The ‘world’s smartest cow’ has strong boundaries and knows what she wants | 24CA News
As It Happens6:29The ‘world’s smartest cow’ has robust boundaries and is aware of what she needs
A Nebraska cow has earned herself a Guinness World Record for her capacity to carry out rapid-fire tips in change for tasty treats and vigorous head scratches.
Ghost, a four-year-old Charolais cow, carried out 10 tips in 60 seconds in March, incomes the Guinness title for many tips carried out by a cow in a single minute.
“She’s pretty excited,” Ghost’s coach, Megan Reimann, informed As It Happens visitor host Helen Mann.
“I think her head’s getting a bit big right now, but she’s trying to stay normal and not get too full of herself.”
‘Just so shiny and good’
Reimann normally trains horses on her Sheridan County, Neb., property. But when she first met Ghost, she simply fell in love.
“I’d gotten Ghost as a couple-day-old calf to raise on a bottle, and she was just so shiny and nice that I thought it would be fun to do something special with her,” she mentioned.
So how do you practice a cow?
“I train the horses and the cows — and I hope my children and husband — using positive reinforcement. That just means that they get rewarded with something they like for everything they do that is what I want them to do,” Reimann mentioned.
For Ghost, which means scratches or cookies.
“That makes training a lot of fun for her and for me,” she mentioned. “Teaching her to give kisses, for example, when she brings her nose up close to my face, she gets a cookie in return. That means she wants to give lots more kisses.”
Kissing is only one trick in Ghost’s record-setting repertoire. The others included staying in place, coming when referred to as, spinning, bowing, doing a fish-bump/leg carry, standing on a pedestal, stepping right into a lasso, touching a bell and nodding her head as if to say “yes.”
WATCH | Ghost the cow does 10 tips in 1 minute:
It helps that Reimann and Ghost have an in depth bond.
“She’s very much my cow,”the coach mentioned. “She’ll occasionally take some treats from the children, but if anybody else gets close to her, she has no interest and wants to leave.”
And if she needs to go away, that is precisely what she’ll do. In truth, the strong-willed cow tends to no matter she pleases.
“She has strong opinions,” Reimann mentioned. “She has no qualms about saying no, to leave or just refuse if she’s not happy about things.”
Not solely does she haven’t any bother drawing boundaries, however she’s additionally nice at advocating for herself.
“She knows her worth and she’s not afraid to tell everybody else. She makes sure that everybody knows what she wants and that she’s going to get whatever she wants and they better move out of her way,” Reimann mentioned.
“She loves to be scratched and she’s more than happy to put whatever part she wants scratched right in your face and demand that you take care of her desires.”
Since Ghost set the document, a number of headlines have dubbed her the world’s smartest cow, an evaluation Riemann agrees with.
But she says she has additionally educated another cows, and so they’re truly simpler to work with than horses.
“I find they’re actually more enthusiastic about the training than the horses. Maybe because we do ride horses sometimes, and that’s work. And with the cows, all I ever do is play, and they enjoy that and really look forward to our training together,” she mentioned.
She admits she did initially plan to trip Ghost, which isn’t an unparalleled follow, but it surely did not fairly work out.
“She loves to run and buck and has her own opinions about where she’s going to go and what she’s going to do. And I’m getting old. I don’t really like to fall off,” she mentioned.
