Most of our mountainous land is protected. Even if it’s not, dairy farms aren’t being run on rugged terrain. Cows aren’t exactly known for their adventurism.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

I talked to a farmer on hill land about this, and he said they have to buy cows that have grown up on hill land otherwise they can’t handle it and invariably end up a bloated carcass in the local stream. That still does happen sometimes, in which case they just leave it there to decompose and pollute the stream because it’s too much work to remove it. Farmers, eh?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

What, you haven't seen all of those videos of cows scaling cliffs like a goat?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Interesting. I imagined it'd be similar to how things are run in Switzerland. Cows there are pretty adventurous I suppose.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Isn't Switzerland the place they keep the cows in a barn and grow the grass separate, then cut and feed the grass to the cows?

I think they also have much smaller herd sizes than NZ.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

When I visited, I run into cows plenty of times while hiking the mountain trails. I can't speak with authority, but from what I was told is that there aren't many big dairy farms, most dairy farmers run small scale farms.