Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Dunamisdeos]

My wife thought that the yellow part of an egg turned into the baby chick when we met wayyyyy back in the day.

We been dating since high, school, that was a long time ago, and I thought it was super adorable.

[martinuzz]

Does milking a cow hurt it, if not I'm not sure why vegans have some problem against it, even more with wool....

You can't have a diary farm without butchering 99% of all male calves.

[redwallzyl]

Does milking a cow hurt it, if not I'm not sure why vegans have some problem against it, even more with wool....

You can't have a diary farm without butchering 99% of all male calves.

They all die in the end.

[Dunamisdeos]

Do dairy farms have a lot of calves? Or do they also generally breed the cows for their beef at the same time? That would make sense.

[Tawa]

They all die in the end.

All humans die in the end too. Doesn't mean that medical science is useless.

Um, also. That chart. I'm not sure where you found it, what the context of the data is, or even what the title of the chart is, but it doesn't seem particularly relevant to the discussion at hand, particularly when one considers that it has "wool" and "kent (mod)" (whatever that is) on it.

[TamerVirus]

It obviously graphs the population of cows that give meat, cows that give milk, cows that give wool, and cows that give birth to moderators named Kent

[redwallzyl]

It's a survivorship curve. That's what it looks like when you plot out this stuff.

[Yoink]

I reduced my energy drink intake to two per day. Still too much, that stuff is pure poison (well, mostly it's sugar content is).
I tried the sugarfree versions but man those are gross.
Coffee is better. Needs way less sugar to achieve the same sweetness.

Huh, actually my energy drink for yesterday and today (yes, I have at last been reunited with it and am currently drinking it on my lunch break) was the sugar-free variety of Monster.
Mainly because it was on special, but it tastes pretty nice too and has a delightful embossed can to obsess over. The other day I mentally described its taste as "severely stale but somehow still carbonated boozy fruit punch with a light dusting of cigarette ash stirred through", but today it just tastes like pure energy.

...and artificially impregnate the mothers for several years to keep them producing milk before slaughtering them once fertility declines.

Ah, the ol' r*pe rod. Learning of that sort of thing is what originally shocked me into cutting dairy, too. I feel like if I hadn't ditched agriculture class as an elective subject in high school as soon as I was able I probably would have skipped vegetarianism and gone straight to vegan once they taught us dairy stuff. ^~^;

I pretty much agree with all your points. I think it would be very difficult for egg/dairy/wool farming to ever become ethical, though - to reach that "symbiotic" would probably be more like a pet ownership-type deal rather than any large scale commercial business.


...Man that was a good energy drink.

[martinuzz]

Do dairy farms have a lot of calves? Or do they also generally breed the cows for their beef at the same time? That would make sense.

They are impregnated regularily, and their newborn calves are taken away immediatly so they can get pregnant again sooner, to keep milk production high.

[Yoink]

Had an unplanned nap and in the meantime it got cold, so I woke up rather shivery.
This ridiculous "no shoes in the house" rule is making me wish I owned some slippers.

[Dunamisdeos]

Do dairy farms have a lot of calves? Or do they also generally breed the cows for their beef at the same time? That would make sense.

They are impregnated regularily, and their newborn calves are taken away immediatly so they can get pregnant again sooner, to keep milk production high.

Oh right, that makes sense too.

[Grim Portent]

Do dairy farms have a lot of calves? Or do they also generally breed the cows for their beef at the same time? That would make sense.

They are impregnated regularily, and their newborn calves are taken away immediatly so they can get pregnant again sooner, to keep milk production high.

Oh right, that makes sense too.

Dairy cattle are also not usually considered good for beef production, so the male calves are usually destined for things other than human consumption, like pet food and animal based fertilizers. Part of breeding good dairy cattle meant directing more energy to growing large udders, with the side effect of their muscles being much less developed than beef cattle who were bred for large muscles and small udders, though most breeds are somewhere between the two extremes.

Cows are very expensive to keep, so few farms are inclined to raise a dairy bull who'll barely make back the cost of raising it if it makes it back at all rather than raising more dairy cows or actual beef cattle, so they get rid of them as soon as they can. Similar with chickens, egg hens usually never reach a table, they have different breeds of bird for it and most males of non-meat breeds (and most males of meat breeds too) get culled basically as soon as they can be identified.

[martinuzz]

Biologists consider dairy cattle to not be a proper life form, they do not fit within the definition which states that to classify as life, you must be able to reproduce independently. For that reason, virusses don't count as life either, for they can't reproduce without using a host cell.

Dairy cows can't reproduce without human aid. We selectively bred them for larger udders so much, that their pelvis has become too small to give birth over 50% of the time. Which is why vets are so busy pulling calves from cows using chains, or sawing them up into smaller bits inside the womb if they're too late.
If you'd release a herd of dairy cattle in the wild, they would likely die out before they lose the small pelvis through natural selection.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

That's just a flawed definition of life. Humans can't reproduce without mitochondria and we can't live without gut flora. Ergo, humans are like virii and aren't alive.

[Dunamisdeos]

Uh-oh, you had a hysterectomy. Guess you aren't life anymore.