Agcovate

My view. Irish. Specialise in Cows. Also know a lot about sheep. Know little or nothing about pigs and poultry so don't ask me about them. Message me if you have questions about anything else I talk about.

[scoutsmoocrew]

the first time I saw a calf born was at a state fair (many many years ago). the calf was stuck and they had to use what looked like chains to pull her out (she didn't seem too distressed and the mom was as good as a new mom could be, although it was scary to see as a kid). I don't work with cows but I was wondering, is that standard practice nowadays or is there some newer method? and how often does a cow actually need assistance birthing?

OB chains are an important part of any cow farmer’s toolset yup! Here’s Sunny being born, notice she has them on

Some people use like, leather straps or rope but chains are easier to sterilize. If you put them on correctly (notice how they’re double looped, to sort of divide the pressure going on the legs). I don’t like to get the chains out of I don’t have to but if the calf has a blue or purple tongue then they help me get it out faster.

Cows mostly don’t need help. Heifers usually do I would say. Most dairy cows seem to appreciate if you put a little extra traction on the calf to make things easier on her.

[farm-365]

I've always used ropes but chains seem a good idea

[chinesegal]

Another rebuttal

“The second video you linked to (And i would suggest anyone reading to read the ridiculous article and mental gymnastics of this farmer talking about why he “has to be mean to cows”) is a farmer trying to justify breeding cows to exploit and slaughter for profit and then when these animals become recumbent (so often due to their living conditions and and treatment which can cause diseases such as mastitis) defending having to beat the cows to get them to stand to “save them” so they can make more milk for him to steal and then send to slaughter so he can profit from her flesh, and then he has the gall to get angry at investigation that show his cruelty, the solution to downer cows is to not needlessly breed them into existence in genetically engineered bodied that suffer greatly as a result (that can lead to recumbency) into farming conditions where these health issues occur that mean they have to intervene violently to save their life before they then brutally take it after these animals are “spent”.“

I mostly avoid radveegs on tumblr whenever I can so I copypasted this paragraph so I can reply to it here.

For those not in the know said video/article was given by @something-i-dunno and if I remember right it was about how “undercover” videos do not tell the whole story, an example is when they show farm workers trying to get down cows to stand up. A “down” cow is a cow that refuses to stand: http://www.nadis.org.uk/disease-a-z/cattle/downer-cow/ and if left untreated for long they will damage their muscles: https://veterinary-practice.com/article/the-low-down-on-down-cows

Of course our ara friend here never misses an opportunity to make as much msery porn as they can. No dairy farmer would want mastitis to happen and there are literally lots of veterinary advice and studies that prevent mastitis. Lots of emotive language, you cant “steal” milk from an animal that doesnt understand what theft is nor cares and cows produce more milk than even a calf could drink, never milk a cow and she will be in pain. Some smartasses have suggested breeding cows to produce less milk but that doesnt exactly help dairy cows who overproduce milk today.

And said “investigation” shows nothing more than workers trying to save a cow from damaging her nerves.

@sebbysheepie 

@dairyisntscary

@zoologicallyobsessed

[yayfeminism]

Very informative thread -source

[fourfeetabovetheground]

@dairyisntscary this isn’t really about dairy, or animals, but definitely an interesting read about food production and waste

[scoutsmoocrew]

hello! sorry if you get asked this a lot, but i remember when i was heavily vegan my biggest influence was hearing that cows producing babies and milk all the time is really hard on their bodies, and their lifespan is cut very short and when they cant stand anymore they get sent to slaughter. is there any sense or reason behind this? i cant imagine it being very true now. furthermore, how common are these big bad dairy farms? propaganda i was fed makes it seem like theyre everywhere. thanks!

Hi there! I’ll go through a few points one by one.

1) Feral cows have the same breeding schedule as dairy cows. In a herd of feral highland cattle, the calving interval (time between calves) was 391 days. In dairy cows, the average is 389 days. So, both are at about 14 months. Cows make the most milk in the first 3-4 months which makes it hard for them to get pregnant, but as soon as their cycle starts up again they’ll get breeding so they can produce that one calf a year. Most ungulates are the same way. So dairy cows are not actually having an unusual amount of babies, in that regard, no more than they’d be having anyway. Dairy cows aren’t milking all the time either - they get a 60-70 (or more) day dry period without being milked before their next lactation. Feral cows wean their calves about 8 or 9 months, perhaps a little shorter than most dairy cows milk but not by that much.

