Cows are used by humans for many reasons. Cows are excellent sources of meat, milk and leather clothing, but there is one product which comes from cows which is rather less well known - the cowskin rug.

Cowskin rugs make excellent blankets as they provide lots of warmth if draped over someone. They have been used as such by indigenous people for hundreds of years. Today, in sophisticated society, cowskin rugs are mostly used for decoration as there are better materials available to make blankets from, and places which have cow hides to spare tend to be warm anyway. Cowskin rugs are even considered stylish in some parts of the world, particularly Texas, Canada and Australia. All of these countries have lots of cows, and thus more hides than they know what to do with. As with any issue of style, some people like them, some don't. However, enough people like them in these places, that one can easily buy cowskin rugs there.

The Fort Worth Stockyards in Texas are quite possibly the best place on earth to buy a cowskin rug. Due to the industrial usage of cows by Armour and other meat plants, there are many cow hides left at the end of the slaughtering process. The stockyards offer three choices of cowskin rug vendors, which is three more than this Researcher has ever seen anywhere else. A rug runs for about $225 US there at time of writing.

It's not as easy to buy cowskin rugs via the World Wide Web - a search of E-Bay revealed no cowskin rugs for sale. It is probable you will have to patronise an Australian source to obtain a rug. The Blue Mountains region of Australia, an hour's drive west of Sydney, has at least one gift shop which advertises these things, for as low as AUS$360.

Cowskin rugs look remarkably like cows themselves. Their undersides are treated so as not to decay, but their top sides still have the original hair, and occasionally even a brand mark¹.

A cowskin rug is about the size of a king-size mattress, but is an irregular shape due to the bits which used to be the beast's legs and underside sticking out, so if it is being used as a throw or a blanket, make sure it covers the area with quite a bit to spare. Also, allow lots of ventilation, unless you really like the smell of leather, although it does apparently fade away after a year. And take care when entertaining; in a small statistical sample of non-Texans and non-Australians, opinions were evenly divided on whether newly purchased cowskin rugs smelled like a dead animal carcass or like the fabled 'new car smell'.