How Do Farmers Raise Cows?

which results in healthy cattle. We use our cattle for milk and meat, and you wouldn’t want

Bill McKibben who is the author for the essay called The Only Way To Have a Cow claims that the way meat is made is an unclean practice that has many negatives. The biggest of them all is methane in the atmosphere. The release of methane can be of the past thanks to today’s methods and technology. Methane can be reduced by having the cows become free-range and grass fed but that would increase the price of meat. Other ways methane can be reduced in the atmosphere is by being stored and used for energy, and by altering cows diets.

The beef industry is an important asset to United States agriculture as a whole. Over a million agricultural entities benefited from the sales of cattle and calves in the year 2000. Gross totals from sales of cattle and calves in 2000 totaled $40.76 billion accounting of 21% of all agricultural receipts making the beef sector the largest single agricultural enterprise. Direct and indirect employment in or related to the production and processing of beef supports over 1.4 million full-time-equivalent jobs in the US as well. Cattle are produced in all 50 states and their economic impact contributes to nearly every county in the nation and they are a significant economic driver (Lawerance and Otto, 2000).

As you can see the dairy cow should be in milk for around 305 days a year and have a drying off period of around 60 days. After calving the cow should be back in calf after 85 days, this is to keep the ratio of 1 calf/ cow/ year. This ratio will get the highest yield out of the cow and keep a good profit margin for the farmer.

Cows are animals that are used to extract many things, since clothes to food. More than 9.3 million cows were used to produce milk in the United States in 2008, and more than 2.5 million dairy cows were slaughtered for meat. In the farms cows are forced to give birth to collect the milk because the first milk is the best, because male calves will not grow up to produce milk, they are considered of little value to the dairy farmer and are sold for meat. Millions of these calves are taken away to be raised for beef. Hundreds of thousands of other male calves born into the dairy industry are raised for veal. Cow lives all her life in a deplorable place where every day the machine extract milk from their udders causing cancer on it when the cow does not serve she is sends to the slaughterhouse to sell their meat. These are the kind of life led farm animals and although they have

Every year, an average American will consume approximately one hundred-twenty six pounds of meat. This meat can be traced back to factory farms where the animals are kept to be tortured to turn into a product for the appetite of humans. The terrible treatment these animals are forced to endure is the outcome of the greed and want for a faster production of their product. The industry of factory farming works to maximize the output of the meat while maintaining low costs,but will sadly always comes at the animals’ expense.

The top four meatpacking businesses hold 20 percent of the nation’s cattle in company owned feedlots or cattle bought before-hand, sometimes using secret pricing contracts (138). These farmers are doing everything they can to make a living. This includes rotation practices that big companies would never care about.

The demand for meat in America is on the rise while the number of family owned farms is declining. The farming industry has had to change century old practices like free-range grazing to keep up with the mass amounts of meat that Americans and other cultures have become accustomed to. A process known as factory farming is controlling the farming industry worldwide. Factory farming is an unnatural and inhuman way to raise mass amounts of livestock. Unfortunately to keep up with demand, small farmers around the world are struggling to survive and are being pressured to work for large corporations raising animals using theses factory farming strategies rather than the natural alternative. As described by Wenonah

The conditions in which meat livestock live in is not exactly that of a large open green field in which they are free to roam and be merry. In the Economist article, Cows down: The beef business (2008) the effects of the ill conditions cows talks of how a

Numerous studies attest that fat composition within in animal (specifically cattle) depend and vary on the diet of that animal (Daley et al. 2010). In the case of cattle, grass-fed and grain (concentrate)-fed are amongst the two largest diets used, and this difference in diets is also correlated with a difference in fat composition (Daley et al. 2010). In general, grain-fed cattle have a higher body fat percentage make up, increasing from 9.76g/100g of muscle in grass-fed crossbred steers to 13.03g/100g of muscle in grain-fed steers (Daley et al. 2010). This is a 34% increase due to a diet change, which is a considerable increase since animal fats are connected to health risks; providing the argument that grass-fed cattle are healthier (Daley et al. 2010).

The Cattle on Feed report is a survey that provides an estimate of the number of cattle being fed for the slaughter market that are expected to grade out at select or better, according to the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). The survey, conducted in the 16 largest cattle-feeding states, represents the numbers being produced by roughly 2,000 cattle feeders with more than 1,000 heads of cattle. The Cattle on Feed survey is conducted monthly and the report is issued on the third Friday of each month.

Dairy farmers work hard to bring fresh and wholesome milk products to the marketplace. Most farms are family-owned. As active members of their communities, farm families take pride in maintaining the environment. That means preserving the land where they live and work and protecting the quality of the air and water they share with neighbors. More importantly, it means providing the best care for their cows, which are the lifeblood of their business.

Cows requires a lot of resources to keep them alive like land,fertilization,food and water. Although we have to raise these cows like many other animals they require more resources than other animals. Beef causes 4 times more greenhouse gases gases than other times of animals that we use for food. Vegetables make less greenhouse gases. It’s better to grow crops and actually

As you can see the dairy cow should be in milk for around 305 days a year and have a drying off period of around 60 days. After calving the cow should be back in calf after 85 days, this is to keep the ratio of 1 calf/ cow/ year. This ratio will get the highest yield out of the cow and keep a good profit margin for the farmer.

Which brings us to the quality of the milk, lots of commercial farms put steroids in there cows to produce more milk than a regular cow could produce, prolactin, steroids including estrogens, progesterone, corticoids, and androgens, these are just some of the steroids commercial farmers inject in there cows. Sometimes when a cow produces too much milk they could develop mastitis in cows, mastitis is an infection or inflammation in the udders which makes them produce chunky milk it can be potentially fatal in the mammary gland and very expensive for the dairy commercial/industrial farms says HDB dairy, if the udders of a dairy cow doesn 't work they often get shot and get butchered for meat just because the farm was pushing them to hard