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
Veterinarian here (who also works mostly with cattle beef and dairy)
Everything you’re mentioning is a problem we invented by pushing genetics.
Cows were never designed to produce the volume a Holstein can. As a result, Holsteins need to be milked every day.
Many beef cattle producers will push their genetics by buying bulls with higher meat EPD’s (genetic expectations, look it up it’s wild). As a result, bigger calves which occasionally get stuck. The calving issue is actually WAY better than it was a few decades ago when sometimes they had to pull almost every calf or have serial c-sections performed.
The bloat is also almost universally caused by giving them a ration with to many carbohydrates, something they would never run into in the wild.
Either way, we created all these problems but we now have incredibly good meat and milk production even with fewer animals.
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