Whenever I post pictures or videos of the cows grazing solar, we are told, with absolute confidence, that cattle CANNOT graze on solar farms. It’s a real headscratcher for me, since we have, in fact, been doing just that. But we’re obviously wrong. Because obviously the cattle WILL destroy the panels, they WILL rip out the wires, they WILL knock over the equipment, and probably dismantle the entire electrical grid and plunge the Eastern Seaboard into darkness while they’re at it. One cow gets a little unruly and we’ve got Mad Max with a little more manure. Now, here’s the thing: as is the case with all dumb comments, there is a little bit of truth there: some cows WOULD do all those things. If you unload a trailer full of cattle that have never seen an electric fence, that aren’t used to being around humans, into a solar array, if you turn them loose and just hope for the best…yeah. You might have a few problems. Which is why we don’t do that. We train our cattle to respect hot wire. We introduce them to fencing in controlled environments, on our pastures back home. We consider their temperament, as well as their stocking density and grazing rotations, with attention to their surroundings. We don’t open the barn door, slap Tina on the ass, and tell her to get out there and enjoy that good clean American energy. It’s called livestock management. And I know this may come as a shock, but different farms can manage the same species of livestock with wildly different results. A cow that has never respected a fence could very well make a mess of a solar array. But a cow like Tina here, who has been properly trained and managed, can graze without incident. Does it mean there’s no risk? Of course not. Cattle are large animals with the occasional decision-making ability of a shopping cart with a broken wheel. But that’s why we manage them. We monitor them. We adjust our behaviors accordingly. Humans have spent generations figuring out how to graze cattle around roads, buildings, expensive equipment, and other things we’d rather they didn’t destroy. Just because YOUR cows might destroy everything doesn’t mean OURS will. Your management is not my management, Linda. And respectfully, we don’t need a 47-comment explanation of what your cousin’s neighbor’s sister’s bull did to a gate in 1998 to understand how cattle behave. We can see it for ourselves.