Sunday, December 5, 2010

Retirement Home for Cows

Today I visited a “Retirement Home for Cows”. It is about 25 miles from Delhi. There are several of these around Delhi. They are run by Non-Profit Organizations. People respect cows and donate money to take care of them until they die of old age. Most of these cows were abandoned by their owners when they were no longer useful. As you might know, cows cannot be killed in India. They are considered holy. My cousin Amar Nath donates money to this place so we went there to donate the money and take a look.

Amar Nath Giving Money

The Retirement Home

The home has about 1420 cows. Only about 12 of them produce milk -- the others are non-productive. Cows live about 20 to 25 years. They give milk for about nine months after delivering a baby calf. One of the keepers told me these facts. He said a cow may get “married” about 10 to 15 times during her life and after giving birth to calf can give milk for nine months each time. Unlike American farmers, they do not use any hormones to keep the cows lactating. Most milk in India is produced not by cows but by water buffaloes. The milk of a water buffalo is higher in fat and the milk output per water buffalo is much higher than from an Indian cow.

They can go inside the shed or wander around
 The volunteer managers and their 22 employees take good care of the cows. Both the facilities and most of the cows are washed twice a day. There is plenty of space for them to roam around. There is a big farm in the back to grow cow feed. The workers are all from Bihar. The whole of Delhi and neighboring area depends on migrant workers from Bihar to keep going. The Biharis are to Delhi what illegal Mexicans are to USA.


This very holy blind cow has an OHM on his back

Progeny of the very holy blind cow

These four were posing for me, like saying please take our photo







2 comments:

  1. Very interesting. Are all cows considered sacred or only those in India? Are there any efforts by the devout to protect cows outside the country? PETA must do well in India!

    I read that at some of these cow shelters in India they have created biogas programs, partly to cover costs and partly to reduce the methane output which is a growing global-warming problem.

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  2. PETA is doing very well in India. I am sorry to say that PETHA is not doing well !!

    (People for Ethical Treatment of Homo_sapien Animals)

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