Holstein cows

[szDave]

Hello,

For the farmer who takes care to keep them cool, providing them with high-energy feed, and milking them regularly, Holstein cows are producing an average of 2,275 gallons of milk each per year.

a) providing them with high-energy feed, and milking them regularly, Holstein cows are producing
b) providing them with high-energy feed, and milked regularly, the Holstein cow produces
c) provided with high-energy feed, and milking them regularly, Holstein cows are producing
d) provided with high-energy feed, and milked regularly, the Holstein cow produces
e) provided with high-energy feed, and milked regularly, Holstein cows will produce

What does providing them refer to, or why is it/isn't correct compared to provided with them? Please give me some explanation about the correct answer, thanks!

[hemant_rajput]

Hello,

For the farmer who takes care to keep them cool, providing them with high-energy feed, and milking them regularly, Holstein cows are producing an average of 2,275 gallons of milk each per year.

a) providing them with high-energy feed, and milking them regularly, Holstein cows are producing
b) providing them with high-energy feed, and milked regularly, the Holstein cow produces
c) provided with high-energy feed, and milking them regularly, Holstein cows are producing
d) provided with high-energy feed, and milked regularly, the Holstein cow produces
e) provided with high-energy feed, and milked regularly, Holstein cows will produce

What does providing them refer to, or why is it/isn't correct compared to provided with them? Please give me some explanation about the correct answer, thanks!

c,d and e are out because of missing pronoun. "Provided with" seems to refer to farmer not to cow.

Now between a and b , b violates parallelism so IMO "a" is correct choice.

What is oa?

[szDave]

OA E

[GMATGuruNY]

Check my posts here:

https://www.beatthegmat.com/holstein-cows-t152122.html

[ceilidh.erickson]

The difference between PROVIDING and PROVIDED is a difference in what is being modified.

If we say hypothetically, "The farmer keeps the cows cool, providing them with air conditioning," then PROVIDING is an adverbial modifier, and it's modifying the entire clause that came before it. In this example, it's explaining HOW the farmer keeps his cows cool.

The sentence we're actually given, though, says: For the farmer who takes care to keep them cool, providing them with high-energy feed... It doesn't make sense here for "providing them with feed" to modify "keep them cool" (unless it was magical body-cooling feed!). So, we don't want this to be an adverbial modifier. PROVIDING doesn't work here. We can eliminate A and B.

Instead, it must be the case that PROVIDE is not modifying what the farmer is doing, but modifying the cows. Consider this hypothetical sentence: The farmer kept the cows cool, dry, and happy. These are 3 adjectives describing the cows. Past participles such as PROVIDED can function just like adjectives here. So the sentence reads:
For the farmer who takes care to keep them cool, provided..., and milked..., Holstein cows...

We need PROVIDED to be parallel to MILKED, so we can eliminate C.

Between D and E, there are 2 issues: verb tense and singular/plural. In this context, we're talking about cause/effect situations that are true in general, so we could actually use the present tense or the future tense. Consider:
If you study, you succeed.
If you study, you will succeed.
Both of these are correct. The same idea applies here - we could use present or future.

So the real issue must be singular/plural. We notice that in the non-underlined portion, we have "keep them cool," so we have to use the plural "Holstein cows."

The answer is E.

[ceilidh.erickson]

c,d and e are out because of missing pronoun. "Provided with" seems to refer to farmer not to cow.

This would only be true if it made sense for "providing and milking" to modify HOW the farmer was keeping the cows cool. But that's not what they're giving us information about, so that must not be the correct modifier. It makes more sense to have them modify the cows.

If PROVIDED and MILKED are modifying cows, we don't need to use the pronoun THEM again. Essentially, this sentence is saying, "Farmers take care to keep them 1) cool, 2) provided, and 3) milked."