2) Producing so much milk does leave dairy cows with very high energy requirements. If you can get a cow to eat a lot of energy though (the nutrient) she won’t have problems. Fresh cows (those just calving in) tend to have the most health issues of all dairy cattle but once they start milking it tends to be smooth sailing. Fresh cows tend to produce a ton of milk but are still not eating as much as they should generally, which leads to negative energy balance and related issues. If you give a cow a good diet, though, she can thrive and milking doesn’t seem to impact her health. Gigi, the cow who produced the most milk on record, lived to 9 years old and only died in a barn fire, and was still going strong at her time of death.

3) down cows absolutely cannot go to slaughter. It’s very illegal because of mad cow disease. A cow may go down for an array of reasons - injuries, milk fever (a fresh cow problem), clinical mastitis, heat stress etc etc. if a cow goes down your options are A) get her up or B) euthanize her on farm, under no circumstances can you get money for that meat.

4) Old dairy cows may end up on the slaughter line for various reasons. 1) diagnoses with a progressive disease (ie once we shipped a cow with heart failure before it got really bad), 2) inability to get pregnant (because we can’t afford to keep non productive animals around unfortunately), 3) some other problem where keeping her around isn’t the kindest option etc etc. they go to sale barns, not straight to meat packers, and some are bought as home dairy cows because they aren’t producing as much but enough for one family. Holsteins do not have a lifespan of 25 years, it’s generally 10-15 and 10 year old dairy cows are definitely not uncommon on any farm you visit. Our farms oldest ladies both died at about 12/13 and one of those hadn’t been milking in years.

As for farm size, in the US the average is 200 cows I believe. Medium sized farms are the most common.

[ethicallyomnivorous]

Aren’t Vegetarian and Vegan Diets Better for the Environment?

Some people choose vegetarian or vegan diets because they believe they are better for the environment. But while there’s no doubt that CAFO meat is harmful for the environment, the same can’t be said for animals that are raised on pasture. In fact, several scientists have made the argument that grazing animals are critical for healthy ecosystems and preventing desertification, a growing problem around the world. via Chris Kresser Compilation links:

Savory Institute’s Science Library (journal articles, white papers, before/after photos, fast facts, etc.)

Defending Beef’s Issuu page (viewable journal articles and white papers in their entirety)

Defending Beef’s Pinterest page (compilation of articles and videos, organized by topic)

Media:

Allan Savory’s TED Talk (video)

Soil Carbon Cowboys (video)

One Hundred Thousand Beating Hearts (video)

Can Dirt Save the Earth? (NYT piece by Moises Velasquez-Manoff)

If you want to save the world, veganism isn’t the answer

A climate change solution beneath our feet (WashPo piece by UC Davis)

Doing What Works: Sloppy Science is Damaging Rangelands & Wildlife(article discussing why removing cattle from land isn’t the solution)

Articles:

Meat Is Magnificent: Water, Carbon, Methane & Nutrition

The Missing Tool without Which Climate Change Cannot Be Addressed

How Much Feed Does It Take to Produce a Pound of Beef?

It’s Not the COW, It’s the HOW: New Study Shows Grass-Fed Beef Can Be a Carbon Sink

More protein, better protein

Vertical Farms: Thermodynamic Nonsense

Why Fake Burgers Make No Sense

Podcasts:

RHR: The Impacts and Ethics of Eating Meat—with Diana Rodgers

Episode 380 – Diana Rodgers – Eating Meat and Sustainability

Books:

Holistic Management (book)

Defending Beef (written by Nicolette Hahn Niman, a vegetarian)

Cows Save the Planet (book)

Water in Plain Sight (book)

The Soil Will Save Us (book)

Scientific papers:

Stanley 2018 – This paper conducts a life-cycle assessment, including a direct measure of carbon flux, on various livestock finishing systems and shows that properly managed livestock create an ecosystem that is a net carbon sink instead of net carbon emitter.

