Life Of A Cow

Did you know that Cows do not continuously produce milk?

Like humans, Cows only begin to produce milk after they have given birth. A Cow’s milk is vital for her calves just like a dog’s milk is for her puppies, a cat’s milk is for her kittens, a goat’s milk is for her kids, and a human mother’s milk is for her baby.

Cheese, ice cream, yogurt and butter are made from milk that is intended for a Cow’s baby. When a Cow’s milk is taken away for human use, it is stolen from her infant.

Let’s Start with Defining Some Terms

Cow – Females usually over the age of two who have born at least one calf

Calf – Young animals usually under the age of nine months for males, and under the age of two for females

Heifer – Female calves under the age of two who have not yet born their first calf

Bull – Male calves over the age of nine months used for breeding

Cows are Thinking and Feeling Mothers

Cows and humans have a lot in common. First, they are both mammals which comes from the Latin word for “breast.” Once pregnant, Cows and humans carry their babies for nine months, and after birth, the newborns are fed their mother’s milk. These early years of receiving milk and the tender care from their mothers are essential for nurturing the minds and bodies of humans and Cows. In fact, Cow and human brains are very similar which means Cows have the same capacity to feel, think, develop deep love and bonds with their children. Cows experience emotions like humans.

For example, have you ever had difficulty learning something? Perhaps it was calculus or maybe geometry? If you worked very hard, it’s likely that you eventually got it. You may have had an “aha!” moment. Cows feel the joy and sense of accomplishment you felt when you worked diligently to learn something new.[1] In one study, Cows were taught to press a button to open a gate to a delicious treat. Cows who learned to do this had higher heart rates and moved more quickly toward the treat than those who were simply given the treat. This indicates that Cows experience emotional “aha!” moments, inspiration, and satisfaction like we do when they succeed.

Cows also feel the rainbow of emotions that we do: fear,[2] apprehension,[3] excitement,[4] joy, love, and happiness.[5] They communicate through vocalizations, ear postures,[6] and they look with their eyes! Also similar to humans, when Cows experience stress, they become pessimistic and depressed and can detect stress in others.[7]

Cows are wonderful, fiercely protective mothers who immediately after birth form strong bonds with their babies. The first few hours after birth are spent nursing and licking her baby.[8] Cows communicate with their babies using vocal cues, and calves learn to recognize their mother’s voice.[9] At the same time, the mother is building her baby’s sense of emotional and physical security similar to how human parents interact with their children.

When calves are taken away from their mothers, the mothers show signs of distress for days.[10],[11], [12] And because the bond is so strong, the calves express severe signs of distress after they are torn from their mothers. Both mother and calf feel extreme anxiety and fear which is expressed vocally, by calls of distress  and both mother’s and baby’s hearts race as they call and look for one another.

Given the choice, a mother will groom and nurse her baby after birth, alternating between staying close together and hiding her baby while she goes out foraging for grass. As the baby grows, mother and calf will spend time playing with other calves, but stay close to their mother for almost a year, before weaning naturally.[13],[14], [15]

The dairy industry completely destroys this natural and beautiful relationship. The REAL life of a Cow is nothing like what the dairy industry portrays.

Reproduction

Let’s go back to the beginning. We now know that Cows don’t produce milk naturally, and that they need to give birth to give milk, how does that happen? What is the birds and bees of the dairy industry?

Cows used in the milk industry do not become pregnant by naturally engaging in intercourse with a bull. Instead, semen is manually collected from the bull, and injected into the Cow.

The most common practice to collect semen is called electroejaculation. The practice was developed and perfected in guinea pigs, and performed in various other species before being used on bulls. The process involves inserting an electrical rod into the anus of the bull and alternating the stimulation between 30 and 60 volts every 3 to 5 seconds.[16] A rubber cone is applied to the penis of the bull, and with manual stimulation, the semen is collected. If the bull does not ejaculate, the bull is electrocuted again in 15 minute intervals. Not surprisingly, the bulls need to be restrained for this procedure. They vocalize, kick, struggle, and attempt to escape all while also demonstrating significant levels of progesterone indicating that it is very painful for them.[17]

Electroejaculation is so painful for bulls that it has been banned in The Netherlands and in Denmark. Despite that, it is used in most other Western countries.

