Any dairy farmers please?

[RedRedWhiney]

I'm pescitarian.

Have been slowly consuming less dairy. This to me seems so horrific to immediately stop consuming any dairy.

However, Google search shows the extremems of the debate, so I would really value the input of dairy farmers

it takes 8 litres of water to make 1 litre of almond milk, i'll stick with cows milk, which takes much less

Oat milk is a good alternative

Definitely oat milk

and that takes extra water to make too

What exactly are you asking?
Is that infographic correct? Yes it is, except not all cows are artificially inseminated, some farmers choose to let them run with the bull.

Dairy farmers are going to give you a very bias response OP, given it's a whole system of living and producing that you find horrific.

Dairy cows are bred so that they produce milk, the calves are separated from the mothers because the milk is collected for us to consume. The males are (mostly) not needed and either shot or grown up for veal.

There are loads of other milk alternatives to almond. Oat. Soya. Pea. Coconut. Hemp. Rice. Etc

I can assure you cows use an awful lot of water to produce milk, do go away with the bizarre argument

You could just drink water. ¯\(ツ)/¯

Well of course dairy milk doesn't require water to make. But it does require the cow to be repeatedly and forcibly impregnated, her babies traumatically removed, then her udders painfully and regularly milked often until they bleed. And repeat. And that's before you consider the impact of the methane she produces, the antibiotics she is fed and the resources required to keep her alive for the duration of her utterly miserable existence. How on earth could this be considered a better option that oat milk??

you go first

I gave up cattle farming a few years ago, but we certainly didn't cull our cows after 5 years! One got to 20, and 15 was fairly normal. We also never used AI, we had a bull.
I'm sure that there are farms where everything on that graphic is true, but there are also significant numbers where it is not.

You can see how much water it takes to produce a litre of different ‘milks’ here. Almond does take a lot of water but still nowhere near as much as cows.

Our local dairy farms don't use any of those sort of intensive farming processes.

That infographic can be correct for some farms of course, but doesn't mean they're all the same.

Well not all males are shot or else where does our Beef come from?

Beef doesn't generally come from dairy cows. Males born in a dairy herd might end up being used for low grade uses, but eg steak and your Sunday joint come from different cows from your milk.

You can definitely make choices about where you buy your milk. Buy from local dairies not supermarkets for the start. But nothing will change the process by which we get milk from cows. You either have to make your peace with that and try and buy from farms which treat their cows properly (inside the bounds of the necessary to get the milk) or give it up totally if you can't.

OP why not research into the fish farming industry you support as well? And the egg industry? Dairy is not the only problem with being pescetarian.

Buy better, more expensive produce, less often if you have to.

The big industrial scale dairy units are very different from the dairy farms local to me. The milk looks so different you wouldn’t believe it was the same product.

I buy local milk from an on farm dairy, it costs 80p per pint.

It can be though, and it’s not necessarily low grade. There is a farm near us that takes the male dairy calves and raises them for meat. So they live for a couple of years rather than being slaughtered for veal. The meat had been used to supply a high end restaurant (I’ve forgotten which chef, but a well known name). But the yield is lower than meat cows.

This. I used to live next to a dairy farm and the cows and bellow for days when they removed their babies. It's horrific. Actually worse than eating meat in my opinion.

An interesting thing to do is visit a dairy farm on open farm Sunday, to find answers to a lot of your questions. You still might not agree with the way the dairy industry works but it'll help put things in perspective.
Dairy cows might not have a wild existence but on an average or good farm they're content, safe, well fed and have top vet care so live ten and more years.
Milk buyers like Arla are constantly raising standards.
But all in all, we have thousands of dairy farms in the UK and they vary a lot in their animal welfare & environmental standards.

An interesting thing to do is visit a dairy farm on open farm Sunday, to find answers to a lot of your questions. You still might not agree with the way the dairy industry works but it'll help put things in perspective.
Dairy cows might not have a wild existence but on an average or good farm they're content, safe, well fed and have top vet care so live ten and more years.
Milk buyers like Arla are constantly raising standards.
But all in all, we have thousands of dairy farms in the UK and they vary a lot in their animal welfare & environmental standards.

• cry and bellow

If you’re near any of these dairies they believe in keeping calves with their mothers for longer until they naturally become independent. You can mail order if you’ve got room in the freezer:

www.cowcalfdairies.co.uk/where-to-buy