to have a site like "peeBay.com" where you can buy it fresh directly from the farmers.

pvaldes2• 7 years ago

Is used to fertilize fields since thousands of years, corn fields for example. Some crops need a lot of manure to work at its best.

If urine gets collected could be probably dehydrated. Would be much cheaper to move by truck.

bloudermilk• 7 years ago

Noteworthy is that cows visit the CowToilet voluntarily. The visit to the toilet is combined with the receival of their daily portion of feed.

"Voluntarily"... right

bluedino• 7 years ago

Is it much difference than milking them? It's just another liquid.

AnIdiotOnTheNet• 7 years ago

I guess it is roughly true, in the same way that employment is voluntary.

michaelbuckbee2• 7 years ago

Well, incentivized, it gets them to pee while the cow eats.

chris_va• 7 years ago

"Once located, the nerve, which triggers the urinary reflex, is stimulated and the cow starts urinating. ... The visit to the toilet is combined with the receival[sic] of their daily portion of feed."

May be stretching the definition of voluntary.

loceng2• 7 years ago

Yeah, using the word voluntary is disingenuous. I'd be interested to see third-party research to determine if there's a developed preference, where both options are provided to cows - two different physical locations that they are both introduced to, and see if they're indifferent or if a percentage prefers one or the other.

jessriedel• 7 years ago

In fact, you could even roughly quantify the degree to which cows like/dislike this experience by looking at the quality of food (or treats) that have to be paired with this versus a non-toilet feeder for the cows to be indifferent between the two options.

mft_• 7 years ago

Cows have learned to voluntarily (genuinely) use automatic milking machines.

(Now, apparently they like it because of the relief it provides to their swollen udders, which are swollen thanks to the hormonal state they are kept in, but still...)

anonymfus• 7 years ago

Judging by the video, the cow is free to touch or not to touch the toilet.

fenwick67• 7 years ago

Yes the cow is perfectly free to starve

munificent• 7 years ago

Very disappointed they didn't call this a "moo loo".

wesammikhail• 7 years ago

you should consider a career in marketing!

xrd• 7 years ago

Cows don't have much purchasing power, so you are wrong.

gabbygab• 7 years ago

Or a career as a cow whisperer.

inopinatus• 7 years ago

Marketing and bovine scat. What a match.

dkarl• 7 years ago

The product video shows the device working... after it shows a guy doing the same thing manually.

morningmoon4• 7 years ago

So now we’re going to force them to pee by stimulating their urinary nerves!?

Another reason to stop our inhumane practice of enslaving, raping, and slaughtering cows to serve our tastes. We don’t need to do this to have nutritious healthy lives.

nkkollaw• 7 years ago

Another reason to stop our inhumane practice of enslaving, raping, and slaughtering cows to serve our tastes.

Do a lot of people really rape cows..?

morningmoon4• 7 years ago

Only cows that have been pregnant produce milk. Cows are made pregnant to increase the duration of milk production, and to produce more cows for dairy or meat. (Edited for clarity)

The process of artificial insemination involves sticking a rod/hand with bull semen into their vaginas. Just do a quick search for this and you can see videos of how artificial insemination works. There’s also a process of hormone injections to ensure cows sync up for more efficient AI.

Usually most farmers justify this by talking about how it’s safer than letting a bull fuck the cow while it’s confined to a pen (how it was done in a bygone era).

Oh, and if you’re wondering about how they get the bull semen they have them fuck artificial vaginas, or masturbate them if that’s not working out.

markstos2• 7 years ago

Eating less meat and dairy also helps solve the ammonia problem.

Plant-rich diets have been identified as a top solution to climate change.

https://www.drawdown.org/solutions-summary-by-rank

Harvard research found switching away from dairy products to be a necessary contribution to meeting climate change goals:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14693062.2018.1...

SeriousM• 7 years ago

Or no meat at all! I can't say how much wrong it is to rape cows, steal their kids and after many births kill it. And now someone wants to take them the pleasure to pee whenever they want? WTF is wrong with this guys? Diary farms are a very bad place already...

toper-centage6• 7 years ago

Killing this cows is probably the best thing farmer's do to them, considering the helish life they live.

zerop• 7 years ago

People in India drink cow urine. It's considered holy and healthy.. Google "why indians drink cow urine".

miguelmota• 7 years ago

It's considered a medicinal drink in some religions.

muthuraj57• 7 years ago

*Some people in India

elbrian• 7 years ago

OP didn't say "all people in India" so your correction isn't at all necessary or helpful.

djsumdog3• 7 years ago

I remember hearing about this from family members and seeing it online. I understand it happens, but is it really healthy or just urban legend/religious BS?

