DH asked me what do cows eat. AIBU to divorce him immediately?

[TheIckabog]

We were watching a program about a fancy hotel where they have their own cows. There was a clip of the cows being hand fed apples.

DH exclaimed in surprise ‘I didn’t know cows eat apples!’ He then paused and said, ‘What DO cows eat?’ whilst looking genuinely puzzled.

I said to him what do you think they do all day in the fields? They eat grass/hay etc, how do you not know this? DH then shrugged and said he’d never really thought about it.

He is a well educated intelligent man in his 40s. We also grew up/live in a place where dairy production accounts for a large percent of the export, so it’s not like he’s never seen a cow in a field or on a farm before.

I am aghast. AIBU to divorce him immediately? I really can’t see any other option to be honest

@Notenoughchocolateomg

I know cows like polo mints, so do horses.

And donkeys. I made the mistake once of going in a barn full of donkeys with a packet of polos in my pocket. I only just made it out.

@BaconsLaw

My husband grew up thinking dogs were male and cats were female.

So did my husband!!!

Fortunately or unfortunately depending on which way you look at it neither the cows or calves seem to mind that much usually. The calves especially aren't at all bothered.

That’s is absolutely not true. I’ve seen them cry for weeks. The fact is farmers ignore them and pretend it doesn’t happen.

Thanks to posters who farm on here this is so interesting , please tell us more . Why is there no topic for farmers/ farming ?

I do think not knowing the difference between Saturn and Jupiter is a bit odd.

Saturn is always drawn with some sort of representation of its rings. I'd say it was the easiest to pick out of a line up (except maybe Earth).

@NiceGerbil

Sheep have long tails?!

Have you never seen a lamb? Their tails aren’t reabsorbed as they grow! 😁

Thanks to posters who farm on here this is so interesting , please tell us more . Why is there no topic for farmers/ farming ?

There’s loads of reliable info on UK and world farming on the internet if you’re interested. Unfortunately you’re unlikely to get the real truth from many farmers about the cruelty involved. It’s just not in their interest to let people know. Most types of farming, certainly anything intensive, will involve a lot of suffering to animals. A few members of my extended family are farmers. I’m vegan as I’ve seen too much. Their kids are vegan too.

@MegaClutterSlut

My dh when we first met (he was 18) genuinely thought that to breastfeed, you had to ram a needle down into your nipple to pierce it so the milk could come out as that's what his friend told him. Bless him

It may not be true but it absolutely feels like it in those first few toe curling weeks!

[quote Jamhandprints]@NoParticularPattern that's really interesting, thanks. So does that mean most of your cows dont get any exercise or sunlight at all?[/quote]
They get milked twice a day so there’s that part of the day when they’re outside for a proportion of it. They also have access to outdoor “loafing” areas (hard standing one side, grass the other) when the weather is good (well all the time actually but inevitably they won’t leave the shed if it’s chucking it down or blowing a gale!). They have free movement within the side of the shed they are in- mostly they will go straight to water troughs once milked, then the feed passage to eat until they’ve had their fill and then they go find a cubicle to lie down in. Our sheds house 400 and 300 (ish) each so there are more lying places than cows so that Daisy doesn’t have to lie next to Brenda who she hates 😂.

Oh and to answer the calf situation: all our calves are taken from their mothers within the week (varies between 24 hours and a week but never left longer than that). They then go into single pens for a week/10 days so we can make sure that they are all healthy and thriving before we group them by age in groups of 20-25. They then get fed milk on demand from an automatic feeder which recognises their collar chip when they approach it and have free access to water and cake (pelleted feed, not a Victoria sponge). Once they’re over 2 months old and consuming more than 2kg/day of cake they get gradually weaned off milk over the next week/10 days. Once a whole pen is weaned and dis budded (the horn buds removed with a hot iron to stop any horns growing which pose a massive injury risk to animals and humans alike) they get moved into a bigger loose yard where they remain until they either get sold through market at 4-6 months old (dairy bred bulls, beef bred heifers an bred bred bulls) where they’ll be bought by someone else to fatten, or the dairy heifers are kept on farm until they are big enough and old enough to be served for the first time at which point they go to one of our other farms to either be turned out with the bull (in summer) or housed and inseminated (done by BIL and by Genus who manage our breeding programme for our heifers). We aim to first calve at and average of 24 months so they are served between 12 and 18 months and once they have reached the weight and size required to safely carry a calf. Once they are in calf close they come back to this farm 1-2 months prior to calving so that their colostrum contains the antibodies required for this farm. Then the whole cycle starts again. Our way is certainly not the only way (some people calve in a “block” so that all the work is grouped together, some in better climates or with handier grazing than ours turn out more etc etc) but it is a pretty standard practice within the industry. Oh and no, we don’t ever shoot calves for any reason other than extremely poor health. Thankfully few and far between because of our high health status, our vaccination protocol and is having a closed herd (we never buy anything in and even if we did it would be isolated and health tested prior to having contact with our animals).

