From: wirthc@portnoy.sdsc.edu (Colleen Wirth)
Newsgroups: rec.food.veg
Subject: Re: Dairy Farms and Cows
Date: 16 Apr 92 18:31:30 GMT
Organization: San Diego Supercomputer Center @ UCSD

In article <1992Apr16.114427.3968@bb1t.monsanto.com> Rich Hoffman writes:

>Hi, I was just passing through this newsgroup and saw the thread on
>dairy farms. I was really surprize how little people new about them.

Actually, what you proceed to write, is pretty much what I remember
reading here, with a few more details thrown in. Except for the few 
people who wondered if cows couldn't produce milk indefinitely with a 
single pregnancy, people pretty much said what you said.

>Most dairies are family run operations, with a few hired hands as needed.

True, my father was a diary farmer, and my uncle in Switzerland is a
diary farmer--this is consistent. 

>There are several mega-size diaries that can handle up to 2,000+ milking
>head (plus good deal of dry cows).

Alta Dena--California's mega-dairy industry is not a pleasant place--in fact 
it's pretty awful, according to my father.

>And at about 15 months or so they can start breeding them (most modern
>facilities use artificial insemination - breeding to a bull is no fun
>for a cow and not the best method genetically - for a number of reasons).

My uncle doesn't use artificial insemination, but he's a pretty small
scale old-fashioned dairy farmer.

>If she gets pregnant around that time, she'll calve back at around 24
>months. Then she can join the milking herd.  Milk production will usually
>go about 300 days or so, at which point production drops (obviously this
>can depend on the cow) and she gets dried off. About 60 days after that
>first calving, you can start looking for heats and safely start breeding
>her again.

Yes, this too is consistent with what was stated before. 300 days is about
a year, which was the figure given.

>As far as the calves are concerned - half of them are males. Males can go
>several ways - semen production (obviously you don't need alot for that),
>veal production (obviously this newsgroup doesn't care for that - I 
>personally like veal) and some can go for beef.  The females are usually
>kept for replacements or sent somewhere else to be raise for replacements.
>Although they can be used for meat production too.

Well, the original poster, if I remember correctly, is an ethical vegan,
who wondered if Ben & Jerry's ice cream should be welcome at a vegetarian
day festival--or something like that.

While milk itself may be acceptable to vegetarians, many ethical vegans
are placed in a moral dilemma because of the by-product veal and beef
industries which the dairy industry indirectly supports.

My uncle's male calves most often wind up as Wiener schnitzel.

>That's really some of the basics as far as an individual animal is concerned.

Yes, this was covered here already.

>One line of thinking on the group really bothers me though. These animals
>are not mistreated. If you think they are, you haven't been on a dairy.
>Dairymen are not in it to make big bucks - they're in it cause they love
>cows and you can make a living doing it. A small dairy operation run by
>a family of four with 60 head is an 18 hour a day, 7 day a week job. You
>don't get vacation, you can't take an afternoon off to jerk around, there
>are no sick days, it's not 9 to 5.

True, my uncle doesn't mistreat his cows, in fact, they're really treated 
very humanely; if he mistreated them, he'd have to replace them more often
and wouldn't make as much money off of them. And, while he may not be in 
the business to make big bucks, he's not in it because he loves cows either. 
He's in it because his father was in it, and his father's father was in 
it...he knows nothing else. My father, however, tried something else and 
broke the chain. He doesn't love cows much either. He thinks of them more 
as milk machines actually.

>Give the dairies a break. They have a hard enough time trying to make an
>honest living without people slamming them and making up stuff. Their
>number are fewer all the time (even the number of cows in reducing).

I don't remember anybody slamming dairy farmers with false information
or malicious innuendo. Everything you've said here was covered in other 
postings. The many many details you added were not actually requested by 
the man who orinally asked the question. He only wanted to know if there 
was an *ethical* reason why ice cream may not sit squarely with the 
vegan philosophy.

>Just my 2 pennies :-)

More like $5.00 I'd say.

Colleen

>Rick Hoffman.