Battery Farming Cows - I despair

[jacob marley]

PAULW i think you have found out that you cannot talk to closed minds..jacob

[PAULW]

JACOB isnt it a shame that the people with closed minds miss out on so much of lifes rich tapestry ;¬) PAULW

[zazen999]

What exactly is 'open minded or 'closed minded' about any of this? As Janie says; this has been going on for years....

[Seahorse]

There's no need for rudeness.

And should anyone care to take note, I was brought up on a dairy farm and all my maternal relatives are still farmers, so I am not an ignorant bleeding heart liberal who wants to give the cuddly moo cows a hug (and nor do I think anyone else in this thread is) but I AM interested in animal welfare and the issue of 'more & cheaper' food production in countries that are already affluent and well fed by the standards of much of the world.

[Nicos]

and well fed by the standards of much of the world.

I think you could substitute 'well fed' for 'over fed' for a lot of peeps ( me included I'm ashamed to say.)

[HayleyB]

Actually the reason I am not happy with this is because it categorically said in a couple of articles that the cattle will not go out in Summer. All my mates keep cows in over winter but they are on grass Spring through Autumn, this is not what will be happening in the Lincolnshire Farm.

[reetnproper]

I saw this story on our local news a couple of weeks ago and DH and I were speechless, not because of any animal welfare issue (looked like it was going to be no worse than your average dairy farm TBH).

8000 plus cloven footed animals in close proximatey!!!!
Have these people gone mad?

I can remember the speed at which foot and mouth spread from farm to farm and county to county at the start of this century! I can still see those horrific pictures of funeral pyres, incinerating 100's if not 1000s of animals at a time. Whole livelihoods (and not just the farmers either) wiped out! Not just infected animals either but those of the poor sods who were unfortunate enough to live within the exclusion zones.

8000+ cows spread out over a huge amount of acreage and if only one of those gets infected - my blood runs cold at the thought of that number of animals slaughtered and for what?

Cheaper input, greater profit, MASSIVE folly.

Reet
xx

[beefy]

Ok then - you don't like the idea of 8000 cows all in the one place .
So how many cows is acceptable then ?
Lets see if we can find out whats acceptable to those who think this is so wrong.

[its hilly]

I think Id like to know the full accurate facts and figures (not the completely reader-grabbing headline, totally (yeah right) accurate newspaper version) before I make up my mind.
Cos someones maths is worse than mine...or as usual the papers have the figures wrong
8,000 cattle on a 22 acre site with 21,500 acres producing feed
Is it 22 acres or 22,000 acres? Or 22a of sheds with the co-op farms being the other 21,500a.
Whats the normal stocking density per acre for dairy cattle someone..1 cow = 1 acre Somethings not right with those figures, youd have to stack them pretty high to fit 8,000 cows in 1/2 an acre of sheds, or even 22a of sheds, so Im assuming its the 22,000 acres, but that would still only leave half an acre for housing. And before anyone else points it out, part of that 21,500a of food production would be the fields dry cows were grazing.
And just what stocking density per acre are the housed cattle to get?
As dairy cattle are only dry for a matter of weeks (rusty memory) then they'll spend a lot of time in the sheds, around a third as much again as they do now. Or will they get time out while they are drying off too?
But..if the sheds are what was on countryfile then they are light, roomy clean not overstocked and a b....y sight better than most cattle get housed in anywhere I've seen, and I've lived in the countryside all my life.
But as most dairy cattle are pretty lazy and only move to eat then I can foresee that having continual easy access to feed will result in leg problems developing.
Juries out pending full info.

