Male Dairy Cows Don't Get to Live More Than Two Years

WHAT IS A MALE DAIRY COW CALLED?

There are a few key terms the dairy and beef industry uses to describe cattle during different phases of their life, based upon which mutilations they’ve endured and what their ultimate use will be. A baby bovine of either sex is known as a calf. A female who hasn’t yet given birth is known as a heifer, and a cow is a female who has given birth.

The only time males factor into dairy operations is for breeding purposes. A bull refers to a male who can reproduce. Some farms deploy bulls to inseminate cows. Other farms cut out the bull altogether by opting for artificial insemination, a procedure that involves a human arm penetrating the cow’s vaginal canal to deposit either bull sperm or a fertilized embryo.

Finally, a steer is a bull who has been castrated, meaning their scrotums are damaged beyond repair, rendering them incapable of reproduction. Castration is virtually always carried out without painkillers.

CAN MALE COWS MAKE MILK?

As with all mammals, it's exclusively the female sex that is physically able to produce milk. A cow’s udders are mammary glands that serve the same function as human breasts, designed to provide nutrient-dense food to newborn and young animals before they can chew and swallow the solid food they'll consume as adults. Because male cattle are not born with udders, they cannot make milk.

WHAT HAPPENS TO MALE CALVES?

Male calves are often considered entirely disposable by the dairy industry, though some farms are equipped to exploit them for other purposes. Regardless, no male calf will live beyond the age of a couple of years before being killed—and in some cases, this bloody end can come within the first few hours of life.

Beef production

Male dairy calves can be sold for beef production to eventually be turned into food like hamburgers. They're sent to feedlots, which are penned-in facilities that can hold up to 150,000 cattle, where they are confined and fed grain diets so that they gain weight and can be slaughtered as quickly as possible.

Veal crates

Young male calves, and female calves who are not needed on dairy farms, may be slaughtered while they're still young and turned into veal. For 1 in 5 of these calves, that means being sent to veal crates: small plastic huts, sometimes with a tiny outdoor fenced area, containing one calf per crate. In veal crates, calves are prevented from running or even strenuous walking in order to keep their muscles from developing. This is to keep their flesh more tender for the humans who will consume them.

Calves are separated from their mothers, fed an artificial milk replacement, and prevented from fully socializing or even touching another animal until they are sent to the slaughterhouse, which occurs when calves are 8-16 weeks old.

Shot at birth

In the United Kingdom, where veal crates have long been outlawed due to their overt cruelty, it's often cheapest to simply shoot male calves shortly after their birth. In the UK, close to 60,000 male calves are disposed of in this way every year. This practice is also disturbingly common in the United States, and in Australia, one survey revealed that around 600,000 male calves were killed on dairy farms every year when they are just a week old.

IS BEEF FROM MALE OR FEMALE COWS?

Beef can be made from either male or female cattle. For breeds explicitly raised for beef, like Angus or Herefords, all calves are reared for meat regardless of sex. Increasingly, cows and bulls of the Holstein breed born on dairy farms are inserted into the beef production system. On feedlots, Holstein populations can consist of mostly males, as well as female calves who were not needed for use as dairy cows.

Dairy cows who are “spent” are also sold as beef. Spent cows are mothers who have endured between three and five pregnancies and have had as many calves stolen from them. Their bodies have broken down to the point where their milk production declines, due to the extreme physical and emotional toll of industrial dairy production. Spent cows skip the feedlots and are entered straight into the beef production line at the slaughterhouse.

ANIMAL WELFARE

Animal welfare refers to the wellbeing of an animal under human control, underpinning regulations meant to prevent the unnecessary suffering of animals who are being dominated and exploited by human beings.

Welfare violations indicate instances of particularly harsh cruelty. The Animal Welfare Act is a federal US law that provides oversight and regulation of animal enterprises such as laboratories and zoos, in order to prevent or punish welfare violations. However, the Act exempts all farm animals—leaving the billions of animals languishing on factory farms across the country vulnerable to systemic cruelties. Much of the treatment dairy cows receive on factory farms would likely be punishable welfare violations if the act included farm animals under its protections.

