To ask what is wrong with this cow

[SHAR0N]

This dairy cow belongs to the farmer in the next village and it looks very ill. Should I report it to the RSPCA?

I know nothing about cows or farming and don’t want to cause trouble if it’s normal. But I don’t want to ignore it if the animal is suffering.

@EffYouSeeKaye oh no definitely not all there are done lovely grazing herds up north and as you say grass is the best option. I know some farmers who turn out as early as Feb

ihaventgottimeforthis my last comment wasn't aimed at you - you and other posters have given cause for consideration on wider issues. I was referring to the fact that the op has posted some upsetting pics and asked for advice on what to do.

No don't worry I didn't think it was, I just realised as usual I can't resist the ethics of farming debate> I get annoyed when my threads go off track.

So yes, my thought is Johne's or elderly cow. Report :-)

Yes @Woodmarsh, ours are typically out to pasture Feb-November (although it was mid March this year because of the non-stop rain )

Do we know if OP has taken any action? I can’t see her saying she has anywhere in the thread but maybe I’ve missed it.

Do we know if OP has taken any action? I can’t see her saying she has anywhere in the thread but maybe I’ve missed it.

I know I sound like a stuck record but as I've said, if someone posts upsetting pictures asking for suggestions as to what to do, then doesn't appear to act on the advice people give.....
Apologies op if you have actually reported it

I had a similar situation with cows in the field behind me. They looked starving, yet had plenty of food and water. I phoned the RSPCA and was referred to the council as cattle/animals for meat production fall under the Trade of Goods Act (as I recall or some other trade legislation). The council looked into it and called me back to explain that the cows (well young beef cattle) had pneumonia. They were being fed extra, had been seen by the vets and were on steroids, but that the weather (it had been rainy) hadn't helped. A few days later they vanished, so I assume we're euthanised.

Were. Not we're. Damn autocorrect!

@TiddlestheCat

Or on the other hand the farmer might have moved them indoors to provide shelter and better care.

@BabyLlamaZen

Hope you reported it! Please let us know.

Hi @BabyLlamaZen, thanks for asking.

It was reported first thing yesterday and they will visit within 48 hours. As I understand it they are limited in what feedback they can give due to confidentiality.

Sorry if that annoys the posters angrily demanding an explanation - you will need to take it up yourselves with the relevant agencies. Perhaps if you made a large donation they could afford to run a 24 hour service?

Many thanks to the vast majority of posters who provided good advice as well as an interesting debate . Which I wasn’t expecting at all, obviously people have strong feelings on dairy farming.

Every day is a school day on MN.

@SHAR0N

People were concerned, it has taken you over 39 hours to confirm that you reported it.

Only you can take it up with the relevant agency, only you know the location of the animal.

@Pellewsmate

It was being confined in the barns over the winter that gave them pneumonia. The best chance that they had was being outside in the fresh air during the summer. Unfortunately it just happened to be quite a rainy summer and they just never picked up.

Is the cow still there?

[quote TiddlestheCat]@Pellewsmate

It was being confined in the barns over the winter that gave them pneumonia. The best chance that they had was being outside in the fresh air during the summer. Unfortunately it just happened to be quite a rainy summer and they just never picked up.[/quote]
It would be exceptionally unusual, to say the least, for a large group of animals all to be put down. I grew up on a beef farm, and that never happened. It’s much more likely that they were moved to another field.

But you know that they were being treated, monitored and cared for.

Poor cow. looks very hungry I would definitely call somebody.

@seeingadistance

It wasn't a herd. I said cows (or rather beef cattle), but didn't specify a herd. There were around 6 or 7 very underweight/ill ones. They were also scouring, so on a rapid downhill curve. There were others in the field who were underweight and covered in ringworm, but they were less emaciated and they remained in the field. My house overlooks the field and it is the 'sick field' as it is the closest to the farm.

@TiddlestheCat

In this neck of the woods it cost £150 to cull a cow (beef or dairy) so that would be a cost to the farmer. Farmers are tight.

As it was the summer most stock would be out and maybe a shed with better ventilation had become available or as they were scouring maybe they had been moved to less rich grazing. Not sure why you want to believe the worst and assume these cows were euthanised.

At no point did @Seeingadistance or I suggest you claimed it was a herd.

The levels of cognitive dissonance on this thread are beyond belief. The same people who are horrified at seeing a starving cow in a field, whilst simultaneously turning a bling eye to the cruelty that is inherent in dairy farming...

