Cows and Effect

Welcome to this occasionally mildly interesting farming podcast (it's a science podcast), hosted by award winning podcaster Michael Blanche (200m swimming badge 1978) and not-yet-not-a-real-doctor Paul Allison. We talk about recent research into soil, pasture, cows and sheep. People say that it's the podcast they didn't know they wanted or needed, and they definitely didn't ask for it. It's sometimes a bit sweary (not the big one). It's fine. Cows and effect sounds like cause and effect. It's a play on words. That's funny stuff. Warning: Following legal advice the listener should be aware that the views and information shared in this podcast do not constitute professional advice or even unprofessional guidance. For God's sake consult someone who knows what they are talking about before making any changes to your farm management practices. Logo image created in https://BioRender.com

Bonus Episode; Fields Good, a book about anti-gravity, and is it really that bad? 08/08/2026

Episode 12. Cutting corners, a funeral and he can't remember more than one name at once. 05/25/2026

Episode 12. Cutting corners, a funeral and he can't remember more than one name at once. A momentous episode listener; it's the last of the first series of the cult science and farming podcast Cows and Effect. For a while anyway. We are mulling over a second series (TBC). Look out for some occasional "Meet the Authors" episodes over the summer. We'll be monitoring the email address , so drop us a line; maybe suggest some topics/questions for Series 2. You know the drill by now. Dear Michael and Paul, Loving the show. Michael is the best. Etc. The regular listener will know that sometimes we fill episodes with science and sometimes it's mainly us droning on about other stuff. As a treat, we threw off the shackles of convention and rammed both science and talking nonsense into this final episode until it couldn't take any more. There's loads of papers and some completely pointless ramblings including half an hour on our favourite films, which all came about because neither of us had been to the pictures lately, but we thought we would talk about films anyway. And then Paul went to the pictures after the main record, so we spoke about that as well in the outro. Good grief, you are a lucky bunch. Be warned. It's a very long episode. Here are the links to the science. We covered some foundational work looking at mob grazing in Texas. Teague, W.R., Dowhower, S.L., Baker, S.A., Haile, N., DeLaune, P.B. and Conover, D.M., 2011. Grazing management impacts on vegetation, soil biota and soil chemical, physical and hydrological properties in tall grass prairie. Agriculture, ecosystems & environment, 141(3-4), pp.310-322. This one is for Craig. Hayman, J.M. and Saville, D.J., 1981. Comparison of rotational grazing with set stocking of ewes and lambs in spring on irrigated pasture in Canterbury. New Zealand Journal of Crop and Horticultural Science, 9(1), pp.11-16. We talk abou an "invited review". This is it. Stanley, P.L., Wilson, C., Patterson, E., Machmuller, M.B. and Cotrufo, M.F., 2024. Ruminating on soil carbon: applying current understanding to inform grazing management. Global Change Biology, 30(3), p.e17223. South America !!! Moojen, F.G., Bremm, C., Laca, E.A., Machado, D.R., Savian, J.V. and Carvalho, P.C.D.F., 2022. Herbage allowance and stocking method effect on grazing systems: Results of a long‐term experiment. Grass and Forage Science, 77(1), pp.45-54. The big one. Billman, E.D., Williamson, J.A., Soder, K.J., Andreen, D.M. and Skinner, R.H., 2020. Mob and rotational grazing influence pasture biomass, nutritive value, and species composition. Agronomy Journal, 112(4), pp.2866-2878. You, the owl-eared listener, may be here looking for the link to Andrew McGuire's blog with the heated discussion about soil organic matter, that Michael promised to post on the shownotes. Nothing heard on that score from Old Mr Reliability, so here's a link to McGuire's main page. Happy reading. Stop the press. This just in from Mr Last Minute. That's it. Well done on getting to the end. Toodle Pip. Have a good summer. See you at Groundswell? /episode/index/show/f70ec79d-4a0d-4d9c-b8be-f9feb667a381/id/41414300

Episode 11. One job, identifying roadkill, and he had to go and live in London. 04/30/2026

