Modern Farmer The evidence against cow tipping is immense, and backed up by both farmers and the laws of physics (more on that later), but the simplest bit of proof we can point to: YouTube. While in the history of the world there have surely been a few unlucky cows shoved to their side by boozed-up morons, we feel confident in saying this happens at a rate roughly equivalent to the Chicago Cubs winning the World Series. The evidence against cow tipping is immense, and backed up by both farmers and the laws of physics (more on that later), but the simplest bit of proof we can point to: YouTube. YouTube, the largest clearinghouse of human stupidity the world has ever known – where you can watch hours of kids taking the cinnamon challenge, teens jumping off rooftops onto trampolines, or the explosive results of fireworks set off indoors – fails to deliver one single actual cow-tipping video. (The one exception is a Russian dashcam video, which shows a semitruck full of cattle overturning – and cows shaking themselves off and walking away.) And yet, ask a room full of non-farmers about cow tipping and you’ll still find plenty of believers. Despite reams and reams of articles debunking the idea, cow tipping, like crop circles, continues to exist as a strange rural legend – the difference being there’s at least photographic proof of crop circles. So why does the myth of cow tipping persist? A 1,400-pound dairy heifer is a broad, squarely built animal – there’s a reason the adjective “beefy” exists. You’d have more luck trying to tip over a Camry than a cow. Part of this, of course, is that the closest many people come to a cow is seeing a Holstein along the interstate. Glimpsed at 65 miles per hour, it’s possible to imagine a docile bovine easily overturned by a blacked-out college bro. Approach a cow on foot and you’ll quickly realize how difficult the task of tipping would be. A 1,400-pound dairy heifer is a broad, squarely built animal – there’s a reason the adjective “beefy” exists. You’d have more luck trying to tip over a Camry than a cow. Nate Wilson, 66, grew up around cows, began milking cows in 1970 and recently retired after selling his dairy farm in Sinclairville, New York. “I think I know a thing or two about cattle,” he says. And for him, the whole notion of cow tipping is, to put it politely, bullcrap. “There’s more cows that have been tipped in people’s imaginations,” says Wilson, “than in the real world.” The Non-Fake Way to Tip a Cow Want further proof of the implausibility of cow tipping? Take a look at “cow casting.” When farm vets need to get a cow on to her side, they don’t simply lean into a haunch and heave-ho. Instead, they use a series of precicely-tied ropes in a complex pattern over the cow’s body, and several highly-trained individuals pulling in opposite directions to carefully get the cow over on to her side. And when cattle casting goes bad, it can go very bad indeed. Now imagine instead of highly-trained farm vets, you have a group of tipsy teenagers, and you start to realize just how difficult, dangerous and unlikely shoving a cow over would be. Wilson points out several factors. First off, cows don’t sleep standing up – that’s what horses do. Cows actually spend a great deal of time on their bellies, digesting food, as well as dozing on their stomachs. Secondly, cows are naturally wary animals. Observe a group of cows laying down in a pasture, Wilson says, and you’ll see that no two of them point in the same direction – part of their instinct for protecting the herd against the many natural predators cows once faced. Beef, as Wilson jokes, has been what’s for dinner for as long as cattle have existed. As a result, they have “incredibly well developed senses of smell and hearing.” Wilson says that even after years of worki