Everything I hear how cow farmers need to take care of their stock baffles me more and more how these were able to survive for so long
A cow needs to be milked every certain period to avoid infections, bruising, death
A cow needs help with the birth of a calf, as its sometimes a process which cant be done by a cow itself
A cow builds up gasses in their stomachs, requiring punctures to avoid sickness, death
And not to mention the parasites, specific diets, and maybe some other things I wouldn’t know about
In: Biology
Didn’t see your specific points being addressed, so as for some specific context:
Dairy cows have been bred to produce more and more milk compared to the natural amount that a calf would need. Holsteins produce an average of nine gallons of milk a day, whereas cattle bred for beef only produce one or two gallons. A pre-domestication animal would produce a reasonable amount of milk for the needs of its calf and wouldn’t require extra milking to keep up with production.
Selective breeding for beef quality and dairy quantity means that if a cow with great milk or from a great beef line could only successfully give birth with human help, their genetics would still be selected for. In the wild this is not true. That said, live births in the animal kingdom can be very dangerous. For example, the death rate for female hyenas giving birth for the first time is around 20%, and the cub death rate during birthing is around 60%. Sometimes nature has these bottlenecks but the overall survival rate is still high enough for the organism to persist. We don’t like this level of waste in animals we raise for food and have the ability to improve the survival rate, so we do. That doesn’t mean that without our help the animals wouldn’t persist, just that there would be higher death rates.
Cattle can be fed on mainly grass or with soy and corn feed. The latter allows them to mature faster and produce more meat or milk in a shorter time frame. It also produces more methane during digestion. Grass fed cows produce less methane per day. It takes them longer to put on weight or produce the same amount of milk. So feed based diets which are only possible with human interference increase the amount of gasses and sometimes those gasses have to be managed to keep the cattle healthy but in nature those pressures would be less.
As for parasites and special diets, nearly all animals do better when those things are controlled. Only humans(and only some of them) have systems to control pathogens and supplement specific nutrients. I’ve seen the question before, “Why can’t humans drink the water in rivers and streams but animals can?” The answer is that animals suffer just like humans do from contaminated water. They persist in spite of this pressure on their population, they are not immune or exempt. Globally, many people only have contaminated water sources, and the global death rate from waterborne diseases is about 3,575,000 per year on average. People in nations with the resources to address these issues do so, those who can’t suffer but persist. Cattle breeders don’t want a high percentage of cattle to die from preventable causes because it’s a waste of resources, so they prevent and treat parasites etc. Same with nutrients. Cattle are supplemented to produce the best quality beef or dairy. The nutrients that benefit the product are included, while those that interfere with the product are restricted.
TLDR: breeding has increased dependence, also wild animals die a lot and still persist
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