The semen then needs to be artificially inseminated into the Cow. This procedure is so intrusive that it requires Cows to be restrained. The device used by the dairy industry to do that is a called a Rape Rack.[18] The Rape Rack is a narrow chute-like device where the Cow is held while a dairy worker inserts one arm into her anus, and the other arm used to insert a device called an Artificial Injection Gun (Gun) into her vagina. The Gun, which contains the semen from the bull, is pushed further until the Gun reaches her cervix, and then the semen is injected into her uterus.[19]

Once she is pregnant, she will spend the next 9 months of her life waiting until her baby is born, all the while not knowing that her baby will be immediately taken away from her.

When a calf is born, their gender will determine their fate in life.

Sons

Males calves are, frankly, useless to the dairy industry. While a few are kept for the purposes of producing semen for the impregnation of Cows, the vast majority need to be disposed of quickly because feeding them is a waste of time and money for dairy farmers.

In some cases, as a result of an industry that has not considered what to do with the babies who are stolen from their mothers, and because they have no financial value, many farmers end up killing male calves on their farms by bludgeoning them with hammers.[20]

In other cases, the calves are sold for veal, either white veal or red veal. White veal means that the calf was fed exclusively on milk or some form of milk replacer.[21] Red veal means that the calf was fed grains, hay, and other solid food in addition to milk.[22], [23]

Whether for red or white veal, calves are usually housed using heavy chains around their necks, are also put into veal crates, and are restricted from moving around, seeing the light of day, and often cannot even lay down. They are kept immobile so that their muscles do not develop. Calves are susceptible to countless diseases, they suffer from chronic indigestion and diarrhea, and also often suffer from painful digestive tract problems.[24]

Not only is their diet and movement severely restricted, but they suffer from severe anemia, and other forms of physiological and biochemical problems.[25] These baby animals also develop psychological problems that are often manifested through excessive licking, biting, and sucking[26]. They have nothing to do 24 hours a day until, at approximately 6 months of age, they are killed.

When calves are transported to slaughter, it is not uncommon for them to not even be able to walk. Their bodies are so weak, and their bone and muscle development almost non-existent, that many die during transport.[27]

All of this is done to ensure that their bodies, when eaten, meet the arbitrary determination of what the culinary industry has deemed to have the highest taste value.

Daughters

Female calves are destined to live the same life as their mothers. After they are torn from their mothers, they are kept in individual hutches for the first two months of their lives. The dairy industry claims that this is necessary to stop the spread of disease among the calves.[28]  However, the reality is that these social animals need contact with others. When given even just one companion, newborn calves are known to play,[29], [30] a behavior denied to the majority of calves who, because of this unnatural childhood, grow up cognitively impaired and afraid.[31], [32], [33]

After eight weeks, calves are housed in groups until they are old enough to be forcibly impregnated, at about one year of age.  They are then impregnated over and over again, usually three to four times in their lives. They are confined. They will never see the light of day. All of their babies are stolen from them. And when they can no longer produce the amount of milk they once could, usually at around six years of age,[34] they become a hamburger at a local fast food restaurant. It should be noted that Cows used for dairy are slaughtered well before the end of their natural lifespans, primarily because with increased milk yield resulting from intensive breeding for production traits, these Cows have experienced reduced fertility and a slew of health issues, sometimes even starving because they physically cannot consume enough food to accommodate for the calories they burn producing exorbitant amounts of milk.[35]

The REAL Life of a Cow

Housing

Most Cows never breathe fresh air, feel the sun on their backs, or graze in grassy pastures. Instead, the most common forms of housing for Cows worldwide are one of the following:

●      Tie-stall or Intensive Housing. In these systems Cows are tethered by their necks in a narrow stall year round, the size of which is barely enough for their own bodies. Cows cannot freely move around, turn around, and are restricted from social interaction with other Cows.[36]

●      Free-stall Housing. Cows are able to move around but are still kept in a fully enclosed space made up of several stalls side-by-side. The Cows may have access to some fresh air through windows, and may also have access to an indoor bedding area.[37]

●      Loose-stall Housing. Cows are kept untethered and are permitted to move around within a barn setting. They often have access to the outdoors.[38]

A 2013 study showed that tie-stall housing, which severely restricts natural behaviors, is the system used most extensively across the world. See “Tie-Stall Housing Chart by Country.[39]

Diseases

Cows who are used by the dairy industry suffer from chronic diseases, some which are also seen, albeit  in lower numbers, in human mothers. One example of this is mastitis. Mastitis affects a Cow's mammary glands, causing inflammation, pain, redness, fever, depression, and even death.[40] It stems from bacteria on the skin which infect the milk ducts, and can reduce milk supply. Mastitis is more prevalent when conditions are unsanitary, as they often are in the dairy industry. For this reason, among others, one in four Cows suffers from mastitis.[41] This is more than double the rate seen in humans.[42] While some forms of mastitis are minor to moderate, it is not unusual for mastitis in Cows to be left untreated, leading to severe pain.[43]

Another common disease caused by bacterial infection is metritis, an inflammation of the Cow’s uterus occurring within 21 days of giving birth.[44] Symptoms can include an abnormally enlarged uterus, a red-brown discharge, and signs of depression, anorexia, and decreased milk production.[45] Research suggests that almost one in three Cows suffer from metritis.[46]

Finally, almost one in five Cows used for dairy suffers from lameness, which in its most severe form prevents the Cow from being able to walk, leaving her unable to access food or water.[47] One study in Wales showed that 25% of Cows used for their milk were lame,[48] and a study of 225 Cows in Quebec, Canada found 245 separate foot lesions ranging from ulcers in 53% of the Cows to what is called “white zone diseases" in 83.3% of the Cows.[49] The causes of lameness are multifactorial, but suffice to say that the dairy industry has created this problem through breeding programs that prioritize production over well-being, unsanitary conditions, and overcrowding in indoor sheds.[50], [51], [52], [53]

Painful Practices

Cows in the dairy industry are regularly subjected to many painful procedures in the name of profit from switch trimming to the removal of teats to teat burning, which is too awful to fully describe herein. A few of the these practices, however, that will be described include tail docking, disbudding, and dehorning.

Tail docking is the painful procedure of literally cutting off the tail of a Cow, and is still a common practice in the dairy industry, despite both the Canadian and American Veterinary Medical Associations opposition to the practice.[54] This practice began in the early 1900s in New Zealand, and became common in North America in the 1980s because workers did not want to get hit by a Cow’s tail, and because it was assumed that it would keep the Cows cleaner. The assumption of cleanliness has been disproven repeatedly.[55], [56], [57]

Dehorning and Disbudding. Cows, calves, and bulls all naturally have horns. Like all horned animals, those horns play an important role in helping an animal to fit within the social hierarchy of their herd.[58] Horns are also part of each Cow’s distinguishing characteristics, their stature, how they are perceived by other Cows, and are used in matters of relationship management and for grooming.[59]

Dehorned herds often have more aggressive behavior, as horns are important tools in determining where each member of the herd fits into the overall social structure.[60]

