Review: The Private Life Of Cows, BBC2 (From Blackpool Citizen)

Review: The Private Life Of Cows, BBC2

4:13pm Thursday 15th July 2010

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WHO’D have guessed it? Cows are more intelligent than Jimmy Doherty.

At least that’s the conclusion I had hoped to form when I started to watch this somewhat unusual documentary in which Jamie Oliver’s less famous mate spent some time with some cows down on Jilly Greed’s farm in Devon.

The premise here is that Jimmy wants to find out why cows have such a special relationship with humans. I didn’t even know they did — how special?

Background time: there are 1.5 billion cows — one of the first animals to be domesticated (tamed) by humans — on the planet; in 1945, the average dairy cow produced 3,500 litres of milk a year — now it’s double that and the demand for beef is also set to increase two-fold over the next 50 years.

In fact, there’s so much background in this programme it begins to feel a bit like one of those school educational programmes that no-one ever remembered anything from, and it really could have been cut from an hour to 30 minutes.

Jilly has an A-team of cows on her farm (the rest go to meet their maker), who will knock out a calf every year for around 15 years. “That’s loads of dosh,” she doesn’t say.

Jimmy’s getting intellectual, though, and wonders why the word “cow” is often used as an insult while “bovine” also has many negative definitions.

Anyway, it’s experiment time — which cow can associate its nudging of a bell with a resulting reward of food? Swift doesn’t manage it, but Privet’s on the case and wins a whole bucket-load.

Intelligent, but don’t expect Privet to come up with an updated version of Animal Farm any time soon.

Another rubbish experiment leads Jimmy to conclude that cows have just the right amount of fear — mmm, surely if they did they’d hoof it as soon as they saw the big bad man with the gun.

Which, incidentally, is precisely who VB, Jilly’s favourite bull, is sent to see when he is lame. Jilly is sad, but hey, no point in letting the lad live . . . and she will get £1,000 when he’s slaughtered for beef.

Then Lichen, Jilly’s least favourite cow, dies almost four months into pregnancy, but that’s okay too.

There’s some unrelated filming of some wild cattle in Northumberland and we get to see top bull Earl (who can do the business with up to 20 cows a day, though sometimes it only takes 10 seconds. Go on, add your own joke . . .) fail to find a cow who is fertile (once every three weeks, apparently, if you’re keen).

Interestingly enough, though, it does turn out that there are cows who are more sociable and popular than others and they can identify up to 70 of their associates, which is more than I can.

Doherty, who comes across as a decent enough bloke much to my disappointment, concludes: “They have put their lives in the hands of humans and I think we have a duty to repay that trust.”

Personally, I believe the cows need a rethink.

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