03-31-2022, 04:27 PM
(03-31-2022, 01:16 AM)Grace Wrote: Back when I had the farm every single day, without fail, as I entered the living room to sit in the peace and quiet of the morning with my coffee (I sat in the dark so I could see out over the fields) there were 200 chickens out the back sliding glass door and a couple hundred head of cattle on their side of the fence all staring me down as I drank my morning coffee, looking in at me accusingly like I had my priorities all screwed up to be drinking coffee before feeding them!
Hahaha... They knew time and lined up waiting for me every day playing the staring me down game all just quiet as mice so not to disturb the morning's peace.
I've never noticed animals knowing days though, but I've always kept to the same schedule regardless of the day. I wouldn't put it past more intelligent animals to recognize and anticipate scheduling changes that are regular. They are often smarter than we give them credit for.
Oh yes they are too! (i.e. smarter than people think). It's one of the reasons I absolutely loathe daylight savings time! We can only adjust our own schedules so much, but the animal's schedule doesn't change. So, we can feed them earlier, but we can't necessarily feed them later.
And yes, they do know what time it is. LOL! If I'm late going to feed, they'll all walk all the way across the pasture to where they can see into the big window of the house and start bawlin' anyone in the vicinity out, especially me! I mean, it's not like you can't hear them anyway, right? Bunch of racket going on outside. But no, they have to get where they know you can see them too!
We've got two cattle dogs (an ACD and an Aussie Shepard), and up until recently my beloved Lab, Shelby. The cows do NOT like the cattle dogs (for obvious reasons), but they LOVED Shelby. For some reason, they thought she was one of them. All three dogs could be outside and Shelby could go walk right into the corrals with them and walk through them, under them, it didn't matter. They always made sure to not step on Shelby, or lay down on her, and it was not uncommon to look out and see Shelby out in the pasture napping with the cows...and even babysitting the calves (which is very unusual). The cows trusted her that much. The other two...NO WAY! Those two show up and they are all on 100% ALERT! Of course, those two are pretty smart around the animals, and they know it. The ACD is a 'heeler' and the shepard is a 'herder', so one works from the rear, and the other from the front.
Anyway, when it was feeding time the cows would all start bawling if Shelby showed up. Shelby would come all the way back to the house (about a half mile) and then act like we needed to go do something (kinda' like the "Timmy fell down into the well", kinda thing). She'd keep pestering us and trying to lead us up to the corrals so we'd go feed the cows. And it was ULTRA-frustrating to watch all this magic happen an hour earlier, or later, because some idiot in government thought it was such a bright idea to change the clocks around twice a year!! The animals don't know, they don't understand that...and it makes me want to go kick some politician dead-square in the ass! Usually goes on for a week or better every single time they switch the clocks.