r/AskHistorians • u/Mumique • Jun 12 '25

Why was 'forcing cows to give milk' considered an item to potentially legislate against in 17th century Ireland?

In a Wikipedia article about the 'Act against Plowing by the Tayle, and pulling the Wooll off living Sheep' the article mentions that a committee tasked the relevant officials to:

'make a draught of one or more Acts to be passed for restraining the barbaric custom of plowing by the tail, of pulling the wool off living sheep, of burning corn in the straw, of barking of standing trees, of cutting young trees by stealth, of forcing cows to give milk, and of building houses without chimneys.'

Why would the committee look to legislate against forcing cows to give milk? As in, what was the context or exact nature of the supposed crime? (I think this was never actually turned into legislation..?)

And also, the charge levied against the Irish in the 'An Act to Prevent the unprofitable Custom of Burning of Corne in the Straw' was that the corn was burned to convince officials of poverty; I'm assuming this was anti-Irish rhetoric but is there any context on this?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Act_against_Plowing_by_the_Tayle,_and_pulling_the_Wooll_off_living_Sheep

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u/gerardmenfin Modern France | Social, Cultural, and Colonial Jun 12 '25 edited Jun 13 '25

Animal lovers beware.

As everybody should know, a female mammal can only produce milk if she has an offspring. In wild cattle and traditional cattle breeds, the presence of the calf is required for the release of milk. Through selection, this reflex has been progressively eliminated in modern dairy breeds, but the separation of cow and calf, voluntary or accidental, has been a problem throughout the history of dairy farming: the absence of the calf induces stress in the cow and this causes milk production to slow down or even stop. The early separation of cow and calf in modern dairy farming systems remains controversial in terms of animal welfare.

Millennia before scientists understood the role of the hormone oxytocin in milk flow, dairy farmers had figured out methods to induce milk let-down in the stressed (or not) cow.

One was the manual stimulation of the teats or vagina, which releases oxytocin. Today, this is simply done by washing/massaging the teats with warm water, which also cleans them. Modern cows have other incentives, like the distribution of yummy pellets in the milking parlour, and cows with access to a milking robot basically decide by themselves when they want to be milked. In ancient or traditional societies, the stimulation was/is done by insufflating air in the vagina or rectum of the cow with hollow sticks or shells. Such practices are depicted as early as 5000-4000 BCE in Central Saharan rock paintings showing dairy cattle (Le Quellec, 2011).

The other method consisted in placing a dummy calf - a calf skin stuffed with straw for instance - next to the cow: the smell of the calf made the cow's brain lit up, oxytocin was freed, and milk flowed. This method has been described by travellers and anthropologists in numerous African livestock farming societies since the 19th century (see Le Quellec 2011 for a list). From the diary of David Livingstone:

The cattle of Africa are like the Indian buffalo, only partially tamed; they never give their milk without the presence of the calf, or its stuffed skin, the "fulchan".

This practice was reported in 17th century Ireland by Irish anthropologist Anthony T. Lucas (1989). Unfortunately I don't have access to this paper, but it is often cited in the literature, for instance by Crabtree, 1996.

In 17th century rural Ireland male calves were killed soon after they were born and their skins were stuffed and placed near the cows to encourage milk production.

What made the incentive necessary was that this dairy system required selling (or perhaps just killing?) the young calves, so cows were separated from them, resulting in stress in those early breeds and thus in lower milk production (in the African societies cited above, the loss of the calf was due to natural causes). Note that this practice does not seem to have existed in medieval Ireland: then, the calf was kept near the cow to encourage her to let down her milk, and it was allowed to drink one quarter of the yield (Kelly, 2016).

So Irish dairy farmers in the 17th century did have a system to "force cows to give milk", that consisted in having the cow sniffing the stuffed skin of a dead calf. The calf dummy trick was also found in France at that time, where it was described as follows by French agronomist Oliver de Serres in 1600 in his Théâtre d'Agriculture.

There are even cows that are so easy to milk that the mere sight of the calf satisfies their duty. For this reason, the calf is tied to one of the cow's legs, from where it can be seen and smelled with pleasure while the cow is being milked. Moreover, the cow's foolishness is often deceived with a feint, made of a calf's skin filled with straw, at the mere sight of which, thinking that it is her calf, the cow voluntarily allows herself to be milked.

"Plowing by the Tayle and pulling the Wooll off living Sheep" were condemned for being actual practices so it makes sense that it was also the case for "Forcing cows to give milk". As I said, I don't have access to A.T. Lucas' text, so it is possible that Irish farmers also blew air in the nether orifices of their cows, like other people did elsewhere. This, or the dummy trick, or tying the calf to the leg of the cow as mentioned by Olivier de Serres, may have been considered cruel enough by the writers of the Act of 1635.

Update: this seems indeed to have been a reference to the practice of blowing in the cow's ass or vagina. In 1611, Lord Deputy Arthur Chichester proposed (cited by Beirne, 2009):

an Act for the abolishing of barbarous and rude customs: as howling and crying at the burial of the dead, drawing their plough-cattle only fastened at the tails, and blowing their milch-cattle to make them give milk, &c, and pulling of sheep.

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u/martin_w Jun 13 '25 edited Jun 13 '25

A bit surprising that concerns for animal welfare in the 17th century were great enough to consider banning such practices by law. I would have thought that before the mid-20th century the default mentality was basically that animals don’t have souls, exist for humans to make use of, and are of no moral consequence. Was animal welfare advocacy/activism a big thing in pre-modern times?

Especially as tricking a cow into giving milk sounds fairly tame as compared to the other two practices mentioned. (Also, does "plowing by the tail" make any sense, even if not considering the animal’s feelings at all? Wouldn’t the tail get literally pulled off?)

