Then I suggest that you read up on the well-documented facts of factory farming – the article I linked to is a good place to start.
Actually, it isn’t, because it’s full of misrepresentations. One hardly knows where to start.
Just a few things very quickly, about cattle. Maybe I will have time to return later. I have actually been around this stuff.
-Cutting calves ears is basically unheard-of among cattlemen. I do understand they used to do this decades ago for identification. I am around cattle and cattlemen all the time, and you just don’t see it.
-Amost no cattle are branded anymore.
-I have seen dehornings and castrations. Calves will bellow when they’re in pain, they almost always do during dehorning, but not afterward. Their perceptions are different from ours. Maybe 2/3 of young bulls exhibit pain during castration; perhaps 1/3 none at all. It’s done when they are very young. After it’s done, they exhibit no signs of pain whatever. Most cattle anymore don’t have horns at all, and are therefore never dehorned. About the only horned cattle left anymore are “decorative longhorns” (nobody dehorns them) horned herefords (prevalent only out west) and shorthorns (same). Some Brahman mixes have very small horns. Some are dehorned, some aren’t. The Angus which are now so prevalent in this country now, never have horns to start with.
-Beef cattle are fed in pastures, on grass, except in the northern corn-growing regions where corn farmers will feed corn “chops” or silage to their cattle. Not much of a “feeder’s” life is spent in a feed lot. They’re pasture-raised to fair size. Often they’re then “backgrounded”, usually on wheat fields, then to feed lots. Feed lot time is 80-120 days. No more than that. Some never go to feed lots, only the best of the best.
-Feedlot animals are not fed much in the way of actual grain. Mostly it’s vegetation like sorghum or milo chops laced with byproducts like distiller’s grain.
-Weaning takes about two weeks. The calf will bellow for its mother off and on for less than than a week. The mother will bellow for its calf perhaps a day. After maybe three days to a week, the calf calms down. All the while, the calf is fed generously. Some do feed some amount of grain by-product, but it’s mostly hay. Hay is grass. Once a calf is weaned, the calf and its mother are indifferent to each other. They are not “sentimental” the way humans are.
-Big commercial feed lots are nasty from a human perspective. But cattle will get just as nasty in a small space on a farm. In neither place is there any way to tell whether they like it, hate it or are indifferent to it. Having segregated a lot of cattle in my time, I would say they’re indifferent. But even in an open field in the wintertime, they’ll befoul the areas where they eat hay or grass. We notice it then because the grass isn’t growing. In the summer, we don’t notice it because of the grass, unless we step in it, but they’re just as dirty then.
-Mother beef cows are kept on the farm until they die, are decrepit or don’t have calves anymore. Twenty years is a mighty old cow, but it’s not at all uncommon to retain a healthy, fertile cow into its teens.
-Very few ranchers feed any grain to their cattle. It’s stupid to do it. It’s even more stupid to confine cattle, and in the big cattle growing states nobody does it.
-Only a very stupid rancher will abuse cattle. It ruins the hide and the meat. An abusive rancher will go broke more often than not. When an 800 lb steer will bring you over $1,000, you treat it as carefully as you would any $1,000 asset.
