Factory Farming Dairy Production

It seems that milk is thought by many as a product that does little to harm those cows from whom it’s gathered. After all the cows are not killed in order to produce milk as they are in beef production. That little harm is perpetrated upon dairy cows seems at first like a fair assumption, unfortunately this is far from the truth.

Shelter

Traditional farms have long given way to agribusiness factory farms. Dairy cows in such systems are intensively raised either indoors in individual stalls or outdoors in what is known as a “drylot.” The Humane Society of the United States describes a drylot as, “an outdoor enclosure devoid of grass” (HSUS, “Dairy Farm”). To be even more accurate a drylot consists of hard packed dirt which increases the likelihood of lameness in cows (API, "Destructive"). Furthermore, such drylots can quickly turn to a mud/manure mix in a storm. For the cows raised on drylots there is normally no shelter available to them in order to protect them from varying weather conditions. Drylots are cleaned only once or twice throughout an entire year. Therefore the waste produced by the thousands of cows kept in a drylot accumulates leaving the animals to continually stand, walk, and lie in their own excrement. These conditions are extremely conducive to the facilitation of disease (HSUS, “Dairy Farm”).

The permanent or seasonal shelters lack many amenities for the occupants in which they house. Cows when kept indoors are kept in stalls which lack sufficient room. In England, surveys have indicated that of the stalls in which cows are kept 87% are “too short.” This means that given the inadequate length of the stall, cows often have to stand with their hind feet in the area at the rear of the stall meant to catch and, to a limited extent, carry away waste and bile. Like their outdoor counterparts, indoor dairy cows lack sufficient, if any, bedding on which to lie¹ (CIWF, “Dairy Campaign”). Kept indoors the cows find every aspect of their life manipulated; “they are fed calculate amounts of feed, temperatures are adjusted to maximize milk yield, and lighting is artificially set. Some farmers have found that a cycle of sixteen hours of light with only eight hours of darkness is conducive to greater output” (Singer, 137).

Pregnancy

We have grown so accustomed to thinking of a cow as producing milk many people fail to realize that cows do not continually produce milk every day of the year without a reason to do so. The fact of the matter is cows, like humans, produce milk only after pregnancy. Therefore dairy cows are kept pregnant, forced to birth a calf every year by artificial insemination or embryo transfer. The latter method has proven so painful to the cows that before the procedure it is often necessary by law to administer an epidural anesthetic both for the donor and recipient (CIWF, “Dairy Campaign”). The gestation period for cows is equal to that of humans so that for nine months out of every year a dairy cow is carrying and providing for not only herself but her unborn calf as well. So demanding is the milk industry, even pregnant cows are used to produce milk for seven of the months they are bearing young (FactoryFarming.com, “Dairy”). Once a cow delivers her offspring she is placed back into production and will be milked between two and three times a day (Singer, 137).

Offspring

When the calves are born they are separated from their mothers anywhere from a few hours to a couple of days after birth. The mother stripped of her new born calf calls out for days in a likely attempt to locate her infant son or daughter (Singer, 136). The stolen calf’s future is bleak, at best, and will be exploited in a variety of ways in order to provide consumable products for humans. If female, the calf is likely to be placed into the dairy industry like her mother. If the calf is male it will likely end up in one of two places. The first is on a feed lot where it will be pushed to quickly gain weight so that they can be shipped to slaughter as soon as possible. Calves not sent to a feedlot will find themselves in a much more inhospitable atmosphere; the veal crate. Calves raised for veal are chained in narrow stalls unable to significantly move about. By limiting their movements calves are unable to develop tough muscle and their “meat” is kept soft. They are also kept in a constant state of anemia so that their flesh remains pale or white making them more desirable to the veal industry. They remain chained and anemic until slaughtered (Singer, 136).

Milking

Dairy cows have been manipulated to produce “2.5 times as much milk today as they did in the 1950’s.” Put another way today’s dairy cows produce anywhere from “10-20 times the amount of milk needed to suckle their calves” (API, “Destructive”). Today’s genetically engineered dairy cows produce substantially more milk than cows of earlier ages. So much more milk is produced that it is common place for cows to be reported as producing one hundred pounds daily (FactoryFarming.com, “Dairy”).

Because the cows are genetically engineered and pushed to produce large amounts of milk, around one third of these creatures develops a painful bacterial infection in the utter called mastitis. Some of these cases become systemic invading the entire body (API, “Destructive”). The indications of acute clinical mastitis include “high fever, anorexia, swollen and painful quarter(s), weakness, diarrhea, and recumbence” (NYSCHAP, “Mastitis Therapy”). Cows not capable of ridding themselves of the disease are often “culled,” or grouped, and designated for slaughter. Jan K. Sheerer and R.K. Braun of the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences states the procedure as such; “[m]ark infected cows for slaughter. This is the recommendation of choice for most severe clinical infections. Treatment has not been very effective” (“Mycoplasm Mastitis,” emphasis added). An extension veterinarian at the Utah State University reveals the criteria which should be used to determine when to send the cows to be slaughtered, “Identify infected (or likely infected) cows and cull them to slaughter as soon as their milk production drops below an economic level. DON’T keep them for another lactation” (Bagley, “Staph Mastitis,” emphasis added except for capitalization which was the author’s emphasis).