Episode 11. One job, identifying roadkill, and he had to go and live in London. Sorry, sorry, sorry. We were a couple of days late getting this one out. It's a busy time of year and Michael found it difficult to fit in all the preparation and research that he needs to do to for the podcast. You wouldn't believe the number of distressed listeners that messaged us, asking if we were OK. So, what to say about this one? We were brilliant on the first take; 45 minutes of pure gold. Then we found a "technical issue" and had to do it again. Second take; a lot of tension in the "studio". Third take; judge for yourselves. We have had a listen and cannot believe that none of the following words and phrases appear in the episode; symptoms, mental health, undiagnosed, broken, dysfunctional, impairment, childhood trauma, disorder, treatment, white coats, & oversized butterfly net. Stick with it listener, we promise that the science does finally arrive. We talk about two substantial pieces of work; two research papers that report long term grazing trials. Fajardo, M., Morgan, S.A., Chilibroste, P., Lee, M.R.F. and Rivero, M.J., 2025. Animal and pasture responses in contrasting temperate pasture-based cattle management systems: set-stocking versus cell grazing. animal, p.101635. and Andrade, B.O., Shropshire, A., Johnson, J.R., Redden, M.D., Semerad, T., Soper, J.M., Beckman, B., Milby, J., Eskridge, K.M., Volesky, J.D. and Schacht, W.H., 2022. Vegetation and animal performance responses to stocking density grazing systems in Nebraska Sandhills Meadows. Rangeland Ecology & Management, 82, pp.86-96. This is McGuire's blog page. Roots so Deep literature page. This is the Roth paper that looked at how cattle select leaf over stalk, when grazing grass. Roth, L.D., Rouquette Jr, F.M. and Ellis, W.C., 1990. Effects of herbage allowance on herbage and dietary attributes of Coastal bermudagrass. Journal of Animal Science, 68(1), pp.193-205. Futher reading for the nerds. A good review paper. Rouquette Jr, F.M., Sollenberger, L.E. and Vendramini, J.M., 2023. Grazing management and stocking strategy decisions for pasture-based beef systems: experimental confirmation vs. testimonials and perceptions. Translational Animal Science, 7(1), p.txad069. And good old Dr Wang. Wang, F., Apfelbaum, S.I., Thompson, R.L., Teague, R. and Byck, P., 2021. Effects of adaptive multiple paddock and continuous grazing on fine-scale spatial patterns of vegetation species and biomass in commercial ranches. Landscape Ecology, 36(9), pp.2725-2741. See you at Groundswell listener and don't forget to email in. It's Toodle Pip. /episode/index/show/f70ec79d-4a0d-4d9c-b8be-f9feb667a381/id/41079090

Episode 10. Winnie-the-Pooh, the c**tosphere, and a big box of explosives on the other parachute. 03/24/2026

Episode 9. Mr Tickle, a cloud of low energy photons and Tom Cruise is going to come round and punch you. 02/26/2026

Episode 8. A pirate, a confidence player and everyone’s right; animals are complicated. 01/28/2026

