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The 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 t
by svieira 2y ago
The 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?
- svieira 2y agoRaise them up to a steer if you don't need breeding stock and use / sell them as a bull if you do.
- GrantMoyer 2y agoOkay, so most of calves are still killed, but maybe after they grow up rather than while they're calves?
- aziaziazi 2y agoI still don’t understand how you keep the calves alive. Ok for one or two year but if you want to maintain a regular production over the years, at some point you’ll have a bunch of male cows (not sure the right English word for that) and a bunch of "bad milker cows". I mean I totally agree what you describe is possible and even the reality in a few ranch but it has nothing to do with what’s happening for the vast majority of cows. Side note: on the other side of the calves killing scale, some farmers (in Swissland at least) started to kill male calves directly at birth because they found it more profitable at scale. Yummy Toblerone!