"LIfe After Cows"

Unlike crop farming, dairy farms can come to a sudden and abrupt end. I know.

Two kids can set a fire, the barn goes, and the herd has to be sold.  (Averaging 27,000 lb per cow--that's a figure unheard of in the 1950's.)

Or advancing age, low prices, a smaller dairy, no successors can make for a more gradual sell-off, as here.

Or a TB test comes out positive, and the bureaucrats order a "depopulation".  (Some great photos at this site, prairie Canada.

Or, as happened with my dad, there's a severe stroke, so the cows went the next day, a phrase I can't type without emotion, even though I never wanted to farm.