[quote MsWonderful]@Scrowy I find that hard to believe tbh. Mammals nurture and protect their young. It would be odd if they just weren’t bothered about them being taken away.
If it is true, maybe the cows are so used to having their babies taken from them that they’ve just given up?[/quote]
Dairy breeds are inevitably dreadful mothers a large proportion of the time. Bordering on actually dangerous. There are times when we retrieve calves from the calving pen as fast as we can simply because we know one of the cows has a well known hatred of any and all offspring. Some cows will genuinely go out of their way to lie on their own calf or even others too and quite frankly leaving a calf in that situation would be far more cruel than it is to remove them. Don’t get me wrong, we have some that would dearly like to keep their calves forever, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’d manage to keep them alive because of how others behave. Our cows and calves very rarely “pine” for one another- you get more noise from them when they’re separated from their mates than when they’re taken from their mother.

@NoParticularPattern

Oh and to answer the calf situation: all our calves are taken from their mothers within the week (varies between 24 hours and a week but never left longer than that)

See this is the thing that made me stop eating dairy (I hadn’t eaten meat for years before that anyway) I only had to see one YouTube video of a calf being dragged away and it’s mum following it and mooing and I didn’t want to be involved in it anymore. Without meaning to be rude, do you not feel an absolute bastard doing that to them? Or do you think it’s ok to interfere in their lives in this very fundamental way?

There’s also the issue of milk- dairy breeds (specifically the Holsteins that we have) are designed to produce upwards of 30 litres of milk a day, every day. There’s absolutely no way on this planet that a calf could drink all of that without becoming very poorly indeed, so the mother would still need to be milked to avoid mastitis. The breeding of dairy breeds has reduced their ability to regulated supply and demand so they produce those 30+ litres whether the calf drinks it or not. Of course it does come down to breeding and obviously it’s years and years of doing so that has led to the mothering traits being removed because they are simply not needed and other traits like easy calving, high fertility, high milk production being favoured because they are desirable. But our cows and calves have lovely lives and are genuinely happy in so far as you can apply human emotions to them. There is a huge amount of information out there about farming but sadly lots of it comes with a vegan agenda and isn’t always applicable to U.K. farming. The hard bit is finding out the truth from a source which hasn’t got an agenda one way or the other.

[quote MsWonderful]@NoParticularPattern

Oh and to answer the calf situation: all our calves are taken from their mothers within the week (varies between 24 hours and a week but never left longer than that)

See this is the thing that made me stop eating dairy (I hadn’t eaten meat for years before that anyway) I only had to see one YouTube video of a calf being dragged away and it’s mum following it and mooing and I didn’t want to be involved in it anymore. Without meaning to be rude, do you not feel an absolute bastard doing that to them? Or do you think it’s ok to interfere in their lives in this very fundamental way?[/quote]
No not really. All our calves walk, they’re never dragged. And their mothers very rarely even get up. Anyone dragging calves without an incredibly good reason- and even then I’d be dubious- is not a good farmer by any stretch of the imagination.

Tbh I think it’s clearly wrong/immoral to “design” and use sentient beings in this way. To even breed out their mothering instincts 😱 it’s so sad and the milk that we drink is not even needed by humans, it’s breast milk for baby cows. And yes I am a vegan, I wouldn’t say biased though, just don’t like all the cruelty involved and the fact that humans think it’s ok to use animals for our own ends. And the environmental impact is also horrifying.

And yes you do sound like a good and caring farmer. But the whole system of farming is fundamentally wrong imo.

And that’s fine for you to hold that view just as it’s fine for me to have mine. What I take issue with is those who want to destroy farming in all its forms just to make themselves feel better. At the end of the day I’m not the one responsible for hundreds of years of selection which have led to the various breeds being what they are today. I am however the one that can do my absolute best by the animals I am privileged to care for and to champion the product that they produce in order to hold all farmers to higher standards. Yeah maybe not all farmers are like us, but we are certainly not the exception to rule either. I’m never likely to change anyone’s long held views, but I go to bed every night knowing that how I feed my family isn’t cruel or abusive despite what some sources of misinformation would have everyone believe.

I think that most vegans would say that it’s not to make themselves feel better, but to dismantle a system that’s really bad for the environment and is built on suffering and death for billions of animals every year all over the world.
And novel viruses like avian and swine flu and even Covid 19 all were able to mutate and adapt to human hosts due to the fact that animals were in proximity to humans due to us eating them, so it just seems like quite a bad idea overall tbh?