3into10power5• 7 years ago

Religious BS

Derek_MK• 7 years ago

No thanks, I'm good

toper-centage6• 7 years ago

Same. I had enough cow fluids today.

peterwwillis• 7 years ago

This just makes me want to consume dairy/meat less, and I'm an omnivore.

fnovd• 7 years ago

Technically vegans are omnivores, too: being an omnivore means you are able to consume both plants and animals. Humans as a species are omnivores. Choosing to consume animal products is something else. I had always considered being an omnivore exclusive from being a vegan but I didn't have a good answer for lack of symmetry between a diet I am capable of eating and the diet I do eat. The "vegan" word for it is Carnism [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnism

aviv• 7 years ago

Humans are frugivores, you got your whole history/life concepts wrong.

Noxmiles• 7 years ago

I understood the concept, after he made the cow pee with his hand within 10 seconds of stroking her slowly and tenderly.

leroy_masochist7• 7 years ago

Not sure how this makes a lot of sense commercially. By way of background I work remotely from my family's small cattle farm (we have 225ish head of grass-only fed cattle).

In simple terms, cow piss has a bunch of nitrogen in it which makes the grass grow faster (especially when you have a well developed soil biome).

I watched the video and appreciate that quality engineering went into this product, I just don't get why it would make sense for any farmer who has cows in pasture to invest in this technology, even if it were available at mass-produced-in-Asia prices. More specifically, it's hard to imagine a use case for cow piss that makes it valuable enough that I'm going to spend tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars on machinery to harvest it, at an opportunity cost of less nitrogen going into my fields.

Maybe it makes more sense for feedlots? They get a bunch of nasty health issues going on with their animals living in mucky high-density conditions, so reducing the ammonia in the muck might lower the amount of sores their animals have, or something like that. But taking a step back, I guess I don't get the general wisdom of inventing technology that makes bad practices marginally better on the animals and/or environment.

fjfaase2• 7 years ago

Here in the Netherlands, cows only go into the fields half of the year, simply because during winter time it is too cold for them to be outside with no protection against wind and rain.

leroy_masochist7• 7 years ago

FWIW, for a climate like the Netherlands most breeds of cow would be just fine living outside in the winter.

jweir• 7 years ago

California has a response to that... https://youtu.be/tItIRScGMuc

childintime• 7 years ago

At least in the Netherlands (where the inventor is from), all cows pass the winter in confinements. Some stay there all year round. In this situation urine separation is very advantageous.

leroy_masochist7• 7 years ago

I don't disagree that this is the case, the point I was trying to make is that keeping animals like this is not optimal.

sandworm101• 7 years ago

> Not sure how this makes a lot of sense commercially.

Some farms have to pay to dispose of manure. Removing any urine from the equation may decrease those costs. Farms are also about creating as many products as possible. There may actually be a market for urine. There certainly was historically.

leroy_masochist7• 7 years ago

Some farms have to pay to dispose of manure.

Pig farms for sure. Cow farms, if they're removing it, they're probably composting and selling it, or selling it to someone who will compost it.

michaelbuckbee2• 7 years ago

In the "Death of the Family Dairy Farm" article that was on HN the other day, the clear trend was toward CAFO's (Concentrated Animal Feedlot Operations) - aka giant farms.

Along with these, there are really clear environmental impacts as the density of the herd/land is just overwhelming to the point where it's not "cows fertilizing the field" but being legally required to create massive manure lagoons, etc.

What's clever about the cow toilet is that it opens up new options for treatment of both manure and urine.

This is the article from the other day, find "manure lagoon" in it to see all the problems

https://blog.abevoelker.com/2019-03-06/on-the-death-of-my-fa...

elmolino89• 7 years ago

There are places where animal manure is being used for the biogas production. The scale of the cesspool in the link is way above any small farm biogas tank, but then there must be better ways to speed up the biological decomposition of the manure. Mixing it with plant material, increasing surface and pumping air i.e.

walrus01• 7 years ago

Fascinating 2002 article that goes into a great deal of detail about CAFOs:

https://michaelpollan.com/articles-archive/power-steer/

toper-centage6• 7 years ago

Yeah people need to let go of the idea of cute happy cows living free in grass planes. The drawing on your milk carton is far from the reality of these animals.

dev_dull2• 7 years ago

How’s is working remotely from a farm?

leroy_masochist7• 7 years ago

Pretty good! I think we're at an inflection point where working from home is really actually feasible for most white collar jobs and a lot more people will start doing it over the next few years. I'm biased, of course.

lancewiggs• 7 years ago

The cow piss ends up not just re-fertilising but also as run off in streams, rivers, and ground water. This is worse as there is more intensification. So in a well working society farmers would either do something like this or get regulated out of business. Methane emissions are the bigger problem.

