Recently we watched Clarkson’s Farm documentary. The series documents British personality Jeremy Clarkson’s attempts at running Diddly Squat Farm, a 1,000-acre farm in the Cotswold, England.

It was fascinating learning the details of running a large farm. Plus, the farm name intrigued me. If you’re not familiar with the word, it’s a slang term that means doing nothing.

I think Clarkson was making a play on words when he named the farm. He expected running it would be easy. In the end, he admitted farming was a lot more work than he thought.

The series, besides teaching me a lot about farming, debunked several farm animal myths.

  1. Cow tipping isn’t really a thing. Cow’s eyes are on the sides of their heads, they can see about three hundred degrees around them without moving which makes them very difficult to sneak up on. Plus, cows weigh 1,200 to 1,600 pounds. It would take a bunch of people to push one over, assuming they wouldn’t move out of your way in the first place.
  2. Brown cows do not make chocolate milk contrary to what my daddy told me when I was a kid. Interesting that seven percent of the American population believes the myth.
  3. Pigs are not dirty animals. They roll in the mud to cool off and protect themselves from the sun but actually prefer to be clean.
  4. Goats don’t eat tin cans. They may gnaw the tin can but they’re eating the label and glue, not the tin. Goats prefer what’s up high, like leaves and berries on trees, as well as grasses, weeds, and other things on the ground.
  5. Roosters only crow at sunrise. Wrong they crow all the time, not just at sunrise. Their “cock-a-doodle-doo” asserts dominance, warns of danger, and communicates with their flock.

We see lots of cows and horses in the pastures as we drive into town for shopping and activities. My respect and understanding of what the farmers and ranchers go through increased dramatically for them after watching the series. I am disappointed that brown cows don’t make chocolate milk, though.

I recommend Clarkson’s Farm series on Amazon. It’s entertaining, informative, and filled with some laugh-out-loud moments. Watching it might debunk some of your farming myths too.