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Sun 11 Nov, 2007 07:48 pm
I understand that cows need to be milked. This is generally done by man &/or machine at a dairy. If the man/machine fails to milk the cow when the cow is ready to be milked, I believe it causes problems for the cow.
My question is, how is this handled when cows exist in the wild?
Domestic cattle, Bos taurus, are extinct in the wild. However wild cattle today is in the Bos genus and are in the bovinae subfamily, a part of the bovidae family. These include gaur of India, Cambodian Forest Ox or Kouprey, Cape Buffalo, Asian Water Buffalo. They are not true cattle like domestic ones but are very closely related animals very similar in appearance to cattle.
And remember cows and bulls are just males and females of the same species, cattle, or usually Bos taurus. The females are called cows and the males are called bulls.
courtesy of Yahoo answers...
also to answer your question- they would be just like your mama...if they don't have young offspring to nurse and are not being milked regularly - they just dry up and don't produce milk anymore.
Wow, we really are becoming increasingly isolated from our food sources and nature in general!
littlek wrote:Wow, we really are becoming increasingly isolated from our food sources and nature in general!
That was my thought too...
Gollum, the dairy cows on farms only produce milk all the time because we force them to, and the calves are taken away so that people can take the milk instead.
Milking Cows
cyphercat-
Thank you.
I wonder how we force them to. I thought a female mammal begins ovulating milk when her body is pregnant. In the human species, I believe a young lady who is not pregnant can not force herself to give milk.
Self-disclosure: I am a male bachelor. I confess my woeful ignorance, but that's why I use able2know.org.
I wonder how the calf grows up, if it is denied its mother's milk.
Milking Cows
roger-
Thank you.
Yes, I have heard of veal. It is the flesh of a calf, so your point is that the calf is killed.
But I guess some calves are allowed to live so that they may become cattle (and provide beef) and cows (and provide milk). And I guess the cow is allowed to give milk to those calves and to that extent not be available to give milk for human consumption.
Quote:Self-disclosure: I am a male bachelor. I confess my woeful ignorance, but that's why I use able2know.org.
That's cute!
Anyway, I didn't mean anything personal by my comment, I think it's common for people to not know much about where their food comes from these days.
As I understand it, the calves are given the milk for as little time as possible (a few days, I think), then taken away and raised on formula of some sort. Female calves are raised for dairy, males are slaughtered for veal. I think cows are kept in milk by doing things like giving them hormones, keeping them pregnant with yearly artificial insemination, and frequent milkings. I can't remember the amount precisely, but we make cows produce something like ten times the amount of milk they naturally would...(it's not a very nice system
)
Quote:I think cows are kept in milk by doing things like giving them hormones
I'm not a dairy farmer so some of this is a guess.
Hormnes are not used to keep cows lactating
At least not in my experience. I think this would probably be illegal as well.
Cows are dry (ie No milk) for around 60 days each year. 80 - 90 days after calving they are Inseminated and continue to produce milk. Lactation gradually and naturally reduces to a point where the cows are no longer economic to milk. Cows are then dried off (milking stops.) 280 days (I think) after insemination cows calve and the cycle starts again.
Different production cycles are used in different countries and have different timing requirements. Different breeds and genetics are selected for differing types of milk. Ie butterfat content. Selective feeding and types of feed can affect the quality of milk produced.
Cows are milked twice a day, with milk being stored in temp controlled Vats. It is picked up by milk tanker once each day and taken to the milk factory where they do all sorts of nasty things to the milk.
This is an example only
http://www.ukagriculture.com/production_cycles/dairy_production_cycle.cfm
And thats no bull.
Women will lactate as long as a baby is willing to nurse (or as long as they are willing to nurse their baby - that's another issue though). So if a woman is brought a child not her own - she becomes a wet nurse and will continue lactating as long as there is a baby to feed. Has more to do with demand of a child. The sucking of the child causes the mammary glands to produce milk. The same thing goes for a cow. As long as there is something taking milk they will produce more.
mismi40 wrote: The sucking of the child causes the mammary glands to produce milk. The same thing goes for a cow. As long as there is something taking milk they will produce more.
Not so sure this is correct.
If this was so there would be no need for farmers to ever impregnate cows.
domestic dairy cattle=newborn calves (usually after 3 days) are usually sold as "bucket calves" as they are fed "from a bucket" which is often just a very large bottle with a nipple like a regular baby's botttle. What they are fed is called "milk-replacer" which is a formulated powdered milk that comes in 20 lb bags.
