Why cows need to calf to express milk?

July 21, 2009 1:45 AM

To maintain high milk production, a dairy cow must be bred and produce calves. Has any research been done on artificially stimulating milk production? Perhaps by artificial selection or by hormone treatment.

As the calves are born half female half male that leaves farms with a surplus of male calves. In most countries the extra male calves are breed for a short while and then used as veal, in others they are simply shoot soon after birth. On a Hindu farm all the male cows are kept and worked on the farm. As an ovo-lacto vegetarian for many many years I am late to understanding that my milk drinking has an ethical cost and I am mostly comfortable about that on a "I'm doing what I can" basis and am unlikely to change now. However what I can't understand is why nobody seems to have tried alternative methods to getting cows to produce milk? I know the market for hormonally or genetically modified organic milk must be small but surely this would offer more efficiency for the dairy farmer?

posted by foleypt to science & nature (22 comments total)

I doubt it. I'm a breastfeeding human and I have to take drugs to help me produce enough for BabyTaff. It's very, very hard to get humans to produce enough milk to satisfy a baby without having been preganant recently.... I imagine cows are the same. The drugs are expensive, have to be taken regularly and the breasts need a LOT of stimulation to get them producing.

And even then, they usually don't produce much. Lots of adopting mums try it.


So... figuring that cows are similar to humans in the prolactin department, I think your idea is impractical.
posted by taff at 1:58 AM on July 21

Bovine somatotropin is a hormone injection given to dairy cattle by injection to increase milk production. It remains popular in US milk producers despite a brief public outcry. It was used in the EU until the mid-1990's, but is banned now.

Made by everyone's favorite corporation, too. They're working on new products that do the same thing, I am sure.
posted by rokusan at 2:16 AM on July 21

taff - that is a beautiful gift you are giving your child.

Ok, so it is difficult and less productive to get expression without having recently being pregnant and there exists a controversial hormone treatment that extends the productive period of a milk cow.

However with cows we can do a few things that we can't do with adopting humans. We can select then for responsiveness to the hormone and stimulation treatment, maybe after a few generations of that the effectiveness of the program could be increased. We could also try selecting them to skew the sex ratio toward females (although I remember reading that this was very hard as there is a lot of genome on the y chromosome that want their fair shot at reproduction).

The problem with the Bovine somatotropin in terms of cow health would seem to do with the prolonging of the productive period, which we need not do, also can it be used to stimulate without pregnancy?

And just to go totally SF about it (and to make sure we destroy any possibility of marketing this product to the very people who might care about bullock overproduction ;) ) we could do female only cloning of cows.

Surely somebody must be researching this?
posted by foleypt at 2:31 AM on July 21

I think the reason that it isn't done is that the industry works the way it is. What's the incentive? Breeding is pretty cheap. Animal welfare and ethics are pretty far down the list from what I can tell, too.

Apparently there are methods to slightly increase the percentage of female calves that involve sperm segregation, but from a dairy cow standpoint, the calf is about making milk, primarily. The excess male cows also don't go to waste, they go to food.

Monsanto or ADM aren't going to spend a lot to minimze cow pain and suffering, IMO. Like most firms, profits come before ethics.
posted by FauxScot at 2:45 AM on July 21

FauxScot is correct. There are no "excess" male calves. They're all either castrated and become "steers" lovingly raised to become valuable meat, hides for leather, and offal for pet food, or, for a lucky few, left with their testes, to become bulls, to breed more cows. And even old bulls and cows past their breeding prime, are eventual slaughter candidates, again for hides and meat for byproducts and pet foods.

Beef slaughter may look horriffic in the PETA videos, but bovine animals of both sexes are too valuable and cost intensive for many to go to "waste," and most live pretty decent lives for several years, compared to their "wild" "cousins" like bison, or wildebeasts, which have to deal with disease, drought, and predation as ends of their days.
posted by paulsc at 4:50 AM on July 21

What paulsc said.