Teague 2017 – This paper is an overarching discussion on various types of grazing management and the potential for proper (holistic) management to regenerate ecosystem function and grazing land livelihoods. It also dives into the shortcomings of most grazing research that reduces whole ecosystem complexities into individual factors.

Teague 2016 – Properly managed grazing, if applied to 25 percent of our crop and grasslands, would mitigate the entire carbon footprint of North American agriculture.

Rowntree 2016 – “From this data, we conclude that well-managed grazing and grass-finishing systems in environmentally appropriate settings can positively contribute to reducing the carbon footprint of beef cattle, while lowering overall atmospheric CO2 concentrations.”

Peters 2016 – This study modeled human carrying capacity under 10 diet scenarios. Even though carrying capacity was generally higher for diets with less meat (likely due to modeling being based on feedlot stats and the cropland needed to grow the feed), “the carrying capacity of the vegan diet was lower than two of the healthy omnivore diet scenarios.”

Machmuller 2015 – “Farms accumulated carbon at 8.0 Mg ha−1 yr−1, increasing cation exchange and water holding capacity by 95% and 34%, respectively. Thus, within a decade of management-intensive grazing practices, soil carbon levels returned to those of native forest soils and likely decreased fertilizer and irrigation demands. Emerging land uses, such as management-intensive grazing, may offer a rare win-win strategy combining profitable food production with rapid improvement of soil quality and short-term climate mitigation through soil carbon-accumulation.”

Herrero 2011 – This paper specifically calls out the often quoted but incorrect stat that 51 percent of greenhouse gas emissions are from livestock. The actual number is closer to 15 percent, but it’s important to remember that these numbers are derived from industrial livestock production methods. Papers above from Richard Teague and Paige Stanley show an alternative approach whereby properly managed livestock can regenerate grassland ecosystems and sequester carbon.

[scoutsmoocrew]

NASA-led Study Solves a Methane Puzzle

A new calculation of methane emissions from global fires resolves what looked like irreconcilable differences in explaining the recent metha

“Combining isotopic evidence from ground surface measurements with the newly calculated fire emissions, the team showed that about 17 teragrams per year of the increase is due to fossil fuels, another 12 is from wetlands or rice farming, while fires are decreasing by about 4 teragrams per year. The three numbers combine to 25 teragrams a year – the same as the observed increase.”

[farm-365]

I wonder will vegan activists argue this study was paid for by the beef and dairy industry.🤣

[farm-365]

Methane is the enemy?

First I will start what I knew before I started researching for this post. The green house gas that cows produce is methane It a green house gas that is 30 times potent as carbon dioxide but has a short life cycle in our athmosphere of aproximatly 12.8 years. So if you produces the same amount of methane every year for 50 years it would be no different than producing the same amount of methane every year for 13 years.

Next I began researching about soil cabon storage and about how effective it is at storing carbon from grazing and was going to compare it to trees. I haven't finnished reaserching on soil carbon sequensation in grass lands as I got sidetracked looking into trees. There is more to trees than you may think, the first thing I found  was that the position on the Earth (latitude) and colours in that environment had a significant impact on whether trees have a net cooling effect on an environment or not. This is the albedo effect. Also the amount of carbon the plant sequesters is also important in calculating the trees over all impact. That's what a these studies aim to measure. Some studies tell us where trees are neutral other don't.

The world's forests influence climate through physical, chemical, and biological processes that affect planetary energetics, the hydrologic

This next study is intresting because it shows the net effect in different places.

Local cooling and warming effects of forests based on satellite observations

Local climatic effects of forests remain poorly understood due to the coarse spatial resolution of models and field observations. Here, the

Here is the infographic from the above study.

As you can see trees don't have a negative in the non snow covered mid latitudes but more or less a neutral effect. But trees planted in the tropics have a positive effect.

Without this next point there is going to be some reposters who will still agrue that methane is simply the worst saying that it has some insanly high lifespan and potency. But if we change the context to methane produced by trees will you get this same hysterical response, let's see.