One of the effects of manipulating increased milk production is an unnaturally large utter. Large utters are daily difficulties for the cows that must live with such industry produced deformities. One of the difficulties is merely standing in place. The utter is located on the underside of the cow almost directly between her hind legs. Such large utters require the cow to stand and walk with a wider gait than what its skeletal system can accommodate. Such a stance leads to abnormalities in the alignment of the pelvis as well as the spine (API, “Destructive”). There is also “a high incidence of damage to the outer claw of the hind feet” (CIWF, “Dairy Campaign”). This problem is compounded given that many dairy cows spend their life on concrete floors (API, “Destructive”). To complicate the issue even further, dairy cows spend most of their lives pregnant, which adds to the amount of weight that these cows have to continually endure, and thus exacerbates their structural deformities.

Food, Disease and Medication

The natural diet consumed by cows cannot provide for the elevated level of milk production that is demanded of them. Subsequently, cows are administered high energy foods. Because this diet is outside of the natural food intake it can lead to ketosis, a potentially life threatening condition, and laminitis causing the cow to become lame. (FactoryFarming.com, “Dairy”). The dairy cow’s food often contains “soybeans, fish meal, brewing byproducts, and even poultry manure.” These foods do not coincide with a cow’s natural digestive process. A cow is structured so as to digest types of grass and other forage. This process is significantly slower than the digestion that occurs in other animals (Singer, 137). Cows are equipped with four stomachs which aid in the fermentation of certain types of food. Because cows are fed high energy food which they are unable to adequately digest, during a cow’s peak milking period she will burn more calories than can be absorbed. When a dairy cow is unable to meet the caloric demands that is being placed on her body, she will begin to “break down and use her own body tissues” as a source for energy (Singer, 137). Such a high milk demand can also lead to “Milk Fever” which is caused by an extreme lack of calcium in the blood. By producing abnormally large milk yields, cows lose a substantial portion of their body’s calcium through lactation (FactoryFarming.com, “Dairy”). The symptoms of Milk Fever are a “[l]oss of appetite, followed by muscle weakness and paralysis of hind legs.” Eventually the cow “collapses into [a] coma and dies” (Butler, “Forage”).

Medication plays a central role in forcing cows to produce high levels of milk. One of the aspects manipulated in cows are hormone levels. Some dairy cows are injected with Bovine Growth Hormone (BGH or rBGH) also called Bovine Somatotropin (BST) (Bedford, “Monstrous”). By injecting dairy cows with BST the already excessive amount of milk they produce can be boosted by 25%. In the United States alone it has been estimated that 7% to 25% of the dairy cows are given this growth hormone. BST leads to larger utters and renders cows more susceptible to infections (API, “Destructive”). BST also causes painful occurrences in cows such as the “draining [of] calcium from bones and tissues, causing ulcers along their backbone and disfiguring swelling of leg joints” (Bedford, “Monstrous”). BST also raises the likelihood of incurring birth defects among the recipient’s offspring (FactoryFarming.com, “Dairy”). Also caused by BST is an increased incidence of mastitis, (the results of which were documented above) the likelihood of decreasing future reproductive tendencies, reactions causing pain at the point of injection, “a doubling in length of the period of catabolic stress endured by cows after calving” and “an increase in the risk of cows suffering from negative energy balance, chronic hunger and severe loss of condition” (CIWF, “Dairy Campaign”).

Abuses

An increasing number of dairy cows are having their tails docked (meaning amputated). Such amputations involve the removal of 50% or more of the cow’s tail. This procedure is performed without any anesthetic either by a farmer or farm employee. The amputation, a process called “ringing,” is performed by use of a rubber band tightly placed around the tail. This reduces blood flow to the point that the tail section begins to necrotize. After seven days the dead tail can be cut off with sheers or left to fall off on its own.

Tails are amputated in a belief that it is both safer for the employees of the dairy farm and for the cows on which the procedure is performed. Tails that come into contact with a cow’s urine have been found to harbor Leptospirosis. It is thought that by removing the tail, workers will have less exposure to such hazards when milking cows (sometimes milked from rear). However, there have been a number of other factors implicated in the transmission of Leptospirosis, and tail amputation has little research which could warrant the continuance of such a practice.

Also, cows are said to benefit from the reduced risk of infections, such as mastitis that a soiled tail may spread by contact to the udder. However, “[s]cientific evidence to date indicates that tail docking dairy cattle does not increase udder cleanliness, reduce the incidence of mastitis, or improve milk quality or purity relative to keeping the tail intact” (Haverson, “Tail Docking”).

Lifespan

The natural lifespan of a cow is around 25 years (BSU, “AIF”). In dairy farming lives are short lived in comparison. The stress placed on cows via intense lactation is a detriment to their vitality and longevity. By overproduction many dairy cows quickly fall below what is economically acceptable. Such a circumstance leads to slaughtering the animals. Only 25% of dairy cows live beyond 7 years of age. Another 25% are killed before they reach the age of 3 (API, “Destructive”). This early age slaughter group also consists of the cows that have been subjected to the stresses of BST, which renders cows unprofitable, some after only 2 years (Bedford, “Monstrous”). This leaves the remaining 50% of dairy cows to live somewhere between 3-7 years. Regardless, it is evident that dairy cows are not allowed, nor would they often be able after such abuses, to live out their natural lives.

Conclusion

Because cows endure the hardships perpetrated upon them by the dairy industry their lives are far from ideal. The shelter provided them is often cramped and dirty leading to infection and disease. The food cows are given is inadequate for their digestive needs. Soon after birth their babies are painfully separated from them never to be seen again. Furthermore, because dairy cows are medicated and engineered to produce massive amounts of milk, their bodies quickly break down becoming unprofitable and resultantly shortening their lives. It is clear that the dairy industry is far from an innocent entity. The dairy industry harms cows in ways that are, in some ways, worse than its beef counterpart as well as providing young calves for other forms of exploitation.