Horns, however, are seen as problematic in the dairy industry, so the industry removes them - this is called dehorning for adults, and disbudding for calves. Dehorning is a process whereby a Cow is restrained, and her horns are cut off, usually without anesthesia or analgesia, despite the fact that Cows experience sensation in their horns. A vast body of evidence demonstrates what the industry has known all along that dehorning is an extremely painful process, yet continues to do so.[61] Because calves are easier to restrain than adults, the dairy industry prefers to disbud calves instead of dehorning Cows. Disbudding is a procedure that utilizes a hot iron to cauterize the tissue that will otherwise form the horn as well as the tissue that contains the sensitive corneal nerve ending, usually without any form of anesthesia or pain medication.[62]

The dairy industry claims that dehorned Cows will be able to garner more profits when they are ‘spent’ and sold at auction.[63] They say that dehorned Cows are more docile and thus easier to handle and that Cows will need less room in transportation trucks when they are sold for auction. The welfare of the animal almost never supersedes the human need for ease and monetary gain, and hence, disbudding and dehorning are still common practice. [64]

Auction

Around five years of age, a Cow’s body is so depleted by the repeated pregnancies and lactation cycles that her milk production declines.[65] When Cows stop producing enough milk to make them profitable, they are deemed to be “spent.” Spent Cows are useless for dairy, but they can still be sold to be slaughtered and turned into cheap cuts of beef, beef for processed foods such as meat pies and canned soups, ground beef, and dog food.

The dairy industry is just as cruel as the meat industry, whether it is using babies for veal, or “spent” Cows for meat.

Spent Cows often suffer from extreme lameness, so much so, that they lose their ability to walk. The industry calls them “downed Cows.” Rather than spending the money to provide downed Cows with the veterinary care needed for a full recovery, farm workers regularly use electric prods to get them to move onto transport trucks destined for slaughter, resulting in extensive bruising and pain.[66]

Transportation

Transportation is one of the most stressful times in the life of a Cow. Cows are deprived of food, water, and rest, sometimes for days at a time.[67] They are unable to lay down or even turn around in densely populated transport trucks. Cows are exposed to all weather conditions, often suffering from hyperthermia or hypothermia.. Animals end up dehydrated, exhausted, and bruised. Cows who are sick and injured are often loaded onto these trucks with no accommodation for any physical needs,[68] some Cows will give birth in transport trucks,[69] while many others will die in transport.[70]

Slaughter

For the lucky Cows who make it the slaughterhouse, their life will come to a brutal and painful end. All Cows, calves, and bulls used in the dairy industry are slaughtered, whether free range, organic, grass fed, halal, kosher, or any other label applied for marketing or religious purposes.

The slaughter of animals used in the dairy industry usually begins with an attempt to stun the animal using a captive bolt gun, a device designed to fire a retractable steel bolt into the head of the animal, causing brain damage.[71] While the intention of this process is to render the animal unconscious, it is not always the result. There are multiple factors that can impact whether or not the animal remains conscious after receiving a captive bolt shot including but not limited to: placement of the gun on the Cow’s head, the training and experience of the worker, maintenance of the gun, the health of the animal.[72]

The fetus is disposed of, and the mother’s body is then cut into pieces, packed, and shipped to grocery stores, restaurants, and other retailers, all to be put on your plate.

In study after study, these gentle creatures are referred to as nothing more than milking machines, or milking robots. You now know different.

In 2018 in the United States alone, the dairy industry spent over $90 million dollars in advertising for liquid milk products[76] – which does not include money spent to advertise other dairy products such as cheese, ice cream, butter, and yogurt – all to try and convince you that milk does a body good.[77]

But we know that the production of Cow’s milk for human consumption does not do a body good. It is not good for your body or mind, and it is not good for the bodies or minds of the Cows who are forced to produce more milk than they ever would naturally. Dairy is the opposite of good, it is predicated on abuse, pain, domination, and violence. It is literally built upon rape racks, on breaking the mother-child bond, and, when the mothers are spent, turning their bodies into cheap meat.

The only way to show compassion for yourself, for other animals, and for the earth, is to leave dairy entirely off your plate. And, with the countless delicious dairy-free options it is easy and those options do indeed do a body good!

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