Episode 8. A pirate, a confidence player and everyone’s right; animals are complicated. Happy New Year listener. Eight episodes in (hard to believe for many reasons) and it’s a bit different this month. There's absolutely no big swears; there's a few mediums, but not the big one. And also because we talk about lots of research papers addressing two subjects; small cows and short tails in sheep. Listeners to Michael’s “exceptional value” Pasture Pod Patreon channel will have heard about these slightly niche topics before. Do smaller cows cause less damage to soil in pastures than heavier cows? Are the intakes of cows proportional to their weight? If you breed for short tails in sheep, will you impact lamb weights and spine lengths? These are the questions that keep Michael awake at night. We have an email address listener. It's Please email your questions for the authors of the papers that we have discussed. Subject to the restraining orders, we'll try to get them lined up for Episode 12. Feel free to email in with any other questions or suggestions. Please start your emails with this phrase, "Dear Michael, loving the show. You are my favourite. It's only a shame that the other one keeps interupting you. You're the best. I love you. Oh my goodness, you're so handsome." Michael doesn't read the show notes so it will be a lovely surprise for him and make everybody else's life that bit easier. See the Episode 7. shownotes for how to get in touch with Karin. The three papers on the ground effects of heavy vs light cows Fraser, M.D. and Vale, J.E., 2014. Breed type differences in hoof volume in beef suckler cows. The Future of European Grasslands, p.362. Negrón, M., López, I. and Dörner, J., 2019. Consequences of intensive grazing by dairy cows of contrasting live weights on volcanic ash topsoil structure and pasture dynamics. Soil and Tillage Research, 189, pp.88-97. Tuohy, P., Fenton, O., Holden, N.M. and Humphreys, J., 2015. The effects of treading by two breeds of dairy cow with different live weights on soil physical properties, poaching damage and herbage production on a poorly drained clay-loam soil. The Journal of Agricultural Science, 153(8), pp.1424-1436. Two books and a couple of papers on how much cows eat. The AFRC book Alderman, G. and Cottrill, B.R., 1996. Energy and protein requirements of ruminants. The review paper that says that the AFRC books under estimates beef cow intakes and needs revisions. Cabezas-Garcia, E.H., Lowe, D. and Lively, F., 2021. Energy requirements of beef cattle: Current energy systems and factors influencing energy requirements for maintenance. Animals, 11(6), p.1642. The paper from french France that says that Paul's cows are the best. Sepchat, B., D'hour, P. and Agabriel, J., 2017. Production laitière des vaches allaitantes: caractérisation et étude des principaux facteurs de variation. INRAE Productions Animales, 30(2), pp.139-152. The INRA book. Noziere, P., Sauvant, D. and Delaby, L., 2018. INRA feeding system for ruminants (pp. 640-p). Wageningen Academic Publishers. Order it from your local independent book seller or; Moving on to short tails in sheep. The webinar that started it all for Michael. Hannah’s paper. Hummelchen, H., Wagner, H., Brügemann, K., König, S. and Wehrend, A., 2025. Effects of Breeding for Short‐Tailedness in Sheep on Parameters of Reproduction and Lamb Development. Veterinary Medicine and Science, 11(1), p.e70138. Scobie, D.R., O’Connell, D., Morris, C.A. and Hickey, S.M., 2007. A preliminary genetic analysis of breech and tail traits with the aim of improving the welfare of sheep. Australian Journal of Agricultural Research, 58(2), pp.161-167. The South African one. Teubes, M., Cloete, S.W.P., Dzama, K. and Scholtz, A.J., 2023. Is there sufficient genetic variation to breed Elsenburg Merino sheep with shorter tails?. Animal Production Science, 63(11), pp.1043-1051. A big sample size in this one; 57,760 lambs. Hodge, M.J., Brown, D.J. and Walkom, S.F., 2025. Genetic evaluation of tail length in Australian sheep. In Proceedings of the AAABG 26th Conference (p. 407). Association for the Advancement of Animal Breeding and Genetics. Well done if you got this far. I’m going to have a lie down. /episode/index/show/f70ec79d-4a0d-4d9c-b8be-f9feb667a381/id/39907365

