Cows

Birth and Separation

• The Motherly Cow: Among mammals, few are as tender and nurturing as mother cows. They bond deeply with their calves, caring for them with undivided devotion. Tragically, in the dairy industry, this natural bond is broken again and again.

  When her calf is taken away, the mother cow's anguished cries echo for days. She bellows and searches, desperately calling out for her baby. Witnessing this suffering is a profound reminder of how deeply animals can feel loss and pain. Ignoring this reality reveals how far removed we have become and how diminished our empathy has grown.
   

• Forced Impregnation: Cows, like all mammals, only produce milk after giving birth. In factory farms, cows are forcibly impregnated year after year to keep milk production constant. They are restrained in narrow chutes where a worker inserts an arm into the cow's rectum to open her cervix before injecting bull semen which is forcibly removed from the bull. This process, once commonly called the "rape rack" by the industry, is now referred to as "breeding boxes" in an attempt to sanitize the harsh reality.
   

• Calf Separation: Shortly after giving birth, mother cows are separated from their newborn calves, usually within hours. This separation causes immense emotional distress. This trauma repeats with each birth, creating a perpetual cycle of grief.
   

• Calf Fate: The fate of the calves depends on their gender. Male calves are often sent to veal farms, feedlots, or slaughterhouses, where they endure lives of intense confinement and suffering. Female calves are raised to become dairy cows like their mothers, destined to experience the same cycle of exploitation and abuse.
   

Cow Manipulation: Dehorning, Branding, and More
 

• Dehorning: Cows on factory farms are subjected to painful procedures that strip them of their natural characteristics and identity. Dehorning is a common practice where calves' horn buds are burned or cut off, often without anesthesia, causing extreme pain and distress. This process is done to prevent injury in the cramped conditions of factory farms but leaves the animals suffering from chronic pain.
   

• Branding: Cows are subjected to branding, where hot irons are pressed into their skin to indicate ownership, leaving permanent scars.
   

• Tail Docking: They may also endure tail docking, a procedure in which a portion of their tail is removed, supposedly to improve hygiene, but it causes lasting discomfort and limits their ability to swat away flies. These manipulations serve only to make the cows more manageable for farm workers while disregarding their well-being and natural behaviors.
  
  Exploitation and Overproduction
   

• Milk Production: In nature, a cow would produce up to 25 pounds of milk per day for her calf. However, factory farms force cows to produce an astounding 70 to 100 pounds of milk daily. To achieve this, cows are fed "enriched" feed containing animal by-products, the unused organs of other animals like pigs and chickens, a perverse violation of their natural herbivorous diet.
  
   

• Physical Strain: The extreme overproduction of milk leads to painful conditions like mastitis, a severe udder infection. The hormones and antibiotics used in these cows further compromise their health. Their udders become so swollen that they sometimes drag on the ground into their own feces, causing further pain and risk of infection.
   

• Continuous Reproduction: Dairy cows are impregnated at much younger ages than they would be in nature, enduring constant cycles of pregnancy and lactation. This relentless reproduction weakens their bodies, and while a cow in the wild could live up to 20 to 25 years, dairy cows in factory farms are often "spent" and slaughtered at just 4 years old.
   

• Downed Cows: "Downed cows" are cows that become too weak, sick, or injured to stand or walk, and this fate befalls approximately 500,000 dairy cows each year in the U.S. The constant cycle of forced impregnation, over-milking, and confinement leaves these cows physically depleted. They collapse under the strain of their unnaturally high milk production and the harsh conditions they endure.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
   

• Leg Shackling: When a cow becomes "downed," she is often neglected, left lying in filth, unable to move. At slaughterhouses, these cows are subjected to further cruelty; they are leg-shackled and dragged by chains if they cannot walk, causing torn skin, broken tendons, and fractured bones. This brutal treatment underscores how the dairy industry views cows not as sentient beings but as mere commodities to be exploited until they are utterly "spent."
   

Confinement and Milking
 

• Tie Stalls: Dairy cows spend their lives confined to tie stalls or concrete-floored barns with little room to move. During milking, they are secured in "milking parlors," head-locked into uncomfortable positions, while machines extract their milk. The automated systems prioritize efficiency over welfare, leading to injuries, infections, and stress.
   

• Lack of Pasture: Most dairy cows are denied access to pastures. They spend their lives confined indoors, separated from the natural environment, unable to graze, socialize, or engage in their natural behaviors.
   

The Brutality of Slaughter
 

• Transport: Once a dairy cow's body is worn out and milk production declines, she is deemed "spent" and sent to slaughter. The transport to the slaughterhouse is often long and grueling, lasting for days without food or water. Cows collapse from exhaustion, illness, or injury during transport. Approximately 29,000 cows die each year in transport in the U.S.
   

• Slaughter Process: At the slaughterhouse, cows are supposed to be rendered unconscious before their throats are slit. However, due to high production speeds, this is often not done correctly. Some cows are still conscious when they are hung upside down and bled out. These cows, who have spent their lives producing milk for human consumption, are reduced to meat for hamburgers and animal feed.
   

• Slaughtered While Pregnant: Shockingly, an estimated 20% of dairy cows (600,000 per year), who are sent to slaughter are still pregnant. The constant cycle of forced impregnation and milk production exhausts their bodies to the point where they are deemed unproductive. These pregnant cows are sent to slaughterhouses, where both the mother and her unborn calf face an inhumane end.

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