[beefy]

I think Id like to know the full accurate facts and figures (not the completely reader-grabbing headline, totally (yeah right) accurate newspaper version) before I make up my mind.
Cos someones maths is worse than mine...or as usual the papers have the figures wrong
8,000 cattle on a 22 acre site with 21,500 acres producing feed
Is it 22 acres or 22,000 acres? Or 22a of sheds with the co-op farms being the other 21,500a.
Whats the normal stocking density per acre for dairy cattle someone..1 cow = 1 acre Somethings not right with those figures, youd have to stack them pretty high to fit 8,000 cows in 1/2 an acre of sheds, or even 22a of sheds, so Im assuming its the 22,000 acres, but that would still only leave half an acre for housing. And before anyone else points it out, part of that 21,500a of food production would be the fields dry cows were grazing.
And just what stocking density per acre are the housed cattle to get?
As dairy cattle are only dry for a matter of weeks (rusty memory) then they'll spend a lot of time in the sheds, around a third as much again as they do now. Or will they get time out while they are drying off too?
But..if the sheds are what was on countryfile then they are light, roomy clean not overstocked and a b....y sight better than most cattle get housed in anywhere I've seen, and I've lived in the countryside all my life.
But as most dairy cattle are pretty lazy and only move to eat then I can foresee that having continual easy access to feed will result in leg problems developing.
Juries out pending full info.

1cow/ acre of ground = thats about right . 1 acre of ground will produce enough forage to keep a dairy cow alive for 1 year. That acre should also give an excersise area for the dry cow.
Why this outfit needs 22000 acres - I can't figure that out either.


22 acres - Thats the area that will be covered by sheds (I assume).Off hand and a bit of a guess I think a dairy cow needs 100 square feet/ cow when housed.

A dairy cow will lactate (give milk) for 305 days / year on average and a calving index of 365 ( that means a dairy cow in good health should calve once a year)


Interesting to see that people dont want 8000 cows together because of disease risks but each weekend this winter crowds of 10000 plus people gathered around Britian to watch football matches when we were trying to get an outbreak of swine flu under control.

I always remember what my animal husbandry lecturer at agri college said to the class one day - " the human being drinks , smokes, eats the wrong type of food , takes drugs and generally does everything thats bad for it's health but yet thinks they know whats best for an animal"

[SarzWix]

Talking of cattle prices (which someone was up there), a farming friend of mine sent 2 Limousin heifers to market this week and only got £700 each for them He's not made any profit there, at all. But as he says, at least they're not costing him in feed now. Their sire has won prizes too.

Mymilk comes from a dairy farm where they have just invested in the 'auto-milking' system shown on Jimmy's Farm program a couple of months ago. Talking to the farmer/milkman, he says his cows are loving the new system

[reetnproper]

Comparing my anxiety of the risks of disease to animals being kept together in such staggeringly large numbers, for no other reason than to generate a PROFIT, to 10000s of people who BY CHOICE go to something as inane as a football match where they might contract some sort of disease, is ridiculous!

The difference is that animals kept for ANY reason, rely 100% on humans to meet their needs and to take whatever action necessary to protect them from illness and injury. 8000+ animals, of the same type (ie cloven footed in this case) in one location is, potentially, a time bomb, whatever way you look at it.

2 outbreaks of foot and mouth in under 10 years speaks volumes, I believe, of the changes to the way animals are moved and kept in this country these days. Smaller groups makes sense in that respect but obviously not in terms of profits. Smaller dairy farmers are going out of business and it is such a shame, for with them goes, in many cases, generations of knowledge - can you honestly say, hand on heart, that this is a good thing?

[richkw]

JanieB
As one of the now three people on this thread that have had dealings with farm animals I totally agree with your comments.

I'm in the same position as you, and agree with JanieB 100%.

All this of course, assumes we believe everything we read in the press..........

[HayleyB]

So, a cow lactates 305 days a year, as they will only go out when not in milk that means they only go out for 2 months a year.

I cannot see that being good for any large beast, especially one that has been getting feed on tap making no effort to move to fresh food for the other 10 months.....

And I hadn't even thought of the foot and mouth issue or blue tongue blah de blah.

But I do strongly feel for the small dairy herd farmers that are gonna be put out of business by systems such as this.

[TEB]

But I do strongly feel for the small dairy herd farmers that are gonna be put out of business by systems such as this.

I doubt that this will have any effect on the small dairy farmer, the UK already imports a billion litres of milk a day as well as 400,000 tonnes of cheese annually. In 2005 one dairy farmer a day was going out of business.