Why is milking cows cruel?

For any mammal to lactate (produce milk), they first must give birth. Impregnating cows is therefore a crucial part of dairy production, as is the almost immediate and permanent removal of the calf after birth. When the calf is gone, the mother is milked for many months. Then she is again impregnated in order to repeat the cycle.

As any human mother can imagine, having a newborn removed within those first few precious moments after birth, or anytime thereafter, is unspeakably cruel. Mother cows have been known to cry out in anguish for hours or days afterward.

Unfortunately, the cruelty does not end there. Cows in the dairy industry have been selectively bred to the point of producing seven gallons of milk each day, versus the single gallon they naturally evolved to produce for their offspring. Their swollen udders grow unnaturally large, sometimes inhibiting their ability to walk or rest comfortably. They can also be prone to excruciating and sometimes fatal infections, such as mastitis.

On factory farms, cows are also kept indoors virtually their whole lives, prevented from grazing the landscape, instead forced to live in cramped indoor spaces with hundreds of other cows. Though farms use many gallons of freshwater every day to keep cows, equipment, and the barn area clean, the build-up of excrement occurs so quickly (due to these high stocking densities) that cows are made to stand and lie down in filth, leading to infections and disease.

Do dairy cows suffer?

The physical suffering of cows is plain to see, especially by the end of the dairy production cycle, when spent cows are prodded into transport trucks and, ultimately, up the ramp to the kill floor of the slaughterhouse. Spent cows are often so injured and pained with lesions, bacterial infections, lameness, and other issues that they have trouble walking these few final steps.

But their suffering extends beyond physical ailments. Studies of cows' emotions have been scant due to lack of funding and low interest, with discoveries instead relating to pushing their bodies to produce ever more volumes of milk. But some scientists are looking at who cows are rather than how people can best exploit them. Cows have been found to express fear and anxiety, and also to engage in play and enjoy gentle pets from people. They can learn, and studies suggest they may be self-aware. The evidence suggests that cows have an inner emotional depth, meaning that they likely suffer psychologically within dairy production, as well as physically.

As with any mammal, the bond between mother cow and offspring is strong, often forming within five minutes of contact following birth. Mothers have been known to exhibit extreme stress at separation, including screaming, crying, urinating, and pacing.

What happens to dairy cows when they're too old?

The oldest age cows reach on dairy factory farms is generally 5 years old, though sometimes they're killed when they're younger. Because their natural lifespans can exceed 20 years, it becomes clear that dairy cows are pushed so harshly to their physical and psychological limits that their bodies begin to deteriorate well before they're meant to. No cow on a dairy farm enjoys a rich, full life.

Spent dairy cows are sent to be killed in the same slaughterhouses as those who are raised for beef. A typical slaughter scenario is as follows: Cows are pushed through a ramp ending in a close-fitting stall that prevents their movement. They are then shot in the head with a gun that has a retractable bullet. This step is meant to stun them so that they remain unconscious for the subsequent steps of the slaughter process, which sees their bodies hung upside down and their throats slit to drain their blood. They are then dismembered.

Because it's more profitable for companies to kill as many cattle as possible in the shortest time possible, workers are forced to rush their work, often resulting in improper stunning, leaving cows awake as their throats are slit. This is not only terrible for the cows themselves but dangerous for workers, since cows can thrash and kick. Many spent cows, after sacrificing their whole lives to the painful and degrading service of the dairy industry, are met with an extremely violent end.

HOW YOU CAN HELP DAIRY COWS

It's never too late to curb or eliminate your intake of dairy products, something that can have a real impact on this savage industry. Increasingly, people are turning to dairy alternatives such as oat milk, cashew cream cheese, and almond yogurt.

Ditching dairy reduces demand for the abuses mother cows are put through on factory farms. It can also spare the lives of all the calves who are either discarded or put through harrowing cruelties on their own. Making compassionate dietary choices, educating loved ones, and taking other actions can help make a lasting difference for male and female dairy cows.