If you're really concerned about animal welfare, buy your goods from a farm where you can go and see how the animals live. Many (most?) small farm owners will be happy to give a tour. They want you to know why their product costs more and have nothing to hide.

Eggs and milk will always require animals to die, so what's important is how they're treated before that date with the slaughterhouse. If you're buying milk and eggs at the grocery store, even organic "free range" stuff, chances are the animals aren't exactly living in the Ritz. Farms are an economic enterprise and it costs money to give animals space, so if you want to know the animals lived well, you're going to pay a lot more.

Also, unless you dislike meat for other reasons, if you're eating eggs+milk you might as well eat chicken and beef from those same local farms, too. One way or another, those males aren't going to live forever.

Have you ever spent time on a farm? If not, you might feel a lot more comfortable with the whole thing if you did. I'm sure you can find a local farmer who would be willing to let you shovel shit for an afternoon. ;)

On a smaller farm, animals have a pretty decent go of it...there's a reason they co-evolved with us in the first place. Those original cows and chickens got a major advantage by sticking with the naked pink bipeds. Sure, the humans might eat some of them, but in exchange they got to live pretty cushy lives, free from predators, with ample opportunities to reproduce and lots of tasty food.

And rest assured, their deaths are better than what most of us will experience. Much faster, less painful and free from existential dread.
posted by paanta at 5:56 AM on July 21 [2 favorites has favorites]

The question arises: why would any dairy farmer in his right mind want his cows to produce milk but not calves? They always need more calves, and birthing them is a hell of a lot cheaper than buying them.

Where on earth did you get the idea that any calves are shot after birth? First of all, that's a waste of a perfectly good bullet, but more than that, it's also a waste of a perfectly good cow. Where exactly do you think beef comes from? Or leather? No, male calves born to dairy cows are absolutely put to use somehow, whether it's veal, beef, or whatever. No way any farmer is going to let that go to waste.

Whether they're being treated "ethically" is a different question, but rest assured, every single animal that can be used for something is being used for something. Agricultural profit margins are far too low for anyone to seriously consider wasting a significant chunk of their herd this way.
posted by valkyryn at 6:51 AM on July 21 [1 favorite has favorites]

I worked with two ag professors who had a goat dairy. The most heartbreaking part was when a male was born. The wife always had them immediately taken to another farm that raised them for meat because baby goats (kids) are so easy to get attached to.

I would imagine the easiest strategy would be to find a way to select the sex before birth. They've already done that in lab animals. It's just a matter of cost. I would not drink milk from a cow artificially treated with hormones. The hormones already in the milk are questionable enough in their implications for human health....

Another concern for conscious eaters is that when production drops for eggs and milk....bessy and clucky don't exactly go to the retirement home, they get axed.

I agree with paulc and paanta that you might want to visit and work on farms to learn more. Unlike what they imply though, you might learn that the realities of production don't make you comfortable. I've worked on several farms and realized it wasn't an industry I wanted to support. I occasionally eat artisan dairy products, but coconut and hemp milk go on my morning cereal now.

It was the same for when I helped truck beef to the slaughterhouse. These were grass-fed free-range lovingly raised animals, but they went to the same industrial slaughterhouse that factory farmed cows have to endure. There have been amazing advances in the past ten years in making these places less stressful, but in the end it's a long drive and strange place in which they die, and mistake are sometimes made that make the deaths painful. I am a strong supporter of on-farm slaughter, but it's nearly impossible to get that unless you are living on the farm or work with farmers closely thanks to federal law (there is an exception for poultry though).

I have a degree in agriculture and love working with farmers, but the more I know, the fewer animal products I buy.
posted by melissam at 6:57 AM on July 21

Where on earth did you get the idea that any calves are shot after birth?

It defiantly is a problem in some parts of the world that don't commonly eat veal or if the price of veal dips uk and also here
posted by foleypt at 7:20 AM on July 21

The dairy industry, as already said, has no incentive to change. I suppose if there were an association of ovo-lacto vegetarians which could subsidize no-kill dairy farms in a Community Supported Agriculture model, that might provide an incentive.

