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These magnets are about three inches long, and apparently they're administered to calves when they're six months old. They don't normally come out till the slaughterhouse removes them. If that sounds barbaric, the consequences of letting the cows rip their insides about are somewhat worse. The cow's heart is perilously close to its stomachs, and that's not where you want a three inch nail
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Nor are they a new idea. They were apparently invented by the Japanese, some time in the 1930s, although the latest types date from the 1970s, and the very latest involve the kinds of rare earth super-magnets that can be so dangerous for children.
Cows don't always swallow iron objects by accident, apparently. They will happily chomp a piece of iron railing, or something that's fallen off a tractor, because the coolness and the hardness answer some deep psychological need in them. (They also have some kind of a pleasure sensor near their mouths that releases endorphins.) "Hardware disease" (yes, it's really called that) is a serious problem that requires such a remarkable remedy. As Michael Caine would have said, not a lot of people know that.
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(Sings:) "Oh show me a home where the buffalo roam...." (And I'll show you a very messy carpet.) Aye thang yew.
BJ