Consequently, if the price control is strictly enforced, some would-be buyers will be excluded entirely. (This shortfall, of course, would probably have been far greater in a large market.) For these individuals, the 21-hen legal "price" is a mere fiction, since they cannot buy a cow for 21 hens or any other legal price. By their subjective value scales, they are clearly worse off than they would have been without price controls, since they can no longer arrange an advantageous exchange. (Ironically, some of them might very well have lobbied for the policy in question.) Furthermore, it matters not how desperately a given buyer needs a cow, for a buyer to whom a cow has higher monetary value is just as apt to be left out as a more marginal buyer. The good's availability is no longer determined by market means, but rather by political or accidental circumstances—whether one happens to know a cow owner personally, whether one can bribe or otherwise extract personal favors from an owner, and so on.
Not only buyers, but sellers as well are adversely affected. Since cows can now be supplied and produced only in smaller quantities, cow producers are deprived of a portion of their livelihood. In addition, those who provide factors of production for the good, such as livestock-feed producers or ranch workers, will lose much of their livelihood.
If the price ceiling is later lifted, then the price will eventually return to its free-market level, although it may be bid artificially high during a transition period, until the structure of production can be corrected to meet consumer needs efficiently again. 
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