Dairy cows make their misery expensive (but their calves can’t)

How much do cows suffer in the production of milk? I can’t answer that; understanding animal experience is hard. But I can at least provide some facts about the conditions dairy cows live in, which might be useful to you in making your own assessment. My biggest conclusion is that cows made better choices than chickens by making their misery financially costly to farmers. Life Cycle. The life of a dairy cow starts as a calf. She is typically separated from her mother a few hours to a few days after birth and, to reduce disease risk, held in isolation. Cutting edge farms will sometimes house calves in pairs. This isolation is clearly stressful for a baby herd mammal and her mother, but I didn’t find any quantification of that stress that I trusted. Calves will be bottlefed until weaning at 6-8 weeks (4-6 months earlier than beef calves). After weaning and vaccinations they can be introduced into a herd. At large farms (where most cows live), they will move in and out of different herds through their lifecycle. This is more stressful than being embedded with your friends for life, but again, I found no trustworthy quantification. Heifers (unbred dairy cows) are first bred at 12-15 months, and calve 9 months later. After this, they will be on a ~yearly cycle of pregnancy, birth, and lactation (they will lactate through most of pregnancy). They will typically have 3 pregnancies before their milk production decreases and they are killed. An advantage cows have that egg chickens lack is that stress immediately and measurably decreases their economic productivity. This makes Cow Comfort big business, although if we can’t solve the sadist problem in nursing homes I don’t see how we can assume it’s solved in cows. On average, ⅓ of dairy calves will go on to be dairy cows (herd size is constant or slightly shrinking in America despite increased demand, because productivity is increasing faster). ~2% will be raised for veal, some unknown percentage will be killed immediately, a