Promessa Escrita*

earlyware:

Brian Ferry

(Source: bferry.wordpress.com, via delectatio)

littlest-folks:

“I wouldn’t mind living in a world with just a few more dinosaurs and unicorns… 🦄 🐊✨

(via #this.little.wandering@ig)

(via ren-in--wonderland)

landscapesdaily:

Make sure you follow our Landscape blog - https://ift.tt/2sGLyRv

(via underthelindens)

animalscience-side-of-tum8lr:

hostilepopcorn:

brodiebutt:

That’s not why it’s bad you fucking idiots. It’s bad b/c were literally taking it from a baby animal, that then gets slaughtered for meat or forcibly impregnated and milked for life like its mum.

Animal Science side of tumblr here! I actually know about this stuff, and basically all the things you hear from animal rights activists/radveegs are either alternative facts misinformation, exaggerations, or misunderstandings.

1) Humans are not the only animals that drink milk. Blue tits will go out of their way to drink milk cream. Feral cats and seagulls compete over elephant seal milk. Bears prefer eating the udders of their kills. Oxpeckers have been reported to perch on the udders of impalas and drink their milk; unfortunately I couldn’t find a credible source for this, but considering they practice wound-feeding, it’s not unlikely. Even cows themselves don’t mind drinking the milk of their herdmates when given the chance.

2) It’s true that cows and calves are seperated at all farms, except very small-scale diaries. But contrary to popular belief, this isn’t to “steal the milk from the calf,” as calves are usually just fed regular, unprocessed milk from their mom and future herdmates (milk replacer is both really expensive and made from cow’s milk anyways, so there’s no reason to use it except for medical problems). In fact, cows that are kept with their calves have a higher milk yield (up to 20% higher!) than those who are seperated, so the farmers actually have monetary incentive to keep the pairs together.

Instead, the reason cows and calves are seperated is that, for starters, dairy cows are really bad mothers and the best case scenario is that they’ll lick their calf clean and then just ignore it. Occassionally they’ll attack their own calf. Secondly, a stall or field full of large and excitable animals isn’t a safe place for a newborn. And lastly, building specific stalls just for mother/calf pairs to stay in for half a year is a huge undertaking when you have over 200 heads of cattle that all need to be milked thrice a day, especially if you use an automatic milking system, which is likely the method that’s most beneficial to the cows’ well-being.

Separation of cows and calves does not cause any notable stress if it’s done within the first 24 hours. From an ethological stand-point, this low stress makes sense, as cows (like deer) are hiders, and feral calves are left alone for hours at a time. Separation also increases calf survival and ensures that the calf gets enough colostrum in its first 24 hours which is vital to its health.

3) I can only speak for Denmark and the US, but there’s virtually no veal industry in either of those countries (the industry is constantly declining, and I won’t be surprised if it reaches zero within our lifetime). In the US, male calves are sent to feedlots where they’re raised until 2 years of age, and then sold as beef. In Denmark, this is the same for most breeds, except we butcher them at 10 months, which is around the time they become sexually mature. Danish Jersey bull calves have up until recently been euthanized at birth because they’re too small and slow-growing to ‘fatten up’. But this practice is now stopping, no thanks to radveegs, mind you. The end of this practice is the work of organic dairy farmers and agriculture students. A lucky few male calves are castrated and sent to rewild forest areas and to do regenerative grazing.

4) Cows are not impregnated against their will. Trust me. When a cow’s in heat, she’ll let you know just how much she wants to be mounted. Cattle in captivity have roughly the same calving intervals as feral cattle (observed feral highland cattle calved on average every 391 days, while dairy cattle calve every 393 days, at least). Some farms choose to keep a bull around and just let the cows in heat hang out with him, rather than performing artificial insemination, but the results are still the same. The only difference is that bulls are dangerous to both humans and cows (the amount of times a bull has broken the hip of the cow he was mounting…), while AI is not.

Also, we have now bred dairy cattle to produce such an insane amount of milk that it isn’t feasible for the calves to drink it all. The cows HAVE to be milked or they are subjected to lots of pain and possible infections. From this perspective, dairys that care for and milk these cows are simply a responsive management practice for animals that we have bred for a specific reason.

And if we’re going to be milking them as a means of properly caring for these cows then why waste the milk? We will have a world population of 9.3 billion by 2050. It’s frankly irresponsible to waste such a vast quantity of nutrients and calories in the form of dairy products. We already have people starving. Why keep this food from them? What we really need to concentrate on is food distribution and making it affordable for all at this point. Why can’t we focus on the problem at hand instead of arguing??

Thank you @hostilepopcorn for the awesome and well presented info!! Well said!

(via silverstargate019)