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Cow Freshener

 Air fresheners for cows
  (+7)
(+7) 		  [vote for,
against]

Cows smell really bad, especially when wet. I'm proposing an air freshener that hangs around a cow’s neck like the old bells did. It would contain a compound that absorbs methane (and general cow smell) and releases a pleasant scent like strawberries.

This town smells like a cross between wet cows and skunks when it rains here. I hate cows except when it's dinnertime.

We have air fresheners for everything else (cars, houses, toilets, cat boxes), so why not cows?

—Katt, Sep 15 2003

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       I'm a farmer and I really don't don't like when city people start in with the farmers. We have it a WHOLE lot harder than you do, and we take all this critizsm.
—dickity, Sep 15 2003
   

       I wasn't intentionally attacking farmers.   

       And I agree, farming is very hard work. I used to milk my grandfathers cows and help him durring harvest season (He owned 1 tractor and most of the work was done by horses and manual labor, he thought new machines took the pride out of farming). Granted, it wasn't a big industial farm, you could walk the perimeter of the fields in an hour. That doesn't change the fact that cows smell.
—Katt, Sep 15 2003
   

       //:That doesn't change the fact that cows smell:// what are we supposed to do about this??? are you gonna make everything in this world wear a air freshener??
—dickity, Sep 15 2003
   

       Ahaha bloody brilliant (and funny) :)
—NeoPiter, Mar 01 2005
   

       [dickity] - No, but I would support active carbon noseplugs.
—wagster, Mar 01 2005
   

       Methane is completely odorless. The main scent associated with it is from hydrogen sulfide.
—Aq_Bi, Mar 02 2005
   

       Maybe a cow wash sort a like a car wash. Your already washing the udders prior to milking. A tunnel with sprays brushes located between barn and feed trough. Some neutralizing compound to adsorb the hydrogen sulfides.   

       Wet dogs are next.
—popbottle, Mar 18 2014
   

       //why not cows?//   

       I can think of a couple of reasons.   

       Stink is gas. To eliminate it you need to add another kind of gas, one that deadens the olfactory nerves of the smeller or provides something that's smellier, (but more pleasant) than the gas you're trying to cover up.   

       Cows produce a lot of gas. They're fermenting several pounds of vegetable matter in their gut and that has a byproduct of lots of stinky gas. Your air freshener would have to also produce a lot of gas and a cardboard pine tree soaked in pine scent wouldn't cut it.   

       Of course anything's possible. Assuming you've equipped your cow with several tanks of Glade air freshener strapped to it's back like a scuba diver, you might be able to change the stink's profile, but let me put it this way; ever walk into a bathroom where somebody tried to mask the shame of their bodily functions with some aerosol spray that's probably a molecular cousin to napalm? (at least that's what it feels like to my nose) How would you like the whole town to smell like that?   

       If we ever go really nuts we could equip cows with some kind of disgusting diaper filtration unit, plastic bag dispensing affair, but I'd rather just roll up the windows, close the vents and tough it out when driving by a farm. Cows are delicious and worth their drawbacks.   

       Besides, can you imagine if we were being farmed by aliens and right before they ground us into human nuggets they complained about how much we stank? Have some respect.   

       That being said, I'm wondering if there's enough power in that methane to run some kind of filtration machine to get a self powering cow freshening gas filter?
—doctorremulac3, Mar 22 2014
   

       I think tail-mounted pilot flames have been proposed here.
—MaxwellBuchanan, Mar 22 2014
   

       ^Spark plugs actually: I got pretty roasted as a result.
—FlyingToaster, Mar 22 2014
   

       Does just burning the stuff really do that much to help the problem? I was thinking burn the stuff to drive a pump to filter the methane driven motor exhaust through a carbon filter.   

       Personally I don't think the idea would be worth anything except perhaps a big government grant to study it as a way to "save" the environment, but taxpayer ripoffs can be fun.
—doctorremulac3, Mar 22 2014
   


 

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