A cow's not a plastic action figure with rigid, unjointed legs, so the lever arm calculation is utterly bogus. All you need is to push the cow's bulk sideways enough so that the off-side legs, who are assumed to be firmly planted on the ground, go nearside of the CoG. If the cow lifts one or both of the offside legs to plant them further out and resist the pushing force better, that makes it very vulnerable at the moment the leg is off the ground.
I haven't read the article, but having lived in rural VA, where we have actual cows, I will attest to the fact that they can and do lay down, and don't normally sleep standing up.
Growin' up in upstate New York in dairy country, we didn't even have a mall to hang out in. So it was either cow tipping for cranapple fights.
I've done it personally, AND on my own. Yes, cows do rarely sleep standing up but they do. My actions were to take a running leap at the cow, slamming my shoulder into the area just behind the front 'shoulder' of the cow. I would get one out of 5 or 6 this way. With two people, it would happen about 50% of the time. Three or more and it wasn't an issue.
The fun thing though was to bring new tippers to a pasture where there was an anti-social bull that was a light sleeper. :)
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(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-05 06:22 pm (UTC)definitely harder than it sounds
Date: 2005-11-05 07:05 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-05 07:06 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-05 08:49 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-05 08:56 pm (UTC)I don't really think anything was debunked. They've just underscored that it's really, really difficult.
Also, I used to live next to a farm that had a bull in the cow pasture. Just one additional factor of difficulty, heh heh.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-06 12:44 am (UTC)Relative violence
Date: 2005-11-06 08:56 pm (UTC)He was on a four wheeler and I believe had some sort of ramming contraption.
They were very serious about the endeavour...
I believe the farmer got his shotgun, and they had to run away.
I've tipped
Date: 2005-11-07 05:45 pm (UTC)I've done it personally, AND on my own. Yes, cows do rarely sleep standing up but they do. My actions were to take a running leap at the cow, slamming my shoulder into the area just behind the front 'shoulder' of the cow. I would get one out of 5 or 6 this way. With two people, it would happen about 50% of the time. Three or more and it wasn't an issue.
The fun thing though was to bring new tippers to a pasture where there was an anti-social bull that was a light sleeper. :)