The dairy cow is then milked every 12 hours and then (depending on the breed_rebred to calf again in about a year) the cow is milked every 12 hours for that year.
Demand for milk is what keeps a human mother lactating. Whether she has been pregnant recently or not...which is why the disturbing examples of Mom's that are still nursing their 6 year old children happen. My Father-in-law is a dairy farmer...or was for many years. He said that the cow has to be pregnant once in order to produce milk but they do not have to keep getting pregnant in order to produce. There are extenuating circumstances in which the milk will dry up...poor nutrition etc...but cows have the ability to lactate for 2-3 years without having to be re-bred. They have to be given a drying up time if they are allowed to milk that long in order for the mammary glands to re-charge. This is what my FIL told me when I asked him a few years back while I was nursing my twins. I had ots of questions for him since I felt like a cow - I nursed two babies for 14 months!
dairy cows do not continue to lactate, they must calve again anywhere from 11 to 14 months to keep lactating.
Alright - just got that from asking him - I'm sure you are correct. :wink: I think they do impregnate them every year to keep the supply steady.
dys (who all of us despise), is correct. We have a term for getting a cow impregnated, we call it "freshening".
dadpad wrote:Quote:I think cows are kept in milk by doing things like giving them hormones
I'm not a dairy farmer so some of this is a guess.
Hormnes are not used to keep cows lactating
At least not in my experience. I think this would probably be illegal as well.
Hullo dadpad-- it may well be illegal there, I know it is in a lot of other countries, but it's not illegal in the dear ol US of A... re-combinant Bovine Growth Hormone *is* given to dairy cows here. I just don't know for sure if it's given to increase milk production or for other reasons. (Also, of course I'm not speaking of all dairy farms, but of the big, intensive factory-farming type of thing-- I have no idea how much or little of this applies to smaller farms.) (Also, I'm not a dairy farmer either [gasp!] so my knowledge of this comes from books and the 'net, and is admittedly from sources that are against factory farming, like the Humane Farming Assoc. I'm sure there are people who'd find that to be a suspect source, so there's full disclosure for ya.)
Anyway, here's what the Humane Farming Association says about it:
Quote:BGH is [. . .] injected into dairy cows on a regular basis. Monsanto claims that BGH merely "enhances" a natural process. Cows do, of course, produce hormones as part of their natural bio-chemical systems. But those natural hormones are produced in the proportion needed to meet the cow's complex physiological needs. BGH manipulates these natural systems and artificially induces the cow to produce more milk than is appropriate for her body.
https://hfa.org/campaigns/dairy.html
Mostly good info there. "Freshening," though, isn't insemination, it's giving birth. A "fresh cow" is one that's just had a calf.
Growth hormone isn't responsible for milk production, so far as I know, but it does help mobilize nutrients and make them available for lactation, just like it made nutrients available to make muscle and bone for Barry Bonds (allegedly).
As for the interminable lactation thing -- I don't know if cows producing "normal" amounts of milk could be kept lactating indefinitely. In nature it doesn't much matter, because the anatomic and physiologic changes that transition a calf from milk to solid food happen over a few weeks, and once they make the switch milk is no good for them. At any rate, the metabolic demands of producing at the level of a modern dairy cow take a heavy toll, and the 60 or more dry days that dadpad mentioned are necessary for recovery (and to get ready to have the next calf). Dairy cows are pushed to their metabolic limits, and many cows lose so much calcium after calving that they go down and medical intervention is required to keep them alive.
All the same, though, I'd rather be a diary cow than a chicken or a pig raised for meat, and I'd probably prefer it to being a beef steer, as well.
patiodog wrote:the anatomic and physiologic changes that transition a calf from milk to solid food happen over a few weeks, and once they make the switch milk is no good for them.
I find it strange and distasteful that humans continue to drink cow (or other animal milk) when it is no longer beneficial for even the offspring of the mother animal.
I don't know of any other animal that goes out of it's way to drink the milk of another species.
I'm not a vegetarian, and a certain amount of milk in my diet seems to be unavoidable, but my belief is cow milk is for baby cows.
I don't know of any other animal that retains the ability to digest lactose into adulthood. Strange as you may find it, dairies are by no means the most inhumane of living situations that we subject animals to.
Personally, I find much of what human beings do to be strange and distasteful, and I don't shed any tears at the prospect of our species becoming extinct. But, like popeye, I yam what I yam, and I likes my cheeses.
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