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The Swiss are serious about their cows

Zurich, Switzerland - The Swiss are serious about their beloved cows and they go to extraordinary lengths to protect their portly livestock.

The Swiss enlist their military (yes, they have one) and emergency rescue teams in the service of cow support and rescue operations. During recent droughts, the government set up emergency hotlines for farmers to call in airborne bovine rescue teams and the military airlifted water to cows stranded on drought-stricken mountains. These are not insignificant operations: In 2015, the Swiss military conducted a 31-day operation to airlift 1,840 tons of water to cows in the Jura and Vaud alps. This involved four Super Puma helicopters and 120 military personnel. The government claims that cow rescue operations serve as invaluable training for their pilots. 

 Water is not the only thing that may be airlifted. Occasionally, the cows themselves are also hoisted aloft by helicopter (pictured below). 

Bovine airlift in picturesque Swiss countryside. Photo courtesy of Gizmodo

Cows may be airlifted for one of three reasons:  
  1. They're hurt. Cows occasionally become injured in high alpine terrain and the only way to bring them home for treatment is by helicopter.
  2. They're lost. The Swiss allow their cows a considerable amount of freedom to explore the alps. It's my impression that many of these pastures are not fenced in. This seems unwise because cows are dumb and they frequently get themselves stuck in places from which they can't return and where airlift is the only means of returning them home.
  3. They're dead. Switzerland is a geographically small country and so a deceased and rotting cow can easily pollute the water supply for a village (or several). Thus, dead cows cannot be left to the elements. Now, if the cows grazed in - and keeled over on - say, a plateau, the recovery of the corpse would be a relatively straightforward job for a tractor (or similar large agriculture vehicle). But this is Switzerland, and so cows graze on - and meet their maker in - the far reaches of the alps, where the corpses have to be airlifted out. Compounding the problem is that cows are dumb, and so placing them in treacherous mountainous terrain tends to increase their mortality rate, as they will occasionally wander off a cliff in search of greener pastures. And compounding the problem still further is the fact that cows are herd animals and so when one cow heads over a cliff, it can set off a bovine mass suicide event, as happened about ten years ago when approximately forty cows collectively strolled off the side of a mountain.
Finally, I leave you with this video of an actual helicopter cow rescue which I thought you would appreciate.



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Location: Zürich, Switzerland

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