Cows On Treadmills Produce Clean Power For Farms 640
separsons writes "William Taylor, a farmer in Northern Ireland, recently developed the Livestock Power Mill, a treadmill for cows. Taylor uses the device to generate clean, renewable power for his farm. Cows are locked into a pen on top of a non-powered, inclined belt. The cows' walking turns the belt, which spins a gearbox to drive a generator. One cow can produce about two kilowatts of electricity, enough energy to power four milking machines. It may seem like a kooky idea, but Taylor could be onto something: According to his calculations, if the world's 1.3 billion cattle used treadmills for eight hours a day, they could provide six percent of the world's power!"
Food? (Score:5, Insightful)
What? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Food? (Score:4, Insightful)
They would probably be walking around anyway.
1.3 billion treadmills needed (Score:5, Insightful)
But if he's got 1.3 billion cow treadmills handy, I'd happily take one if I had a cow.
Brutal civilization. (Score:2, Insightful)
Shouldnt we fix the abomination that livestock industry is, in that they make cows live in 1x2 m enclosed space from their birth to their death in the first place.
reminds of how big corporations treat people like livestock and make them toil for dimes in cramped spaces ... a society's mindset reflects on every aspect of life.
Re:Meat cows? (Score:1, Insightful)
I'm not sure I want my cows exercising. Their muscles will get tough and stringy.
It may be a bit more expensive and resource consuming, but fat, lazy cows are what I want.
For steaks, sure, but for ground beef, you want it lean.
Really clean power? (Score:4, Insightful)
Funny and innovative as the idea is: I wonder how clean this energy really is. It doesn't come out of thin air, those cows have to eat. And a cow's digestive system tends to produce quite some methane (a major greenhouse gas), and quite some waste - which also releases lots of ammonia amongst other harmful chemicals. On top of that the fodder also has to be produced (often using power for machinery and so), and a cow that walks that much definitely eats a lot more than a cow that grazes the pasture or is kept in a stable without much room to move.
And besides I think there are much more cattle-friendly ways to exercise your cow.
Re:Meat cows? (Score:3, Insightful)
Doesn't matter if they are dairy cows. Exercised cows = happy cows = better milk.
Re:Food? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Torture? ASPCA should investigate. (Score:3, Insightful)
Let me guess, you are also one of those people who gives your dog purified water, human food, a spring mattress to sleep on, and keeps them inside all day so they are more comfortable. I am an animal lover, have a feisty fat tabby and a Yellow Lab. Both very happy and healthy, why? Because I treat them like the animals they are. My dog gets dog food, I leave her outside all day, she rolls in mud puddles, chews on dead things, and occationally steals a treat from the kitty litter box when we aren't looking..
My point? These are COWS I have worked with cattle, I grew up in a farming community and worked on farms for most of my childhood. Cows are happy pretty much anywhere they don't have to swat flies. Treating a cow like a human is sheer stupidity because it would make them miserable.
Re:Food? (Score:4, Insightful)
Just to make sure I understand... We grow grain with petroleum based fertilizers, harvest it with diesel powered combines, diesel truck it over asphalt highways, and then feed it to cows on treadmills to make electricity. Then we diesel truck the manure off and bury it in a landfill.
Yes, that make perfect sense.
Here is a crazier idea! Let the cows WALK to gather GRASS instead. Then use the corn for ethanol! Why we insist on feeding 75% of our grain production to ruminants baffles me.
-ellie
Re:Two kilowatts... (Score:2, Insightful)
Cowpower = 2000 W
Horsepower = 745.7 W
WTF?
Re:Food? (Score:5, Insightful)
>> Then we diesel truck the manure off and bury it in a landfill.
Y'all ain't from around here, are ya?
Far Side? (Score:3, Insightful)
If only Gary Larson was still making Far Side comics. I'm certain he would make a very funny one!
--jeffk++
Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
Corn? Cows eat grass. Feeding them corn would be a huge waste of resources.
Everyone sets the line in a different spot (Score:2, Insightful)
while you and a few others will decide the pen is too small someone else will come along and call you barbaric for what you accept. Some may decide that one size permits too much movement which somehow injures the cow. Another might decide its painted the wrong color, get what I mean? There is permanent goal, meet one and they will make another or move it further out.
No farmer wants animals harmed or raised in unsafe manners, it is not cost effective. On a farm with a few thousand head of cattle it ain't hard to find an animal who is not healthy or into a situation you could not predict.
