The hellish existence of a dairy cow
As someone who milked cows for 18 years, I can vouch that dairy farmers can and do have a real fondness for their cows. Like Nate Chittenden in Andrew Jacob's recent article. 'Is Dairy Farming Cruel to Cows?', a lot of the cows I milked had names, I could pet them and I never wanted to see them suffer. What I didn't realise at the time was that every single day I was CAUSING suffering to those animals I loved. How? Where to start.
I was irreparably damaging them physically and emotionally by ordering a large adult male human to forcibly and artificially impregnate them. For this to happen, the cow has to be in a position where she cannot move at all. Then the man forces his very large, gloved arm into the cow's rectum and buries his arm up to the shoulder, deep inside the cow's reproductive system to locate the cervix. Then with the other hand, he inserts a long, metal straw containing bull semen into the cow's vagina before sending her on her way. What would we call this horrific violation of a defenceless female's body parts if she were human? According to Mr Chittenden, it is not rape and cows 'rarely resist' artificial insemination (AI) because it's preferable to a real bull, who may cause damage. In other words, Chittenden makes the disturbing implication that she must show resistance for it to be a violation of her body. While cows may not be able to say ‘no’, the presumption of consent and the entitlement Chittenden and others like him feel they have to use a cow’s body as they wish is a disturbing reflection of the objectification of females that is extremely common in the dairy industry. Also, judging by the number of AI technicians I witnessed, who would swear at the cows for clenching their muscles painfully with all their might around their arms in resistance, and the countless bleeding rectums I saw after insemination, it is not the case that AI causes no harm compared to a bull. If a bull mates a cow in the paddock, she stands there willingly and lets him do it, right out there in the open. No need to secure her in a steel crate or milking bail, where she can't move a muscle. What does that tell you?
“I never stopped to consider that for a cow to make milk, a baby had to be born and more often than not, that baby had to die.”
From the indignity of insemination, the cow would more often than not become pregnant and carry the resulting baby inside her for the next nine months, just as humans do. Upon giving birth, I then played a part in inflicting the worst, the cruellest suffering of all. As the mother cow stood feeding, washing and nuzzling her perfect, newborn calf, I would drive into the paddock with a quad bike and trailer, while another farmworker would scoop up the calf, just a few hours old, place them unceremoniously into the trailer and get me to drive off, with the calf bellowing loudly for their mother and the terrified and stressed mother chasing hopelessly behind, before being taken their separate ways; the calf into a barn, where I would raise them on an artificial rubber teat until weaning and the cow into a paddock with all the other grieving mothers who would never see their babies again. Cows which had names. Cows I supposedly loved. Does this sound as though they 'don't have a stress in the world', as Nate Chittenden claims?
Nate Chittenden obviously knows his cows have feelings. Like me, he will know that cows have a hierarchy, a pecking order. He will know they have best friends and that the mommas love their babies. He will never know however what it is like to carry a growing baby inside his body for nine months and give birth, only to have your baby taken away. To have that baby die. I do know how that feels. My firstborn son died at two days old and it is the worst pain imaginable. Doctors came and took him away and there was nothing I could do. 26 years ago that happened to me and to this day it doesn't get easier. You learn to live with it, you learn to carry your grief but it doesn't go away, not ever. For me, that happened just once. For dairy cows, it happens year after year after year. For almost two decades in the dairy industry, I played a part in bringing about that suffering.
All those years I milked hundreds of cows, singing to them, patting them and greeting them by name, it never once occurred to me that I was harming them in any way. I was only milking them after all, milking didn't hurt, right? I never stopped to consider for a moment that I was once again exploiting and abusing the reproductive organs of another species, twice a day, every day. I never stopped to consider that I was literally stealing from them. Stealing milk which was made for just one purpose - to feed their own baby. I never stopped to consider that for a cow to make milk, a baby had to be born and more often than not, that baby had to die.