But generally, the calves are a profit center, not an expense center, so someone would have to replace that income stream to make it worth changing the approach. Dairy farmers, especially small dairy farmers, operate on a very tight profit margin as it is.
posted by Sidhedevil at 7:40 AM on July 21

Have you considered drinking raw milk from a local farm? I very much of the mindset that "cow milk is for cows" and I think it's kind of disgusting that humans drink milk from another animal, but my son drinks milk and I would only get it from a local farm. It's more expensive, but it's healthier and, as a vegetarian, I know how the animals are treated since I can talk directly to a farmer.

FWIW, I would *not* advocate milk which was produced by hormones. We get enough of those.
posted by Lullen at 8:09 AM on July 21

Have you considered drinking raw milk from a local farm?

That doesn't address the particular issue that foleypt raised, though. Local farmers get milk by calving, and they slaughter male calves just like large corporate farms do.
posted by Sidhedevil at 8:23 AM on July 21

Contrary to what some here have said, there have definitely been times where the cost of raising a calf exceeded what a farmer could recoup. My wife grew up in a dairy farming area and remembers when veal became "unethical" and the market disappeared. Suddenly all the dairy farmers couldn't sell their calves anymore. The farmers tried to find something to do with them, but eventually they gave up -- there was no way to recoup the feed and land costs of raising the calves (and running a large dairy is a VERY low margin operation -- there is no room at all for wasted expenses). Dairy cows don't make good meat (except as veal). They tried giving the calves away for free, but nobody wanted them. Finally, they didn't waste a bullet on them... they just knocked them in the head and threw them into the ravine. I'm not sure what the situation is now, though.

Best thing to do (barring creepy scientific advances) is buy your milk from a local small dairy. Look around for local goat dairies too (when properly done, goat milk tastes just like cow milk -- none of that "goaty" flavour). You'll pay a lot more than at the grocery store, but it's worthwhile because you can see how the animals are treated. Chances are that even at a high price, the small dairy is barely breaking even.

Full disclosure: my wife runs a small goat dairy operation
posted by Emanuel at 9:13 AM on July 21 [1 favorite has favorites]

Where exactly do you think beef comes from? Or leather? No, male calves born to dairy cows are absolutely put to use somehow, whether it's veal, beef, or whatever.

Beef generally comes from different breeds than dairy. Different breeds have different characteristics and ranchers don't want dairy cattle. Dairy calves are generally not raised for beef (though they are, of course, raised for veal). Leather is a by-product: no one is going to raise cattle just to produce leather. Calves are just not that expensive that a farmer is going to treat every one as a precious commodity.
posted by ssg at 9:22 AM on July 21

Suddenly all the dairy farmers couldn't sell their calves anymore. The farmers tried to find something to do with them, but eventually they gave up -- there was no way to recoup the feed and land costs of raising the calves

Yes, good point. That absolutely does happen sometimes, but there's no way to predict it, so I don't think it would be likely that dairy farmers would, en masse, adopt a no-calving approach to stimulating milk via artificial hormones.

The reality is that milk comes from cows that have calved, and the male calves are either slaughtered for veal or put down because it's too expensive to keep them for veal. This is true of both corporate and small farms, though the cows on small farms generally have a much better standard of living (which is why I only do local small-farm dairy myself).
posted by Sidhedevil at 9:51 AM on July 21

I'm currently working on a milk pasteurizer design (for the last 2 years) for very small dairies. The dairyman I am working with has 4 cows. He tells me that on a typical factory farm, they live about 3-4 years, max. His live 12-15! Pretty good life for a cow. They get out every day (except in winter), have good food, shelter, medical care, and have clean lodgings and several acres of clear, sunny pasteur with trees for shade and no mud flats... it's all grass. Their circumstances are idyllic.