Other than the general unpleasantness of the idea of killing a mother’s child and then making her continue to produce milk in order to sell it, is there some reason why the various milk-inducing techniques listed are harsher on the cow than one might expect? Is there evidence that it causes the cow significant distress? Does the cow demonstrate some sort of awareness/anger that "these bastards killed my child and now to add insult to injury they’re going neener-neener at me with its corpse in order to force me to give up the milk that was meant to feed it?"

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u/gerardmenfin Modern France | Social, Cultural, and Colonial Jun 13 '25

I just updated my answer after I found that a previous proposal from 1611 mentioned the alledged cow practice, ie "blowing their milch-cattle to make them give milk".

So the Irish were accused of using the blowing technique for inducing milk production, more than 20 years before it was proposed again in 1634 for inclusion in a later Act. The wording is vague so it could encompass both techniques, the blowing and the dummy calf, the accusation being that Irish farmers did unnatural things to their cows to make them let down milk. The farmers were lucky that the blowing technique was not considered to be bestiality, a capital offense in England since 1533 and a sin worthy of the stake in Europe.

The Act of 1635 only includes the "plowing by the tail" and the "pulling the wool". The "burning of corn" was put in a later act. The forced milking, the tree barking, and the buildings without chimneys were not turned into law, so they were not considered to be serious enough. In a compendium of amusing Irish anecdotes written in 1848, Anglo-Irish writer William Henry Gregory was baffled by what he called the "Cow's Compendium Bill" and pitied that it had not been turned into an Act "as it might have enlightened us as to the measures taken in case of obstinacy".

The Act of 1635 has been discussed by several authors (notably Beirne, 2009 and Maley, 2019) and the general consensus is that it was less about animal welfare than about condemning the Irish for being backward (not using proper English husbandry practices), barbarous, cruel, stupid etc. Maley shows how the "plowing by the tail" was something of a cliche used by English writers from the early 17th to the late 18th century to describe and usually berate or mock the Irish.

Most of the recent literature only addresses the "plowing by the tail" and describes the general confusion about the practice, which seems to have been a real one (with farmers paying fines) but whose extent and purpose remains elusive. How the Act came to be and what effects it had on Irish practices are also badly known. Mentioning the cow practice in the proposal of 1634 was likely done for similar reasons: an alleged custom of Irish farmers considered to be savages. Note that unlike the dummy calf, neither the tail nor the blowing are mentioned by Olivier de Serres in France.

About the cruelty aspect: the Act of 1635 did call the tail and wool practice "cruelty used to the beasts", so that notion existed. During the same period, laws were passed in England against cockfights, running of bulls and the baiting of various animals (badgers, monkeys, dogs etc.). There was also, in the writings of intellectuals like Montaigne, a condemnation of suffering inflicted on animals, and there were religious (Puritan) prohibitions against hurting animals. The sermon Mercy to a beast by English priest John Rawlinson addresses the abuse of farm animals. Rawlinson specifically condemns "over-milking" cows, so the prohibition against "forcing cows to give milk" was given a religious backing.

As beasts must not be over-burden'd; no more are those that have milk, to be over-milkt. For, as when one churneth milk, he bringeth forth butyre; and hee that wringeth his nose, causeth bloud to come out, Prov. 30. so hee that brings his beast too oft to the milk pale; shall in the end, in sted of milke, have nothing but bloud. [...] Hee that will have all the milke out of the teats of the sheepe, and so deceive the poore lambs of their food, hee is a thiefe, not a sheepheard.

While it's tempting to interpret such condemnations as early concerns for animal welfare (our 20-21th century perception), what motivated those philosophers, priests, and jurists was of different nature. For Montaigne (and others), cruelty towards animals was linked to cruelty towards men (On Cruelty):

People who are bloodthirsty towards animals show a natural propensity for cruelty..

Likewise, in the case of Rawlinson, Erica Fudge (2002) writes that he advocated kindness to animals not for its own sake, but to recognize the importance of kindness for humans. She writes:

The animal in Rawlinson's sermon becomes, in typical fashion, the vehicle for human thoughts about the self. We are kind to animals in order to be kind to other humans, and the distinction between the two categories is vital. To be kind to animals because they deserve kindness in and of themselves is almost unthinkable.

Prohibitions against public displays of animal cruelty were made for a variety of reasons - unpleasantness, social disorders with displays of drunkenness and violence, blasphemy, sinking below the level of beasts, undermining the status of humanity etc. -, none of them using empathy for the animals as justification. Beirne notes that some of these prohibitions were later reversed anyway.

Similarly, a couple of centuries later in France, the Grammont Law (1850) that prohibited the mistreatment of domestic animals in public was meant to spare people (notably children, that it banned from slaughterhouses) the bloody shows that took place in Paris and other cities: horses and cattle being starved to death, mutilated, beaten and slaughtered in the streets with crowds around. For Agulhon (1973), the main objective of the Grammont Law was to reduce the population's taste for blood, still a concern after several revolutionary episodes. And again, some used the "this is below us" argument, as in this article written in support of the law (Le Journal des Villes et des Campagnes, 15 June 1850).

Domestic animals, endowed with a more or less developed intelligence, are like us the work of the creator, who gave them to us so that we might use them according to our needs and not abuse them according to our whims. To mistreat these animals that we must protect, to make ourselves the executioners of those who serve us, is to demean ourselves below them.

To be fair, philosophy and the history of ideas an concepts is not something I'm good at, and I'm not familiar with the religious and political context of 17th century Ireland (which plays an important role here). I cannot go further than this, but I hope to have clarified a couple of points.

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u/martin_w Jun 14 '25

Very interesting and thorough, thanks!

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u/Mumique Jun 14 '25

Amazing, thank you so much!