Interesting weather predictors

This area's economy until about 40 years ago was based on agriculture. There were farms everywhere. Most of them were apple farms, but there were lots of cattle and sheep being farmed as well.

With animal farming, and farming in general there are lots of legends or myths that occur. But lately I've been wondering if much of this folklore isn't based in fact?

For example - if cows are all lying down in a field - and field after field you pass has cows lying down, does that really mean it's going to rain? Well lately I've seen an awful lot of cows lying down as I've been driving around, and had an awful lot of rain on my windshield, or my windows...or my head as I'm trying to bring in some fire wood. Makes me wonder, are the cows right?

And then there's the one about the banded woolly bears - a black and orange striped caterpillar that is supposed to predict the kind of winter we're supposed to get in the coming winter - lots more orange in the middle means (I think) cold and snowy winter - less orange  could mean a short bit of snow and relatively mild. Grey or brown with no stripes - mild and snowy/wet, all orange with a tiny bit of black on the front - snow and cold forever....So far I've seen banded woolly bears with all of the above - so I'm completely confused? Are we supposed to have a cold snowy wet mild long short winter? Perhaps you know?

Thick coats on lambs and horses? Cold winter ahead.

Thick coats on my dogs and cats - I'm going to have a lot of vacumming to do but not necessarily be able to ski.

All fun to speculate on. And I'll keep watching the fields of cows... just to see and check the woolly bears as well..

Hope you have fun today speculating on something as unimportant as whether cows lying in a field mean rain, or whether the woolly bears really predict winter weather. I figure I'm pretty lucky to have nothing more serious to think about - for now anyway. And the cows made a pretty picture on that grey day - and yes it did rain.