Credit: Claire Gunning
When Pine Plains resident Claire Gunning arrived at Ronnybrook Farm on Monday afternoon, she found that everything was business as usual. There were no cars parked for miles alongside the roadways and no crowds anxiously staring at the sun. Instead, the farm crew was busy cleaning the barn. The cows, unaware of the coming eclipse, were preoccupied with lunch.
On April 8, Pine Plains witnessed a partial solar eclipse, with the moon obscuring about 94% of the sun. Cloud cover at the peak of the eclipse, which occurred at 3:26 p.m., meant the event went largely unnoticed — especially by the cows.
Although for a brief moment just 6% of the sun was visible, its intensity was sufficient to maintain daylight, preventing cows from showing signs of distress or confusion, such as mistaking the moon’s shadow for nightfall and returning to their barns.
“The cows seemed quite relaxed; some even laying down,” said Gunning, a member of the Herald staff. “When we approached, they didn’t even get up to greet us.”
As Gunning and her husband, Jay Osofsky, waited, special eclipse glasses in hand, for the sun, moon and Earth to align, they aligned themselves with the open barn doors to observe any change in behavior the eclipse might trigger in the cows.
“They just stayed where they were,” said Gunning.
At Chaseholm Farm, owner and operator Sarah Chase reported a similar lack of spectacle among the dairy cows. “They did absolutely nothing unusual,” Chase said. “Just being cows!”
“We did notice that the dairy staff kept coming out to check on the progress of the eclipse, and then they would all go back in,” said Gunning. “I think the groups were cycling in and out periodically. That was the most eclipse-related activity that we noticed.”