At 11:26 AM 02/26/1998 -0400, you wrote:
>Not even a vendor
>who understands your needs - their vendors have the same knowledge about
>software as I have about raising cows (the only thing I know about a cow is
>that they have four legs, say "booooooo...ooooooh", produce milk and meat,
>but that's all......).
>
>Albert Smulders
>InSAD - Encarnacion, Paraguay
>insad@itacom.com.py

As much as I tried to restrain myself, I just could not resist replying to
this!

Sorry, I cannot do anything about your vendor understanding software, but
here are a few additional pieces of information to add to your knowledge
about cows:

1. At least the cows I've heard in the northern hemisphere, they say
"moooooo...ooooooh" amongst other noises.
2. Yes, most of them have four legs.  They also come in a variety of
colors, mostly favoring shades of brown, black, and white.
3. The cow is the female of the bovine species.  The male is called a bull
originally when born (a "bullet"?), but most are "downgraded" to a steer
for better control and meat production.  Bulls/steers usually do not
produce milk.
4. They have multiple stomachs.  Their chewing is programmed into a loop --
between stomach and mouth cavity.  What they chew is often called a "cud".
5. Cows usually eat grass or similar things.  In the old days they did this
in fields called "pastures".  Now often they are kept in confined "feed lots".
6. Milk is stored in a cow's udder which usually has four (but sometimes
more) "spigots".  The process of getting the milk out of the cow is called
"milking", most often today done with a machine, but previously done by hand.
7. Most cows I have known were milked twice a day.  A person or farm dog
may go after them in the pasture to round them up and bring to a barn for
milking -- some herds (a group of cows) are smart enough to meander back
"home" around milking time.  That's where the expression about the "cows
coming home" comes from.
8. You can see a picture of two cows on the web page http://www.tucows.com
9. The newborn bovine is called a "calf" and several are called "calves" in
the English language.
10. Some cows have horns (not the musical or noisemaking type), others have
been de-horned.
11. Besides producing milk and meat, cows also produce fertilizer, often
called by various names such as "cow pies", "pasture patties", etc.
12. The meat of cows is generally called beef.  Veal is the name used for
calf meat.
13. I am not sure if cows ever sleep.  Even when driving in the middle of
the night, you can see them in pastures eating.  Maybe someone can help
here on this.
14. The cow is sacred in some countries.

...all this from a "city boy" who had a lot of relatives as cow farmers in
the state of Wisconsin, "America's Dairyland".  I could go on for a lot
more, but I'm sure that others can contribute greatly to your cow knowledge
base too (and correct any misinformation I gave)  ;-)

Gotta get mooooooooooving...

Don L. Jackson (now in Arizona, USA)