No, you’ll probably never notice there aren’t enough vets in town ready and able to attend to Fluffy’s healthcare needs. But you can be sure the average livestock owner has to wait an increasingly long while for the vet to come care for his or her population of critters.

Imagine owning a 150-head dairy farm in Pennsylvania and realizing your vet’s just retired. He’s done. Not coming back. And...

Fistulated cows serve both as supremely useful research/learning tool in veterinary medicine and PETA magnet. These are cows whose rumens (the largest of the four chambers in the bovine stomach) have been surgically attached to the body wall and made accessible to those curious about what lies beneath.  

Here's an up-close-and-personal pic:

By way of compensation, these cows get treated to a...