Episode 7. Folk dancing, pocket meat and the Malmo shipyards. 12/25/2025

Episode 7. Folk dancing, pocket meat and the Malmo shipyards. This festive episode comes out on 25th December 2025, so Happy blooming Christmas listener. If you're anything like me, the morning so far will have been; 1. Put the turkey in the oven around 06.00 hrs; 2. Check round the stock, 3. Get back to the house in time for a late morning snifter, 4. Check how the turkey is doing, 5. Turn the oven on, 6. Explain that Chistmas dinner is running late. There's some robust swearing in this one listener, including the big swear at around nineteen minutes in. Sorry about that. We know a lot of people don't like the big one, but think it's canonically justified in this case. We'll try to avoid it in the future. The original recording included my favourite ever Christmas joke, but Michael cut it out and burned the tape. I thought it was funny, but he explained that being funny isn't always enough to avoid being taken off air. We have exchanged Christmas presents. I don't understand why I received a £50 voucher for therapy, but Michael says that me not understanding that there is a problem is "just another symptom". Micheal has only very recently realised why he received a dictionary with the word "canonically" underlined. As promised, this month we're in Denmark and looking at Nitrogen transfers from legumes into grasses and herbs. Which legumes are good at fixing? Which are good at transfering Nitrogen to neighbouring plants? Which non legumes are good at acquiring the Nitrogen? Only one way to find out the answers listener. Actually, there is another way. If you just read the paper, you don't have to listen to the chaos and the big swear. Here it is. Pirhofer-Walzl, K., Rasmussen, J., Høgh-Jensen, H., Eriksen, J., Søegaard, K. and Rasmussen, J., 2012. Nitrogen transfer from forage legumes to nine neighbouring plants in a multi-species grassland. Plant and soil, 350(1), pp.71-84. Unfortunately, once again, it's behind a paywall. Sorry about that. I only realised at the last minute. Karin has very very kindly messaged us to say that if you want a copy of the full paper, she will send you one. You will need to email her on to request a copy. Our expertise in internet stalking of scientists revealed that this is where Karin works now. It's Weltacker Berlin and they all look like they are having fun. . Weltacker is a global agroecology demonstration and education organisation (the Berlin site was the first). They are not for profit (which definitely aligns them with our sort of farming). Check it out. . For the real nerds, who like an old reference. Fred EB, Baldwin IL, McCoy E (1932) Root nodule bacteria and leguminous plants. University of Wisconsin, Studies in Science. And our old mate Frank, FRANK, B. 1889. Ueber die Pilzsymbiose der Leguminosen. Ber. Deut. Bot. Gesell., 7: 332-346, 1889. And proving that scientists absolutely love citing themselves, the earlier work with just three species; Høgh-Jensen, H., 2006. The nitrogen transfer between plants: an important but difficult flux to quantify. Plant and Soil, 282(1), pp.1-5. Sheep / halal statistics. England and Wales slaughter statistics UK sheep slaughter numbers Scottish sheep numbers Northern Ireland sheep numbers /episode/index/show/f70ec79d-4a0d-4d9c-b8be-f9feb667a381/id/39480505

Episode 6. Free honey, a faraway look and a copious flow of mucus. 11/27/2025

Episode 5. Chain drives, mushroom tea and a professional. 10/29/2025

Episode 4. A fun guy, a great judge of character and a very interesting three years drawing moss. 09/24/2025

Episode 4. A fun guy, a great judge of character and a very interesting three years drawing moss. Do you like your agricultural scientific research sumarised in easily digestible form or described at length in mind numbing detail? Oh, OK, nevermind; how about this then? Have you ever asked yourself what happens to arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal mediated phosphate supply when stressed plants stop supplying sugar-like carbon molecules to the fungi? No? Seriously? Nevertheless, buckle up and welcome to the School of Biology at Leeds University, West Yorkshire. Eee by gum, ey up, etc. Michael makes a couragous attempt at humour, based on the marvelous premise that AMF (the phosphate supplying fungi) sounds a bit like EMF (the 90s band), but Paul doesn't understand what's happening and it falls a bit flat. We alienate another potential sponsor and the cats continue to carry the show. Links The main paper; Charters, M.D., Sait, S.M. and Field, K.J., 2020. Aphid herbivory drives asymmetry in carbon for nutrient exchange between plants and an arbuscular mycorrhizal fungus. Current Biology, 30(10), pp.1801-1808. Great judge of character, Professor Katie Field on The Infinite Monkey Cage, with Professor Brian Cox and popular fungus botherer Dr Merlin Sheldrake (not kidding). EMF doing their thing. The Swiss work on how AMF protects maize against pathogenic fungi. Lutz, S., Bodenhausen, N., Hess, J., Valzano-Held, A., Waelchli, J., Deslandes-Hérold, G., Schlaeppi, K. and van der Heijden, M.G., 2023. Soil microbiome indicators can predict crop growth response to large-scale inoculation with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. Nature Microbiology, 8(12), pp.2277-2289. The British Society of Soil Science webinar with Dr Anne Bhogal and Professor Richard Bardgett; see proper scientists putting themselves out there and talking to normal people. Don't tell Professor Bardgett (eminent respected academic, titan in his field, behemoth, etc), but Paul thinks that the evidence that biodiversity (species richness) causes agroecosystem productivity is weak, because he's been thinking about it for almost a year now. The paper about soil and bacteria and fungi and that sort of thing. Howe, J.A., McDonald, M.D., Burke, J., Robertson, I., Coker, H., Gentry, T.J. and Lewis, K.L., 2024. Influence of fertilizer and manure inputs on soil health: A review. Soil Security, 16, p.100155. The it's-a-network paper that shows unstressed plants transfering extra Carbon to AMF, which makes up for neighbouring stressed plants being a bit crap. Durant, E., Hoysted, G.A., Howard, N., Sait, S.M., Childs, D.Z., Johnson, D. and Field, K.J., 2023. Herbivore-driven disruption of arbuscular mycorrhizal carbon-for-nutrient exchange is ameliorated by neighboring plants. Current Biology, 33(12), pp.2566-2573. /episode/index/show/f70ec79d-4a0d-4d9c-b8be-f9feb667a381/id/38127200