Large emissions from floodplain trees close the Amazon methane budget

Methane fluxes from the stems of Amazonian floodplain trees indicate that the escape of soil gas through wetland trees is the dominant sourc

Before you say that I'm picking on tree remember, I'm just using them as an example and what I said above about methane actually defends trees.

I haven't finished looking into soil carbon storage, that will come soon, but it's clear that methane from livestock has been extremely over hyped by some people.

[scoutsmoocrew]

So let’s talk about rotary parlors! For some reason, ARAs love to call them cruel contraptions and use them in their propaganda, because they probably look kind of frightening to the layman (although I think that’s rather silly :P oh well)

Rotary parlors are circular parlors that are spinning very slowly. The cows enter on one side, go around until they’re milked out (as sensed by the milking equipment), and then they’re sent on their way.

They’re used because they automate cow movement meaning the milkers can stay in the parlor rather than directing the cows. Cows are not in these for more than 5 or 6 minutes a milking. Sometimes the center bin has grain in it for them to snack on.

I don’t know what people have against rotary parlors specifically, but they’re nothing to be scared of lol

[whitepeopletwitter]

[brodiebutt]

That’s not why it’s bad you fucking idiots. It’s bad b/c were literally taking it from a baby animal, that then gets slaughtered for meat or forcibly impregnated and milked for life like its mum.

[hapalopus]

Animal Science side of tumblr here! I actually know about this stuff, and basically all the things you hear from animal rights activists/radveegs are either alternative facts misinformation, exaggerations, or misunderstandings.

1) Humans are not the only animals that drink milk. Blue tits will go out of their way to drink milk cream. Feral cats and seagulls compete over elephant seal milk. Bears prefer eating the udders of their kills. Oxpeckers have been reported to perch on the udders of impalas and drink their milk; unfortunately I couldn’t find a credible source for this, but considering they practice wound-feeding, it’s not unlikely. Even cows themselves don’t mind drinking the milk of their herdmates when given the chance.

2) It’s true that cows and calves are seperated at all farms, except very small-scale diaries. But contrary to popular belief, this isn’t to “steal the milk from the calf,” as calves are usually just fed regular, unprocessed milk from their mom and future herdmates (milk replacer is both really expensive and made from cow’s milk anyways, so there’s no reason to use it except for medical problems). In fact, cows that are kept with their calves have a higher milk yield (up to 20% higher!) than those who are seperated, so the farmers actually have monetary incentive to keep the pairs together.

Instead, the reason cows and calves are seperated is that, for starters, dairy cows are really bad mothers and the best case scenario is that they’ll lick their calf clean and then just ignore it. Occassionally they’ll attack their own calf. Secondly, a stall or field full of large and excitable animals isn’t a safe place for a newborn. And lastly, building specific stalls just for mother/calf pairs to stay in for half a year is a huge undertaking when you have over 200 heads of cattle that all need to be milked thrice a day, especially if you use an automatic milking system, which is likely the method that’s most beneficial to the cows’ well-being.

Separation of cows and calves does not cause any notable stress if it’s done within the first 24 hours. From an ethological stand-point, this low stress makes sense, as cows (like deer) are hiders, and feral calves are left alone for hours at a time. Separation also increases calf survival and ensures that the calf gets enough colostrum in its first 24 hours which is vital to its health.

3) I can only speak for Denmark and the US, but there’s virtually no veal industry in either of those countries (the industry is constantly declining, and I won’t be surprised if it reaches zero within our lifetime). In the US, male calves are sent to feedlots where they’re raised until 2 years of age, and then sold as beef. In Denmark, this is the same for most breeds, except we butcher them at 10 months, which is around the time they become sexually mature. Danish Jersey bull calves have up until recently been euthanized at birth because they’re too small and slow-growing to ‘fatten up’. But this practice is now stopping, no thanks to radveegs, mind you. The end of this practice is the work of organic dairy farmers and agriculture students. A lucky few male calves are castrated and sent to rewild forest areas and to do regenerative grazing.