Someone2• 7 years ago

Farming in the Netherlands works under different constraints. Farmers don’t have cows in pasture, they often have long concluded that it is more efficient to mechanically inject manure into their land, mechanically mow the resulting grass and feed it to their cows. Grass production increases that way, and it makes it less labor intensive to move the cows from and to milking stations twice a day.

Also, once you have enough nitrogen in your land, cow piss doesn't make the grass grow faster, it seeps into the surface water, kills fish, and makes algae grow faster. The Netherlands mostly is way into that “once you have enough nitrogen” zone.

Scarblac• 7 years ago

They are legally required to inject the manure rather than just spray it to prevent it all being washed off into surface water. It has its own problems, of course.

There is just far too much cow manure produced here.

dmurray• 7 years ago

I stayed for a week on a dairy farm in the Netherlands (Fluitenberg, outside Hoogeveen) last year and it was completely unlike your description. The 100ish cows lived on a grass pasture and came in only for milking.

It was operated very similarly to a dairy farm in Ireland 20 years ago, which is all I'm familiar with.

roel_v2• 7 years ago

Small farms like your aren't commercially viable for much longer (they already aren't in Europe, I'm not very familiar with the US situation, but I have no reason to believe it's different in the medium term). The constraining factor on milk production in Europe isn't land or capital or stock, it's 'nitrate rights', essentially the amount of nitrates you can put into the soil (top soil is already nitrate saturated so any additional leaches into the ground water). Any measure that reduces the amount of nitrates are a net productivity gain.

I did nitrate leaching/ground water hydrology modeling for New Zealand some 10 years ago, and even then there too dairying was starting to become constrained by its nitrate leaching effects (of course, there needs to be the political will to enforce the boundaries when safe cumulative groundwater nitrate levels are reached at downstream points, but that's a different matter). My point is, it's not just Europe.

As to your other comments in this thread about using other breeds, sure that's fine for small biological/organic farms, but not for large scale commercial operations. Milk production is just too low, and any energy the cow has to put into keeping warm doesn't go into producing milk. On top of that, modern breeds (the only ones that can keep up, production wise) are too weak to be outside this much. Of course there are ethical concerns with this, similar to people breeding dogs for example, but that's a concern at a different abstraction level than that of the individual farmer.

naravara• 7 years ago

Small farms like your aren't commercially viable for much longer

I think we’re probably just a decade or so away from having lab grown or “impossible burger” style fake meats able to compete with factory farming on price. They won’t be good enough to replace actual butcher shop meat, but they’ll definitely be able to replace generic taco meat type stuff. When there is a viable alternative we might see animal welfare laws gain more traction.

Perhaps actual meat will increasingly become a luxury product for special occasions, improving margins and encouraging producers to compete on quality (and ethics) instead of racing to the bottom on price.

I’m less sure how that will apply to milk and dairy though.

smnplk• 7 years ago

Now just make bottled water from cow urine and profit.

CodeCube• 7 years ago

Urine as a businessmodel

lol ... I think this is enough internet for today

djsumdog3• 7 years ago

The video was so serious, but the 7 year old deep inside of me was just laughing the whole way through. I wonder if they realized the absurdity of this as they were making the marketing materials.

danielecook2• 7 years ago

What about capturing methane from cows? Isn't that arguably bigger problem? Cows emit an enormous amount of methane which is a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2.

mchannon• 7 years ago

Careful with the whataboutism. Methane's largely been solved by food additives that discourage methanogenic bacteria. We're talking about urine and ammonia right now.

Methane is more potent as a greenhouse gas, but it's shorter-lived, way less of a contributor to global warming than CO2, and doesn't appear to have anywhere near as much impact on the health or growth of animals or plants as heightened CO2 levels do.

danielecook2• 7 years ago

Thanks for your input. I tend to think of whataboutism in the political sphere. I suppose it goes beyond that.

Pharmakon3• 7 years ago

Solved, but not implemented on a wide scale. I don’t know if it’s the added cost, availability or what else, but solved problems aren’t really solved if the solution is never implemented.

rdiddly• 7 years ago

This partly addresses problems pointed out a few days ago in this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19368542

It's neat when that happens on HN.

ChuckMcM• 7 years ago

I think it is great that people are working on solving problems like this. As a feed stock for other processes I'm guessing that the big win here would be use in a modified Haber process to produce bulk Ammonia which is used in a number of chemical plants.

sangd• 7 years ago

Most of cow's methane comes from his mouth, not the other side.

reaperducer2• 7 years ago

It's not about methane. It's about ammonia.

sabareesh• 7 years ago

Not sure why this is being downvoted. I am not sure even ammonia is even a problem to start according to the top comment here

dev_dull2• 7 years ago

I love our society. Always chasing after solutions to things that aren’t really problems. Ban straws. Ban glasses of water. Ban cow pee. Forget that none of those things here make any material difference.

