D&D 5E Can You Milk A Conjured Cow?

[embee]

This question came up this week. My general ruling was "yes, by rules, the conjured cow can be milked. Milking isn't a hostile action, doesn't break concentration, and won't drop it to 0hp.

Now, the cow is, by rules, a fey creature in that it is a fey spirit that has taken the form of a beast (a cow). So that is another consideration. Also, it isn't food/drink that is being offered. It is being taken without invitation.

A) Do you think that a conjured cow could be milked?
B) If so, what would the effect of consuming fey food (in this case, milk) while in the Material Plane?

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Owner: Take this object, but beware it carries a terrible curse...
Homer: [worried] Ooooh, that's bad.
Owner: But it comes with a free Frogurt!
Homer: [relieved] That's good.
Owner: The Frogurt is also cursed.
Homer: [worried] That's bad.
Owner: But you get your choice of topping!
Homer: [relieved] That's good.
Owner: The toppings contains Potassium Benzoate.
[Homer stares, confused]
Owner: That's bad.

Can I go now?

While I hadn't considered that conjuring an animal could or would be influenced by common farming practices...

I just assumed that it conjures an animal as it would be in nature.

This is really up to the DM. More and more, I like the idea of a fairy cow giving you magical milk....that isn't really milk.

Side note:
There are probably stats for a 'bull'. They can be a bit more dangerous than a cow. I might give them warhorse stats, change the charge to a gore attack and reduce their speed. So they'd be a separate 'summoning' for the purposes of a spell, I think.

Edited stuff.

A cow is a domesticated animal. I don't think a druid should be able to summon one in the first place.

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

For most species this would be the case. For better or worse, there haven't been cows in nature for a few hundred years. And even if the wild ones were around, it's questionable if they would be considered the same species. I guess another question for the DM is "how specific can you be with the breed?"

So, out of curiosity, I googled the amount of time a water Buffalo lactates in its life to get an idea of how often a ‘wild’ cow would lactate. With a super quick search (because everything on the internet is true), I found this:

The average lactation length ranged from 252 to 270 days. As a result of these factors the productive life of a dairy buffalo is only 39% of its total life, compared to a stunning 52% in developed modern dairy cattle breeds (Ganguli, 1981; Sastry et al., 1988)

So a modern dairy cow is only lactating for half its life. Pretty good odds but not guaranteed.

The more important factor goes back to a previous comment: this is exactly the ‘real life’ knowledge that really isn’t necessary in a game.