A cow, a cow! My kingdom for a cow!

What's happened, what's current; or what's coming ... and why an Australian cow is important

Shakespeare knew a lot about frustration, need, urgency, and despair. He expresses all these emotions in two sentences. Despite Shakespeare portraying King Richard as a deformed, villainous tyrant, his lines were immortalized in one of the greatest battle scenes of all times, whether fact or fiction.

In William Shakespeare’s play Richard III, in act 5 scene 4 during an intense battle on horseback, King Richard III of England is fighting The Earl of Richmond’s men at the Battle of Bosworth in Leicester on 22 August 1485. It’s an historical battle in the War of the Roses. King Richard is fighting to retain his crown, his country, and his life. His strong, swift, white horse is killed from underneath him, and Richard, thrown to the ground, fights on bravely, killing five men. Nevertheless, he is horseless and hopeless. He knows that, without a horse, all will be lost.  He will lose his reign. He will lose his life.

King Richard III is an obvious target now. His enemy the Earl of Richmond takes advantage of Richard’s vulnerability, and charges, hoping to usurp him to become Henry Tudor, the future King Henry VII of England. The suspense is tense. Richard sees his ally Catesby trying to help. He shouts to Catesby that he desperately, urgently, needs a horse before Richmond is upon him. A horse – the one thing that could save his life and save his country. He shouts in extreme despair for Catesby to get him a horse: “A horse, a horse! My kingdom for a horse!”

The tension breaks. Richard is dead. The powerful Tudor dynasty begins and reigns for a hundred years to 1603 – with Henry VII, Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I, and finally, Elizabeth I.

Why does my article heading mention a cow when I’m writing about a horse? Apart from the fact that the loss of a horse brought down a king and 331 years of the French royal house of Plantagenets, it’s because I’m writing about a need, an urgent need. But not of a noble horse. Instead, an urgent need for a peaceful, unassuming, slow-moving, cud-chewing cow.

In 2010, I wrote about the need of Pakistan household farmers for a cow. It was a chapter, “Literacy and Cows” in my novel Kashmir on a Knife-Edge after working in Pakistan-administered Kashmir in 2002. In my role as education consultant, I worked in rural communities. Small-scale farmers, knowing that I was Australian, asked not for education aid, but an urgent need for a big, fat, high production dairy cow. “A cow, a cow! My kingdom for a cow!” they bellowed dramatically, for they all knew Shakespeare’s Richard III.

Not just any cow. They wanted an Australian Holstein Friesian cow – a HF cow. A Pakistan cow produces, on average, two litres of milk a day. Most small-scale farmers only have one cow, so two litres is not enough for their children’s needs, and they supplement it with powdered milk.

The Australian Holstein Friesian cow is a high milk producer, accounting for 70% more milk production than other breeds of cattle. But there is an alternative to an Australian HF cow.

It’s an Australian Friesian Sahiwal cow, a cross-breed of dairy cattle from the 1960s. The Australian Government imported Sahiwal cattle, a Zebu breed, from Pakistan in the early 1950s. It originated in the Punjab province, a dry region of Pakistan on the border with India, and a good cow in terms of milk production that could tolerate heat. The Australians wanted the Sahiwal as a dual-purpose breed – for milk and beef – but now primarily only for beef production for the Australian market because its milk production is nowhere near the production of the HF cow). However, cross-breeding led to an ideal cow for Pakistan. Tick resistant, heat tolerant, with the propensity for a long life, and being a reasonably high milk producer, the Sahiwal cow was ideal to cross breed  with the Holstein Friesian, the queen of all milk cows.

The Queensland Government in Australia crossed the Holstein cattle (Bos taurus) with the Pakistan Sahiwal (Bos indicus) to get the Australian Friesian Sahiwal.

The issue now, is that the Australian Friesian Sahiwal breed is not common in Pakistan, nor can it meet the needs of a large population in a vast land of snow-filled mountains and flood-prone plains. For a one-cow family, this foreign cow is prohibitive. Only wealthy farmers have the means to import the Australian Friesian Sahiwal breed into Pakistan.

Back in Pakistan this year in 2024, again for an education consultancy, I hear the repeated plea from small-scale farmers and heads of households, “A cow, a cow! My household for a cow!” with the same frustration, need, and urgency expressed in 2002, but without the despair.

Maybe a bit of despair. How, they tell me, can their children learn in school if they don’t have their daily milk? How indeed! How now, Australian cow!