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There is a farm near where I lived some times ago, in France south west, where the cows are choosing when they want to be milked (assuming it's the good word fo
by Xoros 9y ago
There is a farm near where I lived some times ago, in France south west, where the cows are choosing when they want to be milked (assuming it's the good word for it).
The farmers owned 2 or 3 machines where the cow goes when it wants to give milk, and get out whenever it feels about it.
There's a video on their website where you can see it
http://www.lafermeduramier.fr http://www.lafermeduramier.fr
The cows can go outside whenever they want and sleep on some kind of mattress.
I think they're having quite a cool life
- DanBC 9y agoYou've missed out the bit where cows only produce milk for their young to drink, and so you need to keep breeding these milk cows. You get a bunch of calves. Half of those are female, and go to replace the older dairy herd, which are killed. The other half are male, and there's no use for male dairy calves, and so they're all killed while quite young. The selective breeding of dairy cattle has caused some genetic problems with modern cows. All of this applies to the free range end of dairy farming.
- slothtrop 9y agoThis selective breeding has gone on for thousands of years. Cows used to be much, much larger, unintuitively, which made them more difficult to manage. It's disingenuous to attribute their current make-up almost entirely to recent standards of breeding - they are a domesticated species, meaning they effectively evolved alongside humans.
- WalterSear 9y agoYou've missed out what they did to all the male calves. And what they do to the cows after the 6 years or so (of a natural life of ~25).