4) Cows are not impregnated against their will. Trust me. When a cow’s in heat, she’ll let you know just how much she wants to be mounted. Cattle in captivity have roughly the same calving intervals as feral cattle (observed feral highland cattle calved on average every 391 days, while dairy cattle calve every 393 days, at least). Some farms choose to keep a bull around and just let the cows in heat hang out with him, rather than performing artificial insemination, but the results are still the same. The only difference is that bulls are dangerous to both humans and cows (the amount of times a bull has broken the hip of the cow he was mounting…), while AI is not.

[animalscience-side-of-tum8lr-de]

Also, we have now bred dairy cattle to produce such an insane amount of milk that it isn’t feasible for the calves to drink it all. The cows HAVE to be milked or they are subjected to lots of pain and possible infections. From this perspective, dairys that care for and milk these cows are simply a responsive management practice for animals that we have bred for a specific reason.

And if we’re going to be milking them as a means of properly caring for these cows then why waste the milk? We will have a world population of 9.3 billion by 2050. It’s frankly irresponsible to waste such a vast quantity of nutrients and calories in the form of dairy products. We already have people starving. Why keep this food from them? What we really need to concentrate on is food distribution and making it affordable for all at this point. Why can’t we focus on the problem at hand instead of arguing??

Thank you @hostilepopcorn for the awesome and well presented info!! Well said!

[scoutsmoocrew]

Linebacker cattle are a dual purpose breed slowly being bred to be more dairy and they deserve so much more appreciation!

[scoutsmoocrew]

what the hell does she think AI entails. How can you be so bad at it you break cows’ legs

[farm-365]

This person has to be kidding. Wtf. I think these vegan post on dairy are getting even stupider. I dont believe is this person ever saw A.I taking place they would belive this.

As for the rest just read the rest of my posts. Im tirerd of rewriting the same thing.

[scoutsmoocrew]

It’s strange, I spend 75% of my time on dairy farms and my special interest area is calves & maternity and I’ve never seen a cow shed tears of sadness and most farms are relatively quiet 🤔

of course these ppl hear a cow moo and it’s automatically assumed she’s crying for her baby so like

[farm-365]

Can cows even cry if they are sad? Im just wondering is thier any hardcore evidence on this as i litualy never saw a cow shed tears except for once when a cow had pink eye, I can't rightly remember. Maybe a vet might know?

[vero-in-technicolor]

Animal agriculture is basically using food to make less food so that privileged people can eat decomposing flesh and then waste half of it. 🤷🏽‍♀️

[agro-carnist]

I honestly don’t think distributing corn stalks and wheat byproducts to poor people is gonna help much but go ahead and tell me more about how you don’t know what “decomposing flesh” is.

[scoutsmoocrew]

Let them eat grass! Uwu

[pearls-and-polowraps]

To expand on the points that @agro-carnist and @dairyisntscary are trying to make… So very little goes to waste in the agricultural sector. The “waste” products from corn, soy, wheat, rice, cotton, brewer’s grains, and various other crops all have applications as animal feedstuffs. In turn, the “waste” products produced by animals often return to the cycle as fertilizers, calcium and other nutritive supplements, textiles, pet foods, and treats/chews. There’s even new research that suggests that animal fat could be used to produce biodiesel or a more environmentally friendly plastic than that which is currently made from petroleum products, and scientists are currently working toward finding other uses.

Whether you like it or not, crop production and animal management have a symbiotic relationship in much of the world. Don’t believe me? Let’s look at the research: Animal Agriculture: Symbiosis, Cultural, or Ethical Conflict? 

Symbiosis of Plants, Animals, and Microbes

Eco-efficient approaches to land management: a case for increased integration of crop and animal production systems

Agricultural sustainability: concepts, principles, and evidence

Mixed crop-livestock farming (an international study prepared by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations)

This is just a small sample of the evidence suggesting that livestock are beneficial to the production of plant-based foods at almost every stage, and vice versa. One cannot thrive without the other.

[farm-365]

This is a bit like Irelands (and many others) beef and dairy sectors. In Ireland its a hybrid of grass fed and grain fed beef and dairy. Its called grass based system. Simular to New Zealand in that regard.

[farm-365]

Do cows like being milked?

I often see a picture of a rotory parlour and militant vegans like making a big fuss about this "torture". Cow dont mind being milked. They actually compete to get milked first.