Dairy calves are taken away from their mothers within hours of being born so we can steal their milk
NOBODY GETS SPARED
That's just the basics, the daily, monthly and yearly cycle of a dairy cow. When I was in dairy farming, there were many cows in the herd who were 10 years old. One was as old as 16. Do you know what that means? It means she had been artificially inseminated over a dozen times. It means she had given birth to 14 babies and they had all been taken away from her. That cow had a name. Her name was Tilly and she loved nothing more than a good pat and a head scratch because she had grown up as the family pet. Yet when Tilly got too old to be of use, she got put on the truck and sent to the slaughterhouse, just like any other cow. That's what she got, for 16 years of service, money-making, abuse and exploitation. I didn't get to say goodbye to her. By then I was at home raising children, but I wonder now if the other farmers did; the ones who raised her from a newborn calf. I wonder if they thanked her, said goodbye, or gave her one final head scratch. I know they were sad. But the way they said it, 'poor old Tilly's got to go to the works' – it was said with some kind of resignation, as though they couldn't do anything about it. Yet they could if they'd wanted. This was a small family farm, just a couple of hundred cows, with the old traditional stocking rate of 'one cow per acre'. There would have been plenty of room for Tilly to live out the rest of her life peacefully, without having to earn her keep! I don't think that ever even entered their heads though, or mine, back then. What about Nate, the kind and caring farmer in the article? Would that ever occur to him? I would wager not.
Nobody gets spared, you see. Their fate is all the same, no matter what. There are many reasons a dairy cow is no longer deemed 'good enough' to keep but the main two are either she fails to get pregnant, or she fails to produce enough milk to earn her a space being fed on the farm. I'm not sure about other countries, but in New Zealand, the entire dairy herd is tested twice a year. A small sample of milk is taken from each cow during morning and night milking and sent away for analysis. If a cow performs poorly for one test, depending on age, general health and past results, she may get a reprieve but if the results are bad for two tests in a row, that's it. Her production figures are irrefutable and she goes 'on the truck'.
On the truck. That's it. You don't think or say anything more than that when you're in the industry. You don't think about anything past that. Not about where those poor cows are going, what treatment they will face from stock truck or slaughterhouse workers once they leave your property and especially what is going to happen to them at the very end. Their confusion and distress, their fear, their pain are never once considered. I don't think many farmers even know what does happen, to be honest. I certainly never did. It's not our 'department', not our job. I didn't get a glimpse of that until many years later and once I did? Well, that's another story.
“We cause immeasurable suffering to dairy cows... and that’s just the good farmers. What about the many of the ‘other kind’ I witnessed in my years of working on dairy farms?”
I saw a Facebook post a few months ago from someone I used to know who is still in the industry. She wrote about her sadness at sending two of her favourite cows 'on the truck', that day. She admitted to shedding tears as they walked onto the truck and even laughed at herself for getting so emotional, describing how she had to keep a discreet distance from the truck driver, in case he noticed her weeping and teased her for being 'soft'. It took me right back there to my years on the farm and how helpless I had often felt as a worker, who carried no weight when it came to deciding who lived or died. What you do instead is learn to compartmentalise your feelings and store everything neatly away so you don't have to think about things too much. You nod and listen to those in authority who pat you on the shoulder and tell you this is just how it has to be, and after a while, you come to believe it too.
We cause immeasurable suffering to dairy cows with our blatant disregard for their feelings, their babies and their bodies. And that's just the good farmers. What about the many of the 'other kind' I witnessed in my years of working on dairy farms? The bosses who would brutally break the cows' tails during milking if she dared to twitch or kick the cups off, or wouldn't keep still. The kind who would beat them in the milking shed with metal bars until they fell on their knees and couldn't get up. The kind who murdered newborn calves right in front of their mothers. And let's not forget the kind who would sexually abuse the cows while they were immobile in the milking shed, by forcing a fireman's hose into their vagina and turning it on, or violating them with a steel pipe and blowing sharply into it, to 'trick' the cow into letting her milk down.
Even before I truly saw our treatment of dairy cows for what it was, I would often feel so sad for them, my 'girls'. Even then I felt they had a more wretched and sad existence than any other animal I had ever seen. The fact they had names to go with their numbers didn't change that for a second. Is dairy farming cruel to cows? I think Nate Chittenden hit the nail right on the head when he said 'I'm in charge of this entire life from cradle to grave'. Not for one single second is a dairy cow's life her own.
Jackie Norman is a freelance writer and author of several books, including the cookbook Easy & Delicious: Everyday Vegan, released in 2020. Jackie is a member of non-profit organisation Vegan FTA, where she works as a writer, researcher and co-host of the series Activist together with husband, Gareth Scurr. Facebook.com/veganfta
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