As far as the quip about big corporations and cubes, spend less time ranting and more time starting your own business. Oh, I forgot, ranting is so much easier. There is a reason why so many are employed by big corporations, it is because it is far easier to let someone else make the decisions for you and take the risk for you. This is the same reason why many have no problem giving up their personal and financial freedom to the government for the coddling they believe they receive in return.
We seem to put more care into the well being of animals than ourselves.
Re:Food? (Score:5, Insightful)
Hint to mods: parent complaint is 'Funny' not 'Insightful'
This is crazy: "We grow grain with petroleum based fertilizers, harvest it with diesel powered combines, diesel truck it over asphalt highways, and then feed it to cows on treadmills to make electricity."
But is this any more sane: "We grow corn with petroleum based fertilizers, harvest it with diesel powered combines, diesel truck it over asphalt highways, and then feed it to yeast on treadmills to make ethanol to burn."
Re:Brutal civilization. (Score:1, Insightful)
That's true only of veal. For most cattle, they live in an open area, with many other cattle - granted, when you take the area and divide by the number of cattle, each cow may indeed end up with 2 m^2, but you're forgetting something -- cattle are herd animals. Even open grazing, they will typically stand as close together as possible and still eat fresh grass.
Feed lots and the like suck, don't get me wrong - but it is the willing price we pay for meat. I've been to large feedlots - I've worked in a small processing facility. I've hunted, dressed my own game, and been a part of the entire process, from feedlot or field to the table. I still eat meat. I fucking love meat.
Animals die to predation all the time in the wild - that is far, far more stressful and violent than standing in a line and getting a piston gun through the head. While standing in a muddy pen mooing all day must be awfully boring, I would wager that it is probably preferable (if a cow was smart enough to have a preference) to wandering around constantly in search of food.
We are human beings, the very pinnacle of the food chain. Cows are animals, below us, and damned tasty. It is right and natural that we should raise them, slaughter them, and eat them. If you feel it is barbaric, then don't partake - but please don't try and make it out to be some moral outrage, because it isn't.
As for the "big corporations" - show me the ones using slave labor, and I'll stop buying from them. If you mean sweatshops and child labor in the third world - you don't know what you're talking about, and if your ilk were ever successful in stopping it, the death of countless people would be on your hands.
Re:Blasphemy! (Score:1, Insightful)
I believe that having a gun pointed at you is a fairly universal language for “stop”.
Re:Food? (Score:4, Insightful)
A cow that could sustain 2kW would be a frightening beast.
Re:Brutal civilization. (Score:3, Insightful)
Feed lots and the like suck, don't get me wrong - but it is the willing price we pay for meat.
It's not a price I'm willing to pay for meat and as such I get my meat from local, organic, and free range farmers and you should too.
Re:Food? (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, so my mother who was in end stage cancer and unable to walk more than a dozen yards doesn't qualify? She had two arms and two legs.
I agree that a fair number of the people using them might look like they would benefit from exercise but that doesn't mean that I have any right to judge whether or not they use a scooter. Ditto with the handicap cards. I'm not qualified to decide if they're handicapped or not so I don't bother worrying about it.
Re:Food? (Score:3, Insightful)
Excellent idea. In the past it was difficult to harvest the methane because they were all over the fields.
Now that they're on treadmills I say we put a feeding tube in one end, a gas hose in the other and a milking machine on their udders. Now if we can only genetically modify them to shed their skin like a snake we could radically increase leather production too.
Re:Food? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Um, no (Score:2, Insightful)
Make that "AND no corn syrup". High-fructose corn syrup ON meat is a bit much, even for crazy Amercicans...
Re:Food? (Score:4, Insightful)
There's this *really* cool thing called a free market economy that prevents bozos from implementing cockamamie schemes that don't create any economic value. Then we go and do stupid shit like subsidizing corn production to fuck up these economics. I'm not an absolutist, but when it comes to energy production technologies, we really should just let the market sort it out, and abolish the corn subsidies.
Things that make no sense in terms of net energy production will inherently be money-losing ventures in the absence of state intervention. So we won't have to listen to people whining about how bioethanol is inherently a net energy-wasting fuel (gee, if it is, and it produces no economic value otherwise, it will be a money losing venture and nobody will make it).
Beyond that research funding and venture capital investment should finance the technologies that are actually capable of producing net energy, rather than those that have figured out how to game the system of subsidies best.
Re:Um, no (Score:3, Insightful)
What do you think barbeque sauce is made from?