An easy example to use is a robotic milking machine. These machines work on the principle that cow comes to the station to be milked. I dont think cows would go to be tortured.

[scoutsmoocrew]

Not dairy related but I found this gem on FB. Because you know, you should never groom your animals. I pity all sheep left in the care of these people.

[agro-carnist]

Someone: take off your winter coat dude it’s summer

Me: oh so you’re gonna deprive me of my bodily autonomy huh????

[farm-365]

This is literally one of the stupidest thing I have ever seen. Why would the have to hack the wool off if the shears were so sharp? Sharp tools dont rip they cut. This is wool ist not tough.

Anyway sorry for the mini rant, but this person annoys me. Thinks the sheep wool should be left alone. He/she has no idea what they are talking about. Sheep were domesticated over 11,000 years ago.

Wild sheep like Mouflon don't grow their coats as long and fluffy and shed their coat in Summer. Domesticated sheep hair is not natural.

As well as problems with heat, unsheared sheep are more susceptible to maggots.

Hear in Ireland wool from mountain sheep is so cheap it cost more to get the sheep sheared. So it is not done for the money necessarly.

The part about the farmer laughing and throughing the wool in the air seems fictional aswell.

Do some of these vegans know what they are saying or are they delusional.

[omnifail]

Farmer propaganda at its finest.

[scoutsmoocrew]

You know you could of googled a lot of this.

Cannot find the percent of males that go to mature beef. That is based on my experience on the many farms I’ve researched and visited and may vary with country. I stand by the vast, vast majority being raised to two years old, at least in the US

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/1460129/ (highest milk yield -> 4th and 5th lactation cows)

Cows, and any other mammal, only stop lactating after they stop being milked/suckled. Some human women breastfeed their kids up to their teens, some farms only calve cows once. They only technically need to give birth once. Their milk production will go down, though, hence why they’re bred again.

Dont need to to explain that a cow barn full of lumbering excitable cows isn’t a good place for an immunocompromised fragile newborn, even if his presence increases milk yield.

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?start=10&q=dairy+cow+welfare+milk+yield&hl=en&as_sdt=0,19&as_vis=1 here’s a variety of studies on dairy cow milk yield & welfare and the correlation. There are many, many of these studies that all have the same results.

But hey what does science know after all

[fumblebeefae]

Hi zoologist here, while my main work is with bees not cows, I did completely my undergrad degree in zoology on a historical agricultural university, which was 80% land for the cattle, sheep and deer we had. This meant I spent a lot of my undergrad degree helping with the farm, and using the animals for educational purposes. 

So here’s a bunch of scientific research on well-being in cows = higher milk yield 

Behavioural indicators of cow comfort: activity and resting behaviour of dairy cows in two types of housing 

The management of intensive dairy farms can be improved for better welfare and milk yield

Combined effects of once-daily milking and feeding level in the first three weeks of lactation on milk production and enzyme activities, and nutritional status, in Holstein cows

Here’s some scientific studies on why keeping calves with their mothers increases disease and risk of injury: 

Evidence for age susceptibility of cattle to Johne’s disease 

Successful control of Johne’s disease in nine dairy herds: Results of a six-year field trial

The effects of weaning beef calves in two stages on their behavior and growth rate

Suckling behaviour of young dairy calves with their own and alien mothers

Acute effects of cow-calf separation on heart rate, plasma cortisol and behaviour in multiparous dairy cows

Here’s also a statement by the Australian Veterinary Association supporting off-cow rearing  

Also everyone go support your local farmers and listen to people who have actual education, experience and knowledge in this area, not from a few idiots with a laptop and access to the internet.

[agro-carnist]

Lmao, OP trying to EPIC PWN an omnivore with a meme and then gets their ass handed to them with actual research. OBVIOUSLY EVIL PROPAGANDA.

[hatingyouwontmakemesuckanyless]

As someone in agriculture, I’m not gonna hate on people for being vegan or vegetarion, but I see a lot of posts that look like animals being tortured in the agriculture industry these pictures are either people who are abusing their animals and are like 1% of the ag industry or taken out of context. This is a scare tactic and is not true. PETA does this constantly, and their posts are usually not accurate at all