Caring for Cattle Expands the Mind of a Neuroscientist

Before embarking on a tour of his 85-acre property, Berns advises his visitor to change into a pair of knee-high gumboots. “It’s muddy,” he says. “And there’s a lot of ticks this year.” 

Gus darts ahead as Berns sets off through the pine forest on his land, which rolls down toward a creek. The U.S. Forestry Service prepared a management plan for Berns to maintain the trees through selective logging and controlled burns of underbrush.  

Berns squelches through the mud back up the hill where a workshop houses a tractor and no-till drill.

“One of the fundamental tenets of regenerative agriculture is don’t till up the soil,” he says. “Traditional seeding is a violent process that destroys the soil structure and makes the topsoil prone to erosion.” 

In contrast, metal disks on the no-till drill slice the soil and the plant residue, insert seeds and then tamp the soil and organic matter back down.  

Berns strives to provide fresh grass and other crops for his cows to graze on nearly year-round. In turn, the cows provide manure that improves the soil.

“I’ve become an expert on grass out of necessity,” Berns says, as he plucks a sprig from the ground. “This is ryegrass. It’s a cool season grass famed for its rapid growth.”

He balances the ecosystem through crop rotation. Daikon radish is known for deep taproots that penetrate the hardpan of the fields. Clover, a legume, can pull nitrogen out of the air and make it available to other plants. And nitrogen is like steroids for bermudagrass, which thrives in the warm season.

The tour continues past a small vegetable garden, then down to a barn and an open-air pen where around a dozen chickens keep nests when they are not free-ranging.

“We have two roosters right now, but they're beginning to fight, so one of them will likely go into a soup pot,” Berns says. “Living on a farm, you become really conscious of where your food comes from.”

Finally, Berns leads the way into a pasture and the main attraction: the herd of 10 miniature Zebu. The cattle breed originated in South Asia and is distinguished by droopy ears, a hump of fat on its shoulders and a dewlap — loose flesh hanging from the neck. The miniature variety reaches a maximum height of 3.5 feet at the withers.

The animals amble toward Berns, slowly enveloping him in a giant cow cuddle as he sinks to his knees in the grass.

“This is Ethel,” Berns says, as he rubs a grayish-white cow’s neck. “And this is Walker,” he adds, as he pats a calf the same color as Ethel, his mom.  

A brown calf named Cricket nuzzles Berns’ back. “Cricket here is getting jealous because I’m giving attention to Walker,” Berns explains. “I’m not feeding them anything. This is just for pets and lovin’.”

Berns kneels next to a full-grown, gray-dappled male and another of Ethel’s offspring.

“This is B.B., the number one cowpuppy. We have this little thing where he puts his head on my shoulder and gives me licks,” Berns says, grinning as B.B. slurps the side of his face. “That’s how he shows affection.”

In his book, Berns writes about how he forged a deep bond with his herd, as he learned each of their distinct personalities while helping them to give birth, grow and stay healthy. He senses a wide range of human emotions in them and finds their presence therapeutic.

He describes leaning against the hulk of a cow chewing its cud in the evenings while he marvels at the stars. “Whenever I felt the weight of life’s challenges, I sought out the cows,” Berns writes. “I often found myself drifting off into a meditative state after these sessions. I felt relaxed in a way that I hadn’t before.”

It probably goes without saying that none of Berns’ cows will ever wind up as hamburgers or steaks. And, yet, Berns is not a vegetarian. Instead, he advocates for more mindful — and minimal — consumption of meat.

“People have always eaten cows and they will continue to do so,” he says. “But cows should be managed in a more humane way to give them the best possible life, even if they are headed for the dinner table.”

There are about 101 million cows in the United States, one for every three people, Berns notes. Ninety percent of these cows are destined for beef. Calves are separated from their mothers and raised on industrialized feedlots known as concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs. The CAFOs, some of them teeming with more than 100,000 animals, are designed to fatten cows quickly so they can be slaughtered after they reach 12 months.

“Do industrialized feedlots and meat-packing plants care about the mental well-being of these animals? Probably not,” Berns says. “But I think that an increasing number of consumers are starting to care about the welfare of the animals that they eat.”

The farm life didn’t just turn Berns into a cow person. A self-described introvert, he has also become more of a people person.

“My wife won’t go to the farm store with me anymore because I end up staying there an hour or more talking to people. It’s like ‘Green Acres,’” he says, referring to the 1970s sitcom about a lawyer and his wife who leave Manhattan to become farmers in a rural area. 

“I have more friends here and know more people better than I ever did living in Atlanta,” Berns says. “I’ve been surprised at the common ground I’ve found with my neighbors. Fundamentally, what people care about is community and family and the natural resources that we have here. They want to get to know their neighbors and they look out for each other. I really like that. It’s not something that I’ve experienced anywhere else that I’ve lived.”

Berns dedicated his book to Ken Peek, a retired pastor, Vietnam War veteran and cattleman who is his closest neighbor.

“Before moving to the farm, I could not have imagined someone more different from me than Ken,” Berns writes.

After three years of Peek helping him learn the ropes of raising cattle and maintaining a healthy farm, Berns now considers Peek his best friend.

Whether human to human or human to cow, face-to-face contact is key to the quality of relationships, Berns says, an understanding that is eroding in a digital world.

“I don’t care how much texting or whatever else you do with your family and friends online. I don’t believe that it’s possible to have the depth of connection you can have from face-to-face interactions,” he says. “I’m going to ban phones in my Psychology of Sustainability class.”

Story, photos and video by Carol Clark.