United States agriculture and the agencies serving this industry have made great changes during the past century. Even though there has been some progress, a few problems defy solution.

An 1893 report of the Secretary of Agriculture describes some of the early concerns within the USDA. J. Sterling Morton wrote: “This department was instituted by act of Congress in February, 1889. It is therefore, the youngest in the Executive branch of the Government of the United States, and not yet perfectly emerged from the period of formation.”

He can say that again. I think USDA employees would agree the department hasn’t “perfectly emerged” even yet.

Of all the transformations in the USDA, the thing I miss the most is the old agricultural bulletins we used to stock in county extension offices. There was a time when a person could go to the extension office and find a bulletin on everything from curing hams to making horseshoes.

In his book This Trifling Distinction, Maine author John Gould describes the reliance upon government research during the 1930s and 1940s. He once took it upon himself to poke fun at the serious tone and stilted language of university writings of the day, but was surprised to learn people took him seriously, instead.

Gould claims he wrote an article for The Farm Quarterly during the mid-1940s, pretending to be a dairy science professor who was studying the effects of “horn elevation” upon milk production of dairy cattle. His research began when an Ayrshire cow by the name of Lulu knocked her horns off while leaving the barn and had to have them reset by a taxidermist.

An inadvertent placement of the horns resulted in a higher angle of adjustment than previously held, and the cow immediately began producing more milk.

Chuckling to himself as he wrote, Gould used as many big words as possible while describing further studies in which he tried the same treatment upon several other cows. He found that increasing the horn angle by 10-35 degrees caused a doubling of milk production.
His technique required unscrewing the horns with a Stillson wrench and replacing them at the new angle. Later studies confirmed a lower mortality rate when the horns were knocked off with a baseball bat instead of using the wrench.

Gould sent the article to the only publication he thought might have a sense of humor, and was inundated by inquiries from people wishing to study the phenomenon further. He even got letters from dairy scientists and others who should have known better.

I often think of Gould’s story when writing this column. Sometimes I worry that folks may not see the humor in what I think is funny.
I take pride in one thing, though: I may threaten a few cats, but I’ve never suggested folks should unscrew the horns from their cows.