They look great, seem content, and if they are being abused, I hope someday someone will abuse me like that! The milk they produce (especially when run through my pasteurizer) is unlike anything I have ever sampled, kind of like an unwhipped milkshake. (They are Jerseys, FWIW.)
posted by FauxScot at 9:54 AM on July 21 [1 favorite has favorites]

If it makes you feel any better modern cows are indeed bred to give vast, vast quantities of milk so that they need fewer cows to produce all that milk. I can't seem to find any sources, but I recall that Holsteins produce much, much more milk than any other breed even though it not as rich as other breeds like Jerseys.

But other than that, until recently like others have said, there's never been an "excess" calf. Dairy cows may not make great food but they make perfectly find pet food, etc.
posted by GuyZero at 10:11 AM on July 21

>Have you ever spent time on a farm?

About 25 years + ago most of my childhood summer holidays were spent running around a small dairy farm, perhaps that is why the idea of them being rather benign places stuck for so long.

I guess I just accept that for me this remains an ethically conflicted point.

I have realised that a dairy and egg supplement diet implies many of the things I would have hoped to distance myself from as a vegetarian and I can't really justify it ethically. However where I am living currently there are few vegetarians and of those few are ethical vegetarians and to go vegan would complicate my life further immensely. Those who thing they understand my vegetarianism would not I think understand why I might think dairy or chicken farming presented problems, of the ovo-lacto vegetarians I know who I have brought up this point, few seem to want to consider the implications.

It seems a pity that all the machinery in the cow, the chicken is present and when in production provides no discomfort to the animal and you can end up with the 12-15 year old Jerseys living in the shade as above but to switch it on you need to produce a whole load of young bullocks destined for an early death.

I accept the point that there is little incentive for the farmer to solve my problem here, it mostly isn't a problem for them.

And I agree as was mentioned that the best way to get this to happen is Community Supported Agriculture no-kill dairy farms, However as I mentioned despite being the majority of vegetarians little thought would seem to be given in ovo-lacto vegetarians circles of this problem and there would not be much demand. Besides there is already organic and also local sourced food and to introduce another label might just confuse the ethical consumer further. Also as I implied techno fixes such as a one shot no health side effect hormone shot to stimulate pregnancy or genetic engineering are just the sort of thing that would turn off such a market.

I do love cheese and can't stand soy milk!

Having lived so many years (20+) as I have I think that even if I was to give up thinking there was any ethical cost to what I consumed I'd still continue with the same diet. It is just my diet, it is what I eat.
posted by foleypt at 4:34 PM on July 21

If you want milk in your diet without the ethical concerns you have, you might consider investigating goats milk.

Normally, dairy goat milk production is similar to cows milk [you need to breed before milking], but there is a phenomemon that occurs in some goat breeds known as a 'maiden milker' - a goat that lactates spontaneously without being bred.

A friend of ours has one of these, and provided milk for their family from a saanen-cross goat that had never been bred.

You might have to hunt a bit to find someone who has such a goat with milk to sell.
posted by HiroProtagonist at 8:31 PM on July 21

very interesting HiroProtagonist

so precocious udder can exist in maiden goats, supposedly from strong milk lines. which sounds to me like it would defiantly be a selectable trait. Raise goats without breeding them, watch out for occurrence of 'maiden milker' syndrome, breed only from such goats, perhaps after n+1 generations we could greatly increase incidence.

Not that I can get into goat breeding now, perhaps a project to take up in my later years?
posted by foleypt at 1:18 AM on July 22

Raise goats without breeding them, watch out for occurrence of 'maiden milker' syndrome, breed only from such goats, perhaps after n+1 generations we could greatly increase incidence.

Definitely do-able. Of course that whole n-generations selective breeding cycle will engage you in the type of activity that originally gave you qualms...
posted by HiroProtagonist at 6:03 PM on July 22

More Developments

But the sorting technique, known as sexed semen, is expected to put 63,000 extra heifers into milk production this year, compared with the number that would be available if only conventional semen had been used, researchers estimate.
posted by melissam at 6:19 AM on September 29