Episode 3. French cigarettes, the Motown joke and there's someone Scottish that's really annoying me. 08/28/2025

Episode 2. Farmer jail, the first rule of ecology club and carry on with your dull stuff. 07/31/2025

Episode 2. Farmer jail, the first rule of ecology club and carry on with your dull stuff. We’re staying in Ireland for Episode 2 and talking about a research paper that looks at four different pasture types (permanent pasture, perennial ryegrass, a six species mixture and a twelve species mixtures) under grazing. They measured yields, nutritive value and how plant species persisted and it’s all fascinating stuff (it helps, if you keep telling yourself that). There’s more. Paul cries at a boat. Michael reveals his Joel Williams man-crush. And there’s four jokes. Here are the links. First things first; a link to a biograph of Fridtof Nansen. There’s loads of stuff about him on the interweb, but this one also gets you into The Polar Exploration Museum website (where the boat is). The main paper Shackleton, J., Boland, T.M., Kennedy, J., Grace, C., Beaucarne, G., Kirwan, S.F., Schmidt, O. and Sheridan, H., 2024. Annual and seasonal dry matter production, botanical species composition, and nutritive value of multispecies, permanent pasture, and perennial ryegrass swards managed under grazing. Grass and Forage Science, 79(4), pp.630-650. This is the Dee et al (2023) paper about how diversity (species richness) affects yields in grasslands. It's probably behind a paywall, but essentially they look at previous studies, take confounding factors into account, and integrate the results to get to a conclusion, which is; "Contrary to many prior studies, we estimate that increases in plot-level species richness caused productivity to decline: a 10% increase in richness decreased productivity by 2.4%.” Dee, L.E., Ferraro, P.J., Severen, C.N., Kimmel, K.A., Borer, E.T., Byrnes, J.E., Clark, A.T., Hautier, Y., Hector, A., Raynaud, X. and Reich, P.B., 2023. Clarifying the effect of biodiversity on productivity in natural ecosystems with longitudinal data and methods for causal inference. Nature Communications, 14(1), p.2607. Here’s the Raedts and Langworthy plantain paper. It’s behind a paywall. Sometimes if you Google the title, you can find a free copy on the interweb somewhere. If not, go to the next one. Raedts, P. and Langworthy, A., 2018. Establishing plantain in spring in existing perennial ryegrass pastures in northern Tasmania. Animal Production Science, 60(1), pp.114-117. This is the open access paper on establishing plantain. Bryant, R.H., Dodd, M.B., Moorhead, A.J., Edwards, P. and Pinxterhuis, I.J., 2019. Effectiveness of strategies used to establish plantain into existing pastures. Journal of New Zealand Grasslands, pp.131-138. /episode/index/show/f70ec79d-4a0d-4d9c-b8be-f9feb667a381/id/37565540

Episode 1. Five billion, there's no snakes in Ireland and an upside down graph. 06/26/2025

The Prologue; contract work, wild animals and he knows who he is. 06/26/2025

Cows and Effect

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