The Life of a Dairy Cow
Cows are mammals who, like us, produce milk in their mammary glands to feed their young. They therefore must give birth to a calf in order to produce milk and must be re-impregnated every year to keep that milk supply going. Most dairy heifers are impregnated for the first time when they are between 14 and 28 months old, giving birth to their first calf nine months later. Farmers aim to get cows impregnated as early as possible to reduce the time and cost of keeping a cow that can’t be milked.
Most dairy herds in the UK are now artificially inseminated (AI) as this is much cheaper than keeping a bull and allows farmers to select the sire from a variety of breeds.
Although a cow would naturally suckle her calf for nine months to a year, calves born on dairy farms are taken away from their mothers within a few days of birth – so that we can drink the milk that was meant to nourish the calf. A strong mother/infant bond is formed between cow and calf within the first few hours of birth, making their separation extremely traumatic. Both the cow and calf bellow and show obvious signs of distress when they are separated, often continuing for several days, leaving those within earshot in no doubt that it is a harrowing experience for both. The cow will be re-impregnated two to three months after the calf is removed and forced to endure this emotional suffering again and again, every year until she is worn out. Professor John Webster describes the removal of the calf as the “most potentially distressing incident in the life of the dairy cow”.
Because she is re-impregnated while still lactating from the previous pregnancy, a dairy cow spends seven months of every year simultaneously pregnant and producing large quantities of milk. This enormous physical demand requires her to eat over four times more food per day than a beef cow at pasture. Her average milk yield will be around 25 litres a day but for some cows it can be up to 50 litres a day – this means seven to 14 times more than a calf would drink, so her whole body and udder in particular is forced to work unnaturally hard. In addition, a calf would normally feed five to six times a day so that the maximum amount of milk in her udder at any one time would be around two litres. But on most dairy farms a cow is milked only twice a day, allowing milk to accumulate in the udder and can force her to carry around 20 litres of milk or more. This greatly enlarges the udder and leads to lameness in her hind legs and predisposes her to mastitis (a painful infection of the udder).
Her only rest from this demanding workload is during the last month or two of her pregnancy when she is ‘dried off’ in preparation for calving – then the whole cycle starts again. This ‘dry period’ lasts between two months and three weeks before birth and its main aim is to give the cow’s udder a little bit of time to heal and regenerate before she starts to be milked again. Predictably, this gruelling cycle takes its toll on her body:
Problems of malnutrition, lameness and mastitis. Because of the huge pressure this puts on the cow’s body, the average dairy cow in the UK completes less than four lactations – that means that around the age of six, she is slaughtered because she stops being profitable (either because of low milk yield, infertility or diseases that would require costly treatment).
For all of her hard work and suffering, the dairy cow is sent to the slaughterhouse as soon as her milk yield drops. Modern dairy farms are about maximising profit and minimising overheads. Worn out cows endure a gruelling journey to market where they are sold to fattening (finishing) farms, before being sent to the slaughterhouse – ending up in ‘low quality’ beef products such as pies, burgers, soups and baby food.
DairyCo even has a dairy herd culling calculator online enabling farmers to count their herd’s cull rates. It states these reasons as the main and most common reasons for culling dairy cows: infertility, mastitis, lameness and poor milk production.

(Taken from Viva! website)

Personally I find the levels of cognitive dissonance displayed by most vegans absolutely mind-blowing.

For people to eat, animals have to die. Pigeons are shot over brassicas and oilseed rape and peas and God knows what else so that they don't eat so much that it becomes uneconomic to harvest the crop. Deer are culled so they don't eat everything in sight (they have no natural predators in the UK). If you've ever seen a cereal field near a large rabbit warren you'll understand why farmers aren't terribly keen on having hundreds of rabbits reproducing on the farm, and do what they can to keep numbers down. Add to that all the bugs and beetles killed by spraying to increase crop yields. And then you have the damage that crop monocultures do to the soil. Over time, unless the soil is carefully looked after with organic manures, periods of fallow and so on, crops will eventually trash it.

Like it or not, there are a lot of people on this planet, and not much arable land. Pastured ruminants on land unsuitable for crops turn stuff humans can't eat (grass and various other plants) into high-quality protein. I suppose you can argue that we can get our protein out of vats, but oddly enough I'm not keen on turning food production over to vast corporations, given their record on feeding us all utter crap for decades.

It doesn't follow from "for people to eat [plants], animals [pests] have to die" that "animals [not pests] have to die for people to eat [not plants]."

I make food choices based on the best information I have. Other equally intelligent people will make different choices based on the same information, but I think most people who care about farming, animal welfare, their health and the environment will come to a genuinely held view based on a proper assessment. There isn't one single "right answer" and that view may differ depending on a whole range of other factors.

@GrumpyMiddleAgedWoman What cognitive dissonance, exactly? Because personally, I’m hard pressed to think of a clearer example of cognitive dissonance than any person claiming to love animals or care about animal welfare while still happily funding industries which exploit, harm and kill them. How do you defend that as a logically consistent position?

There is no metric by which you can assess diets in which an omnivorous diet isn’t worse than a vegan one for animals and the environment.

Yes, animals die as a result of plant-based agriculture. That doesn’t change the fact that in addition to these, many, many more animals die (not to mention spend their lives in conditions which are often horrific) if you eat animal products.

Veganism is a philosophy which seeks to exclude suffering of and cruelty towards animals as much as is possible. It recognises that the complete eradication of all animal suffering as a consequence of human activity is an unachievable goal, but still compels us to do the significant amount that it is in our power to do.

As for your bizarre comment about getting protein out of vats, that sounds like a science fiction novel. I get my protein from beans, soy, chickpeas, nuts, peas, tofu and lentils. It’s also worth mentioning that the average person in the U.K. eats 45-55% more protein than is required for optimum dietary health, so protein deficits are not exactly the issue some omnivores make them out to be.

If your concern is about eating crap then you’re about to have to be very careful indeed about your meat now that we are post-Brexit: www.google.co.uk/amp/s/unearthed.greenpeace.org/2020/05/14/chlorinated-chicken-brexit-trade-talks-liz-truss/amp/

If I hear the phrase 'cruelty free' one more time I'll scream. To your immense credit, you don't use it and you accept the realities of food production. Unfortunately I have been preached at by multiple vegans who don't have a clue, so I apologise for tarring you with the same brush.

Unfortunately there seems to be a lot of effort into foisting fake meats onto the population - that was what I meant by protein out of vats.

You should perhaps look into regenerative grazing if you're worried about the environment. There is a great TED talk by Alan Savory that is worth ten minutes of anyone's time.

Personally I value the ecosystems that exist under pasture, and I dislike factory farming. I'm happier eating venison (since deer have to be culled) than factory pork. But my moral stance is that it is not wrong to kill animals for meat if we treat them well beforehand and kill them cleanly.

Ffs Viva is an animal rights group and hardly unbiased.

@questionablemouse you can tell that by the language used