Hiking to the Alps with cows. Every year the Swiss bring their cows to the Alps. But Why?

Every year thousands of Swiss farmer's walk near cows from their Winter pastures in The Valley to The mountains to spend the summer. This is a tradition that has been going on for hundreds of years even before Switzerland was a country. But why? Today one of the local farmers invited me to help a bring cows from this Valley up into the mountains. I was like yeah that sounds pretty cool. So I was given a special shirt And told to bring some earplugs. The shirt is a traditional herds men's shirt. Everybody today is wearing white. But other traditional colors are blue or green. And generally they have some sort of embroidery. This one has some flowers and the name of a town. Which is actually the name of the town right behind me here. It also has a pretty sweet hood. Oh yeah. It didn't take me long to figure out what the air plugs were for. Earlier that morning the farmer had switched out the cows normal Bells for these massive Bells. And they are super loud. We leave the farm and head right down through the center of the city. The older cows that have made this trip multiple times a lead the way followed by the younger cows leaving the very youngest cows in the very back. But where are we going and why are we going there. About 35% of Switzerland's farmland is high up on the mountains in what is considered the Alpine. So it make sense to have your cows graze this steep hard to access mountain sides and leave the valleys for growing crops and harvesting hay. But there's a problem. In the summer these pastors are generally pretty warm. But in the Winter it's like the North Pole. And cows don't like the North Pole. So farmers started bringing their cows to the mountains in the summer and bringing them back down to the relatively warm valleys in the Winter. And here we have the reason that farmers bring their cows up to the mountains in the summer and walk them back down to the valleys in the fall. But these are not just any old cows. These are dairy cows. Meaning they have to be milked twice A-day 7 days a week no breaks. It's just simply way too far to walk back-and-forth twice A-day to milk your cows. So the farmers and everybody else working with the cows would move up to the Alps And would stay there throughout the summer. So traditionally This is not just another days with some cows walking by your house this is saying good bye to a large portion of your community As they leave for the summer. Nowadays with modern fencing and milk machine there are not as many people needed to take care of these cows but even to day people will be living up on the mountain with these cows. And now we have a nother problem. We have farmers way up on the mountain milking their cows twice A-day with no one to drink the milk. Nowadays we have trucks cable cars and helicopters getting the milk down the mountain is no big deal. But back in the day that was no easy task. So if you can't carry it down the mountain and you can't drink it all what do you do? You make it into cheese. Switzerland's one true love. After a little over 3 hours of walking we reached the pastures where these cows will be spending the summer. We remove the enormous Bells and it's Time for me to head home. If you enjoyed this video hit that like button and leave a comment. It helps you to know that this video is worth watching. And if you would like to see more videos by us just he had that subscribe button. Thanks for watching.