A Special Day for the Cows

Today is Govatsa Dwadasi. On this day, cows and calves are honored and fed. Govatsa Dwadasi begins Diwali, the Hindu festival that celebrates good over evil and light over darkness. Also, this is the month of Karthik, which honors Lord Krishna’s childhood pastimes with the calves and cows. Therefore, today is a spiritually potent time to give to the cows, bulls, and calves, or Adopt A Cow!

In addition, ISCOWP has launched the 2nd Matching Gift Challenge for $25,000. Therefore, your gift to the cows will be doubled in value! Together, we can match the challenge before the end of the year! Together, we met the first $25,000 challenge and completed the Feed the Cows Campaign for $18,750.00!  Thank you so much!

Why Give to the 2nd Matching Gift Challenge

Conflicts in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan, and other places sadden and disturb all of us. We pray for a more peaceful world! When innocent creatures like cows have their children taken from them, are forcibly given growth hormones to produce more milk, are dehorned, forcibly impregnated, and their brother, the bull, is placed in a small cell to produce veal for humans to eat, it is only a short step to hurt and harm human beings. By protecting innocent creatures like the cow who have no voice, we begin to break the cycle. We celebrate good over evil, light over darkness.

Please help the cow at this spiritually potent time. The Matching Gift Challenge will double the value of your donation. You can Adopt A Cow or renew an adoption. You can make a one time donation or a monthly donation. Your donations help support not only the cows but also our staff. ISCOWP cowherds protect and care for the cows at the ISCOWP sanctuary. They also create and post countless videos on our social media channels (Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube) to inform the public about cow protection and diet change.

How to Free Stuck Ox From Hay Ring

Two weeks ago, we found one of our oxen, Dhruva Laddu, who weighs about 1 ton, with his head stuck in one of the hay rings. By the time we got to him, he had dragged the 200 pound aluminum hay ring about 50 yards through the pasture, emptying the ring of hay.

This video shows what we did to free Dhruva Laddu from the hay ring. There are a few things this video does not show. One is when ISCOWP president William Dove (Balabhadra das) tried to calm Dhruva. Dhruva panicked anyway and bumped William, who fell. At the same time, Dhruva pulled up the 200 pound hay ring at a 50 degree angle to the ground. We yelled at William to get out of the way as the ring was about to fall. He rolled away just in time to avoid the ring crashing on top of him. William is 77 years old and not as quick as he used to be, but apparently just quick enough!

Another bit of information not included in the video is that we used wire cutters to finish cutting the bar. Then, to pull the bar to make the space wider for Dhruva to get his horns and head free, we used the winch on the ATV.

Dhruva was freed without a scratch and then roamed the ISCOWP pastures happily and peacefully. However, the fall badly bruised William, but he did not have any broken bones or fractures. He rested with ice packs for about two weeks and is now just resuming his regular service to the cows. As of 11/8/23, this video has received 566,024K views, 14,897 likes, 343 comments on YouTube, 282K views on Instagram, and 64.4K views on TikTok.

Ex-officials at UN farming body say work on methane emissions was censored

“Former officials in the UN’s farming wing have said they were censored, sabotaged, undermined, and victimized for more than a decade after they wrote about the hugely damaging contribution of methane emissions from livestock to global heating.

Team members at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) tasked with estimating cattle’s contribution to soaring temperatures said that pressure from farm-friendly funding states was felt throughout the FAO’s Rome headquarters and coincided with attempts by FAO leadership to muzzle their work.

The allegations date back to the years after 2006 when some of the officials who spoke exclusively to the Guardian on condition of anonymity wrote Livestock’s Long Shadow (LLS), a landmark report that pushed farm emissions onto the climate agenda for the first time. LLS included the first tally of the meat and dairy sector’s ecological cost, attributing 18% of global greenhouse gas emissions to livestock, mostly cattle. It shocked an industry that had long seen the FAO as a reliable ally – and spurred an internal clampdown by the FAO hierarchy, according to the officials. “

After reading this article, we were reminded that when humans control and manipulate vast numbers of other living beings for their own desires, there is bound to be trouble in the universe.