This is an opinion brought to you by a rancher, who knows quite a few other ranchers and dairy farms.
I recently watched a documentary called Earthlings, which gets praised on a lot in the Vegan, animal rights, and animal welfare tags.
This documentary is complete, biased, exaggerated, and twisted bullshit (At least when it comes to beef and dairy, which is what I’m talking about)
It opens on beef with branding, showing an animal being hot ironed on the face. In my state, you cannot register to brand a cow on a face. In fact, the face is the least common branding site available, as it can damage the cow’s jaw and make it difficult for her to eat. The most common branding site is the hip, rib, and shoulder, but the documentary simply says, cows are branded on their face.
Does it say why? No. Because obviously we scar our animals for fun, right? Cattle don’t have microchips like a dog. If your dog gets stolen, you can usually find it because of it’s Microchipped. Cows don’t have that. Cows are so expensive, they’re like gold, so often Ranchers brand their cattle. If a cow has a brand, she cannot be sold without the brand owner’s authorization, meaning, someone can not steal young, healthy animals from my pasture, and sell them for slaughter.
Next they go on to dehorning, stating that it is cruel, painful, and often done with simple pliers. HAaha.
If I have an animal, I don’t want to ruin it by painfully tearing off it’s horns. This animal will never let me touch it again!
Most cattle, and I DO mean most, are dehorned either as calves (Less painful, not remembered), or have a shot to numb the area at the base of the horn before it’s CUT off, not YANKED off. This way, the cow can still be handled.
Does the documentary say WHY cattle are dehorned? Does it mention that a cow with horns is a danger to itself, humans, and other animals? No? Of course not!
Beef cattle are not stuffed into trailers until it’s so full the animals die. This makes absolutely no sense. If the animals die before they reach the sale ring or slaughter house, no paycheck for you! You make less money if the animals die before slaughter.
Nothing the documentary covers is explained why. WHY do they do that? It’s biased. It makes it seem like ranchers and farmers WANT to hurt their cattle. They don’t. Most of us get attached to our cows. It exaggerates EVERYTHING
According to the documentary, Dairy cattle are CHAINED to their stalls, in their own feces, with no water or food, pumped full of hormones to make them milk more. Wrong.
A dairy barn consists of a long isle down the middle of the barn, with a large alley on each side for the cattle. The cattle can walk down the main alley, or lay in a padded stall. They can stick their head through railings to eat food specially mixed to meet all their needs, or drink water. Dairy barns, because they produce milk that MUST be clean, cannot milk a cow pumped full or hormones and chemicals, and clean their barns daily to avoid bacteria. WOW! It’s almost like we take care of our animals so they produce! WHO KNEW?
Most dairy cattle are allowed to graze in a pasture with their calves, until they’re milked in the morning and the evening. Others keep their cows in a well airated barn. Calves are removed to avoid injury! Calves are often kept it smaller pens, with calf huts, pads, soft bedding, and even blankets! It is counter productive to not care for a calf. A calf is your future cow! Dairy farmers feed them the highest quality milk so the calves grow into strong, productive animals.
Dieing cows are not left in the isles. If a cow begins to appear sick, a vet is called. Simple as that.
The documentary states that a cow’s lifespan can reach 20. WRONG. at the age of 8 or 9, a cow starts to lose her teeth. If you kept a cow alive until 20 she would be malnourished and miserable, unable to eat. The average cow lives until 8 or 9, at which point they are sold. It would be cruel to keep an animal who cannot eat or fulfill it’s own needs.
Cows do not, on average, die at FOUR YEARS OLD because of exhaustion! Four years, at almost any dairy or ranch you visit, is a cow in her PRIME! We do not run our animals to death. We do NOT torture them.
You don’t eat meat? Great! Do your thing! Eat your veggies! That’s fine! But don’t make me out to be devilspawn if I eat meat. Don’t make me out to be cruel, (As stated by the documentary, as cruel as hitler to the jews), because I raise cattle. Fuck. You.
The shit thing about that documentary is it preys on people who have never been on a farm or dairy. If you’ve never been to one, it’s easy to believe things like this. If I made a documentary about how vegans grew their food, and showed it to people who have never met Vegans, or seen how crops are grown, I could easily exaggerate and make Veganism seem horrible, like this documentary does to livestock owners.
Please stop hating on ranchers and farmers. Please?
