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"They did eat meat, of course, though the reliance on milk meant that beef was a rarity" I find that hard to believe. Cows need to be pregnant to milk. Roughly
by rffrancon 5y ago
"They did eat meat, of course, though the reliance on milk meant that beef was a rarity"
I find that hard to believe. Cows need to be pregnant to milk. Roughly half of their calves would be male. Which were primarily valuable as meat. Further, cows produce more milk than their calves require, which means calves could be matured.
Beef was probably proportionally as prevalent as diary.
- praxulus 5y agoYou can only mature the calves if you can spare the milk, and you get a lot more calories from just drinking the milk. A cow produces roughly 40 times more calories worth of milk over its lifetime than you get from the beef from one animal. There's no way it would be similarly prevalent unless they were raising herds specifically for beef.
- rffrancon 5y ago> You can only mature the calves if you can spare the milk, and you get a lot more calories from just drinking the milk. Perhaps in the short term. But after 10 weeks calves exclusively eat grass. And after a year on grass the riginal 10 week dairy calorie investment is dwarfed by the beef fat calories produced. I think it comes down to land costs and labour costs. Most Irish land is only suitable for livestock. Rough grassland is cheap. And hand milking is labor intensive. The Dexter cattle breed originated in Ireland, is suitable for both dairy and beef, and is tough enough for harsh conditions. Scaling up on beef male cattle makes sense if the grassland is available.
- watwut 5y agoThat 0.5 calve per cow would amount to rare. Plus, meat is prseved in form of sausage or dry meat - not steak or raw form.