Mtinie• 7 years ago

Completely different situations in this case. This isn’t banning cow urine, it’s solving a co-mingling problem with real economic costs and jusristictional concerns.

markstos2• 7 years ago

Single-use plastics is a big problem. It gets solved by chipping away it from a lot of different angles. Plastic straws are one piece of the problem.

My family loves straws and brings steel straws when we go out. No big deal. No one is banning steel straws.

The only hit I get when I search for "ban glasses of water" is this post. Perhaps you referring to bottled water? That's another piece of the single-use plastics problem.

Shifting away animal agriculture is one the top solutions for climate change ( https://www.drawdown.org/solutions-summary-by-rank ). So yes, cows and all their poop and pee are a very real problem. I don't think moving the piss around differently is nearly as a good solution as breeding and killing fewer cows, though!

UncleEntity2• 7 years ago

The only hit I get when I search for "ban glasses of water" is this post.

Used to be when you went to a restaurant they would automatically bring a glass of water to your table. Then "they" decided this was a bad thing so now you have to specifically ask for water if you want water.

bensonn• 7 years ago

From the inventor of the Moth Ladder.

amarant• 7 years ago

I'm not sure this makes any kind of sense actually. My girlfriend, who is a biologist and works at a waste water treatment plant, tells me the ammonia from (cow out any other kind of) urine isn't really that much of a problem. There are other components that might be (mostly residues from various medicines, but those are hard to separate from the water) but according to her, ammonia is essentially less of a problem than the erosion caused by the cows walking on the ground in most cases.

Someone2• 7 years ago

These cows typically don’t walk on ground; they walk on a floor in a stable, and ammonia is a problem in the Netherlands, if only because the EU has set sets national emission reduction commitments (https://www.eea.europa.eu/themes/air/national-emission-ceili...), and cattle farms are a major source of ammonia.

droithomme• 7 years ago

That's extremely cool. It serves a need and apparently (according to their description) it actually works and the cows will use it.

(And obviously not needed for free-range grass-fed cows as opposed to congested feed lot cows.)

Magi604• 7 years ago

Outside the box thinking!

jv22222• 7 years ago

For me, it's really sad to see animals in that high density scenario as shown in the video. I'm not a plant based eater but I do feel myself getting pulled in that direction as time goes by.

toper-centage6• 7 years ago

I want everyone to go vegan, but I'm pragmatic and can recognize it's a life changing choice. But eating vegan 2-3 days a week is already a healthy step for you and you'll be saving 100+ animals per year from this kind of treatment. (source: http://thevegancalculator.com/#calculator)

hereiskkb• 7 years ago

Get it to India. Huge potential market!

toper-centage6• 7 years ago

They call it "voluntary" then say the creepy machine locates a nerve in the cows rear and stimulates it to induce urination. Nothing voluntary about forced urination... But these are animals routinely force-impregnated so maybe they're used to be abused.

cw-dunn• 7 years ago

My husband sent this to me.

We had a small Jersey house cow,years ago, with only 1 ac to graze and 1/4 ac veg garden, that one cow produced more nutrient load than the land could absorb... composted before (there by reducing volume) spreading. Friends with a real dairy herd had 150 acres to use, and even they had a problem using it all.

This device is brilliant for the larger milk producers, and even a small New England Herds kept inside for the winter. Even a few hours eating in the atanchion barn leaves a lot of waste. To be able to collect and redirect this urine is solving Many problems on many levels. It makes a world of Common Sense to Me.

As to the manure waste, many country’s burn dry dung, and the clever folks who designed ‘Cow Pots’, have redirected manure in a beneficial way.

In Africa they still ‘pave’ the floors with cow dung and seal it with blood. It wouldn’t be a Martha Stewart approved design here, but certainly dried dung (mostly odorless cellulose) could be added to wood chips and made into bricks for fuel.

I think the Cow Toilet is a practical device and hope it will be affordable to any dairy that wants to implement it.

As for feed lots like the escresent ones in Coilinga CA.& elsewhere, be they Bovine or Porcine, or poultry; understand that the rules on the books need to be Enforced, and the graft/lobbyist elements removed. They’d get cleaned up or shut down darn fast without the greedy business machinery supporting them in government hallways.

A restoration farmers point of view from seven decades looking at life

CowToilet, a Toilet for Cows

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