Humane Treatment to Animal Welfare
Humane treatment and animal welfare of factory farms and slaughterhouse animals are a huge problem in our society.The rearing of farm animals today is dominated by industrialized facilities known as confined animal feeding operations. Most farms in the United States treat their animals unfairly in order to make products easier to sell and faster to make more money faster. Weaning the animals off of their food at a young age and starting them on a strict diet including mostly fatty foods, which will help the animal gain weight is common. Another common inhumane treatment in the animal welfare industry is keeping the animals in confinement. In most cases the animals stay in confinement their whole life. The
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Veal cows are often raised in crates where they do not have enough room to groom themselves, move around, or explore and interact naturally. To stop this unfair treatment, some states have banned veal crates, but the cows are most likely still kept completely indoors on slatted flooring with no bedding and fed an inappropriate diet (Animals).
The heifers (young female cows) are usually raised as “replacement heifers” either on the same farm or sold to another dairy farm, where they will eventually take the place of older cows that have come to the end of their productive life (Animals). Unlike veal calves, the heifers calves are commonly raised in pens or hutches for the first few months of life where they have limited space and don’t get to interact with other cows.
In the U.S., dairy cows have been bred to produce even greater quantities of milk and evidence shows this practice has led to reproductive problems and a higher occurrence of disease (Animal). In other words, if an animal is fed hormones to make them produce more milk, then the antibiotics could be what we are consuming when drinking the company's milk. In 1950. The average dairy cow produced almost 5,300 pounds of milk a year. Today, the typical cow produces just under 20,000 pounds
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The “cow-calf” phase is where the farmer manages the cow during breeding. The cows are then weaned off of their food. The second is the “stocker” phase, where the weaned calves are managed for 3–8 months, during this time they will gain an additional 200–400 pounds of weight. The final phase is called the “feedlot” or finishing phase, where the calves are usually kept in very high numbers and fed forage and grain to end up weighing 1,000-1,500 pounds before being slaughtered.
Another animal that is treated unfairly and packed with hormones is birds such as hens, chickens, and turkeys. Inhumane Practices on Factory Farms says, Four or more egg-laying hens are packed into a battery cage, a wire enclosure so small that none can spread her wings (Inhumane). The hens begin to peck at each others bodies and become irritated. Pregnant sows spend each of their pregnancies confined in a metal enclosure that is scarcely too small for the sow (Inhumane). Unable to turn around, the sows develop abnormal behaviors and tend to have leg
Veal is the meat of young aged cows also known as calves. Veal can be
Important to know is that cows are all females. The bull is the male. Only the cow produces milk, which us humans use for our industry, but actally it is meant for their children. Whatever.
The living conditions of chickens are dreadful and appalling. What came first the chicken or the egg? Chicken farming is found particularly in the Southeast margin of the United States (“Factory Farm Map”). It is explained that, “chickens and hogs on factory farms have no access to the outdoors, fresh air or natural light” (“Factory Farms Map”). This exemplifies one situation of how chickens are poorly treated in the factory farms. In addition, even before the chickens are born, they are treated horribly. More than 125,000 to one million hens can be living in the same factory together (Hobson). Along with crowded living spaces, these animals suffer being “docked,” which means they are declawed and stripped of all teeth (Hobson). This shows how bad the conditions
I am a co-owner of a cattle company were we raise and sell Purebred Hereford cattle, a few years ago we purchased two show heifers from Perez Cattle Company in New Mexico. After I was done showing them, we turned them out on pasture to get bred by our new herd bull. Later that fall we began to do pregnancy checks and those two were the only who that were open. We didn't know why, because we had the bull semen tested again and nothing was wrong. We then realized that they had gotten too fat, coming for a terrain like New Mexico, where there's not an abundance of grass to a place like the Flint Hills of Kansas. We then got their diet adjusted and they got bred to calve in the fall. We also saw a problem like this with another cow that was putting
This is due in part by the previous statement to get higher yields out every animal raised. Cattle, chickens and pigs alike are all subject to certain fattening diets, modern breeding techniques and growth hormone treatments. These forced practices have very adverse, life altering and threatening affects that lead farmers to use antibiotics in order to keep diseases at bay. The Committee on Drug Use in Food Animals states, “doses are used when pathogens are known to be present in the environment or when animals encounter a high stress situation and are more susceptible to pathogens “, (1999, p. 28). It is important to point out that the use of growth hormones and antibiotics dramatically increases body mass, drastically shortens the lifespan of animals such as cattle and is being detected in food for human consumption.
One case of animal abuse in the U.S. food industry is the Central Valley Meat Co, located in Hanford, California. Employees at the Hanford Slaughterhouse were caught on video killing cows violently and inhumanely, neglecting to render cows unconscious before slaughter, and other forms of abuse. Many of the cows appeared to be sick and unable to walk as well. Under federal rules, sick animals can’t be slaughtered for human consumption. (Nidever)
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.
Jersey cows live forever! Within these years Jerseys require limited maintenance. Jerseys have extremely high fertility rate, so there is no need to waste numerous straw of seman on one cow when she is likely to become pregnant that first time. Nine months later when the cow is calving there is also no need to waste time assisting in calving because another characteristic of the Jersey is their calving ease, the calves practically jump right out. So there is no need to consume your time pulling a calf out when most Jerseys do it all by
When it comes to feeding show cattle many raisers have certain feeding strategies that they follow, ensuring they can maintain their goal on winning. Along with feeding it takes exercise so that one’s show calf will not become stout nor stubborn. Certain aspects are necessary to show an animal
Turkeys and Chickens are the two most abused animals in the world. Birds who survive the horrific conditions of broiler sheds or battery cages are transported to the slaughterhouse. Workers rush around grabbing multiple birds by their legs, carelessly flung into cages, a process which breaks many bones and can even snap necks. The journey may be hundreds of miles, but they are given no food or water through any of the process, no matter the conditions.
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
There are several types of dairy farming like intensive, indoor, outdoor and organic farming which involve different ways of farming cows.
There are several different ways to do this, there is a two-breed rotation + terminal sire crossbreeding system, the three-breed rotation cross, and the two-breed rotation cross. For the two-breed rotation + terminal sire crossbreeding system, the “sires used in two-breed rotation primarily to produce replacement heifers.”also the terminal cross sires mated to the less productive females,will increase the pounds of the calf weaned per cow brd by more than 20%. Then comes the three-breed rotation cross, the cross sired by specific breeds are bred to the breed of the next bull in rotation, his increases the pound of the calf weaned per cow by approximately 20% also. For the two-breed cross, the F sired by the breed A are mated to breed bulls, heifers sired by breed B are matd to Breed A bulls, this increases the weight by approximately
Cows are either raised to be eaten or at least used for a food production, as in meats or milk. Cows can be used as a fun ride, as in bull riding. A very neat thing about a cow is their stomach, they have four different compartments in their stomach for the use of food digestion. Cows are usually never alone, they are in a herd. Have you ever been going down a country road and seen only one cow in a field? No,
But what motivates the cattle to enter the Astronaut? Cows begin learning to enter stalls like this early in their life- and it all revolves around one thing. Food! At six days old the calves enter a small stall to get their milk. This then turns into bigger stalls, where full grown cows eat their daily feed. When it’s time to learn how to enter the Astronaut, where nutrient-rich concentrates and relief from a full udder awaits, it’s usually no problem getting the cows inside. The secret here is association, a fairly simple idea that goes all the way back to the 1890’s with Pavlov and his dogs. Once the cattle learn to associate the milking stall with only good things, they’re willing to enter by themselves, without the usual poking and prodding of a directed cow system, making things much easier for both the people and the cattle involved.