4 ms·
It's the dead calves' milk.
by npoc 2y ago
It's the dead calves' milk.
- detourdog 2y agoOne can have whey without the calf dying. I have personally seen whey produced without harming calves. I also don't understand why some HNer's insist on downvoting simple questions. Trying to silence questioning is not healthy for society.
- aziaziazi 2y agoI agree with the downvote think. What you have seen (whey without calves harm) is probably typical an old farming practice OR of some rural family production. That’s great for them and their cows, but have nothing to do with 99% of the milk consumed daily, even the best quality you can buy wherever else those farms are.
- detourdog 2y agoDo you think all dairy cows need calves to create milk? I don't care if someone disagrees with my posts I agree that they engage in conversation. Downvoting without explanation is my complaint. Finally the comment that whey production results in dead calves is pretty simplistic and not based on any analysis that I can discern. If HN is about the struggle for truth I expect a certain amount of intellectual rigor in comments.
- aziaziazi 2y agoI meant "I agree with you about the downvote think". I also read your explanation in sibling thread. IMHO you’re right about the calves not-killed if we only look for a specific time frame , but it can’t work on the long run. If you can please share some materials for us to learn more. Also, cows definitely needs a clave to start the milk production.
- GrantMoyer 2y agoSo what did they do with the calf?
- detourdog 2y agoWait until it is done weaning to start using it's mother's milk. Most Dairy cows don't need to have a calf to produce milk.
- GrantMoyer 2y ago> Wait until it is done weaning to start using it's mother's milk. Then what happens to the calf? They raise it to the end of it's natural lifespan as a pet? Are male and female calves treated differently? > Most Dairy cows don't need to have a calf to produce milk. I can't find anything to corroborate this. Every source I find on the topic says dairy cows produce milk for up to about one year after giving birth, then they need to be re-impregnated to begin producing milk again. Do you have a source for this claim?
- svieira 2y agoThe mother very quickly starts producing more milk than the calf can drink. In the wild the milk production levels off to the level of the calf's intake (and then slowly rises to match their needs as they age and then tapers off as they age further). In a small dairy situation the calves are kept off of the cows for either the morning or the evening milking and so the cows' milk production remains high the entire time. The calf weans, but from the cow's udder's perspective the calf is still suckling like mad and so the cow keeps producing milk. The calf grows up and is bred themselves, doubling the milk output over the course of two to three years. Now this isn't sustainable in a paperclip-optimizer kind of way, so only the best milkers are kept and the ones that either have a hard time getting pregnant, or are ornery, or produce less milk, or get sick regularly wind up getting harvested for their meat. But there's no need to kill the calves (at the local dairy scale).
- GrantMoyer 2y agoWhat about male calves?