English cows get their very own bristle brush and show us how playful they really are
Have you ever been in a situation when you had to ask yourself: how do I make over 100 cows extremely happy very quickly?
Sure, we all have.
But if you’ve failed to come up with a good solution, 27-year-old Tom Pemberton has you covered.
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The second-generation farmer from Lancashire, England has multiple social media channels devoted to giving people insight and advice on farm life and animals.
And he has a huge following, partly because he’s convinced people that it’s important to know where their food comes from and who’s responsible for it.
But he didn’t plan to become an online farming sensation.
“I got into social media by mistake. I was trying to promote a raw milk vending machine in a video, which my girlfriend helped me with at the time. We posted the video on Facebook and YouTube — Facebook went really well with around 11,000 views and YouTube only got 200-300 views. That’s how it started, completely by mistake!”
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A video he posted back in June of 2020 already has over 2.3 million views – partly because the title “HOW TO MAKE OVER 100 COWS EXTREMELY HAPPY VERY QUICKLY!” is an age-old question, but also because once you find out it’s all about making a cow scrub brush, the absurdity alone draws you in.
Apparently, cows are a lot like cats in that they love rubbing themselves along bristles.
She looks pretty pleased, right?
Now, we don’t know if cows have just always had an itch they couldn’t scratch or if they really do just enjoy rough bristles, but it’s pretty clear that any cow that doesn’t have access to one of these new-fangled contraptions is seriously missing out.
After using something similar to brush his bovines earlier in the year while they were inside the barn during the winter, Pemberton wanted to give them the same pleasure while they roamed the fields.
So with the help of Finneasy (which makes the brushes) and Mayo Cow Comfort (which manufactures what can only be described by city slickers as “cow furniture”), Pemberton let us in on his project.
You can’t just throw a brush out into the field and expect the cows to come running – it needs to be set up in a way that gives them easy access and can handle a couple of thousand pounds of pressure.
So Pemberton heads out to set up the device to make his crew of roughly 123 milking cows happy. And while they were doing nothing but lying down with bellies full of grass at first, it turns out cows are like cats in yet another way – they’re curious.
When Mayo Cow Comfort arrived to help him stake the pole for the brush, the herd wanted to know what was going on.
And once one cow does it, you know everybody else has to make sure they’re not missing something exciting. The cow FOMO is real.
The little construction project drew quite the audience!
The Mayo van gets a good once-over too, but the herd is more interested in what Pemberton is adding to their field.
Will they love it?
It’s hilarious to watch the two men assemble the device as the curiosity grows.
Is this dinner? Can we eat it?
Finally, the brush is assembled!
Some volunteers line up for its first use.
We have to say, it looks like a success to us!
And should we ever have the task of making a herd of cows happy, we know where to start!
Be sure to scroll down below to watch the bovine drama unfold.
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Source: Tom Pemberton Farm Life via YouTube, @tompemberton_farmlife via Instagram