Shad Clark
Animal agriculture forces calves to give up milk—so that people don’t have to.
For all mammals, weaning is the natural developmental stage when babies graduate from feeding exclusively on their mother’s breast milk to eating solid foods. In nature, this takes time—wild calves tend to wean themselves when they’re around ten months old. But nature isn’t fast enough for beef and dairy farmers.
To maximize profits, the animal agriculture industry exploits the female reproductive systems to churn out as many babies as possible, as quickly as possible. This brutal reality of "business as usual" in animal agriculture has been normalized and even romanticized, justified as being a necessary part of the industry. Consider this characterization of weaning from a Smithsonian Magazine piece: "A mother cow who is nursing her infant calf could be taking energy away from a new one that might be gestating inside her, and for dairy farmers every drop of milk a calf suckles away means they have less product to sell."
What does weaning a calf mean?
In animal agriculture, "weaning a calf" is the forced separation of a mother from her calf. The sooner the mother and calf are separated, the sooner the farmer can forcibly impregnate the mother again. As long as a cow keeps producing babies, she'll keep producing milk. The more milk she produces, the more the farmer profits.
At what age are calves weaned?
70% of calves are weaned at seven weeks of age, and another 25% are weaned at nine weeks. While either of these timeframes are already a fraction of the ten months in which calves would naturally wean themselves, the beef industry encourages calves to be weaned even earlier.
Early weaning
To ensure that each mother cow can be impregnated again as soon as possible, the beef industry suggests calves be weaned between 40 and 80 days, but also notes that "many farmers" wean calves even earlier—at only 28 days.
What are the different weaning strategies for calves in the beef industry?
Abrupt separation
This traditional method of weaning is also the most stressful. Without warning, farmers tear calves away from their mothers, causing intense distress in both. The beef industry has begun to move away from this method, mostly to save farmers from having to hear calves "bawling" for their mothers. But on dairy farms, 65% of all calves—and 100% of newborn males—are taken from their mothers within hours of birth, often before they can even begin nursing.
Fenceline weaning
Farmers separate mothers and calves by a fence, which allows the captive animals to still see and hear each other, but abruptly ends any possibility of nursing. Though some fences are built to allow nose-to-nose contact, barbed wire and electric fences are also common in the industry. In efforts that are heartbreaking to watch, frightened and confused calves will often struggle to return to their mothers.
Two-stage weaning
In this weaning strategy, the mother and calf remain together, but the calf is fitted with a nose-flap device that makes nursing impossible or even painful. The simplest version of this device features a flap literally designed to get between the hungry calf and nursing mother. Other versions of the device, such as the nose plate and medieval-looking spiked nose ring, are designed to spur the mother's sensitive udders, hurting her when her calf tries to feed and ultimately forcing her to reject her own young.
How cruel is weaning a calf?
Effect on the mother cow
Just like for humans, pregnancy for cows lasts nine months. That's nine months of eating for two and preparing for motherhood. When a mother cow loses her young, understandably, she mourns. Farmers admit cows often "cry for days" after their babies are taken away. In at least one community, locals have reported the crying and bellowing to police, afraid something was wrong. And of course, for those cows, something was. For as long as she's fertile, each mother cow is forced to relive this trauma with a new baby year after year.
Effect on the calf
Like any baby looking for a mother's comfort, a separated calf will cry and struggle to reunite with the missing parent. A distressed calf will typically refuse food and lose weight. Studies show that the emotional pain of separation leads to prolonged mental stress, even leading to calves becoming emotionally shut-down.
The bottom line: Calf weaning is animal cruelty
To produce an endless supply of beef and dairy, farmers first produce an endless supply of living, breathing, emotionally intelligent animals. Cows don’t have babies or produce milk without being forcibly impregnated. And no cow volunteers to be turned into hamburger or beef. In other words, in beef and dairy production, there’s simply no way around animal exploitation and cruelty.
What can you do?
The good news is, with an expansive range of delicious and nutritious plant milks booming, it's never been easier for us humans to finally wean ourselves off dairy. Ending the suffering of farmed animals is as easy as eliminating animal products from our diets. Start your plant-based journey today.