Tbh I think it’s clearly wrong/immoral to “design” and use sentient beings in this way. To even breed out their mothering instincts 😱 it’s so sad and the milk that we drink is not even needed by humans, it’s breast milk for baby cows

But again you are applying human experience and feelings and emotions to cows.

The cows don't feel sad that they have had the mothering instinct bred out of them. They are fed the best diet, they have access to clean fresh water, comfortable bedding, veterinary care, they generally live far better lives than most animals in the world.

Cows don't have 'breasts' they have mammary glands like all adult female animals. Cows aren't adult human females. Also, it's not that uncommon for adult cows to try and drink milk from each other, so try telling them it's only for baby cows (they won't be embarrassed, or ashamed, because they are cows).

They’re missing out on something that was naturally theirs, just because they don’t know it doesn’t mean it’s ok. If a child was born in prison they wouldn’t know any different would they? It’s unlucky for cows as a species that humans have found out that we can drink their milk.
Some adult men apparently like to drink human breast milk 😬 why should cows be different?

They’re missing out on something that was naturally theirs, just because they don’t know it doesn’t mean it’s ok You could say the same about the millions of dogs which are kept as pets.

I do say the same! I’m letting my elderly cat come to the end of her life then won’t be having any more pets, for that reason. Also it’s a bit weird feeding crushed up bits of animals to another animal imo.

Also it’s a bit weird feeding crushed up bits of animals to another animal imo. But she's a carnivore. Does she not hunt mice? That's 'cruel' to the mouse but that's what nature is like.

Yes she’s a carnivore which is why I feed her meat. I feel an obligation to look after her of course. The weird part is the packaging of parts of some animals into a tin in order to feed a more valued animal. The human involvement.

And novel viruses like avian and swine flu and even Covid 19 all were able to mutate and adapt to human hosts due to the fact that animals were in proximity to humans due to us eating them, so it just seems like quite a bad idea overall tbh?

Whilst yes this is true at the very bare bones of it, you are looking at animal consumption and production in other countries and applying the same criteria to the U.K. We have much higher standards in this country than those from which the aforementioned diseases originate. Mostly because we actually learnt our lessons from BSE, foot and mouth etc and have safeguards in place that prevent things like this happening. There’s a reason why farmers are up in arms currently about the government selling out on food standards because of brexit. You open the doors to produce from countries that have had issues like you mention and which have made no attempts whatsoever to learn from it or improve their standards and you’re not just going to financially murder our already tightly squeezed agricultural sector, you’re asking for diseases to be spread like wildfire. Our food and welfare standards are the highest in the word and we would very much like to keep it that way as well as expecting anyone else wishing to sell in our country to hold the same high standards. Safeguarding against disease does not have to mean the complete dismantling of the system, it means that the system has to work to prevent those things. Our system in this country does, others do not and I don’t know anyone over here that would prefer to farm in that way over the way that we currently operate- even if it does mean an absolute MOUNTAIN of paperwork to prove you’re compliant. Humans and animals are perfectly well suited to living in close proximity to one another but the methods and practices involved are where the problems arise. You could take the most commercial, large scale farm in the U.K. that you could find and thankfully it still wouldn’t even come close to the way that large scale commercial farms are run in other countries.

@plinkplinkfizzer

Thanks to posters who farm on here this is so interesting , please tell us more . Why is there no topic for farmers/ farming ?

Probably because there are so very, very few of us, even fewer on a predominantly female forum. And for every farmer, there's a thousand 'experts' who have seen it all and know it all even though they have no practical experience or knowledge at all They spend their time telling us very loudly how very badly and wrongly we are feeding them, while they pop down to tesco and shovel food into their mouths.

I know many, many farmers, it's my job and has been for many years, and not a single one is vegan, or even vegetarian. I'm talking 'proper' commercial farmers that have devoted their entire life to producing food for you, not a new smallholder with great ideas of how it should be done. Not knocking the smallholder, they just need to realise that they have a different way of doing things (and if you are one, please ask your neighbours for help if you need it, we're a friendly bunch).

Away from the internet I find that people are genuinely interested in farms and farming, but you are all so very far removed from food production which is something that is so very difficult to change. For a brief moment in time at the start of lockdown, people remembered that we are here producing wheat, fruit, potatoes, vegetables, milk, meat and eggs, but now that the shelves are full again we're not given a second thought.

What changed during lockdown? Absolutely nothing, we still went out everyday, no furloughing, no social distancing, no working from home, no weekends off, no days off, no change. Enjoy your breakfast.