COWS can love, play games, bond and form life-long friendships. They can also sulk, hold grudges, they have preferences and can be vain.

All these characteristics and more have been observed, documented, interpreted and retold by Rosamund Young, based on her experiences looking after the family farm's herd at Kite's Nest Farm in Snowshill Road, Broadway.

The farm has long been regarded as a trailblazer of the organic movement worldwide, inspiring many to take up the organic cause.

The Young family was visited by Prince Charles when he was setting up his organic unit at Highgrove House, further across the Cotswolds.

"Here, the cows, sheep, pigs and hens all roam free," Miss Young said. "There is no forced weaning, no separation of young from siblings or mother.

"They seek and are given help when they request it and with only supplementary feed during the winter they eat from meadow and verge, even searching out willow and other medicinal plants when ill."

Her Secret Life of Cows promises to be a fascinating insight into a secret world. Secret because intensive farming has rendered such natural behaviour unprofitable, unimportant and out of place in modern farming practice.

But she argues that compassion in farming makes sound and economical as well as ethical sense.

The Secret Life of Cows, to be published by Farming Books and Videos Ltd in June, is not only a study of cow behaviour including self-medication, family and herd relationships, physical communication, grieving and playing, but will make for a highly readable and poignant study littered with anecdotes that will cause readers to laugh, wonder and reflect, and certainly look at the domestic cow in a different light.