Daisy’s pitiful and merciless existence is reaching the end. She is no longer profitable to the farmers. Her milk production dwindling after her fourth calf and her enormous, infected udders and lame back legs can’t carry her weary body any more. Despite the fierce beatings, electronic prodding and shouting from the frustrated farmers Daisy’s body is finally broken, just like her heart and spirit much before. Daisy can no longer stand up, she is what the industry calls a ‘spent’ dairy cow. Daisy will now be replaced in the herd by her daughter who will endure a life as gruelling and unforgiving as her mother’s.
No Thanks and No Mercy
Broken, her final journey to the slaughterhouse to be ground up and used in cheap hamburger beef or pet food is as undignified and painful as her life was. No longer able to stand up she is dragged onto a crane like device with no regard for her welfare. This undignified and brutal upheaval really does epitomise her cruel and unforgiving life. After a lifetime of emotional and physical abuse she is repaid with a brutal death once she is of no use. A thankless life in all respects.
Pregnant at Slaughter
Since dairy cows are kept pregnant most of the year many dairy cows like Daisy all around the world are pregnant when they reach the slaughterhouse, as many as 20%, with the foetus often going undetected until her throat has been slit and her body cut open. Slaughterhouse workers have spoken of this absolute horror. Some embryos are just a few weeks along, but others are several months. They are discarded like trash. This is one of dairy’s darkest secrets that of course farmers want to keep from the public.
Animals arrive at slaughter exhausted, thirsty, hungry, and terrified. Every year 100,000 factory farmed cattle arrive at slaughter injured, or too dispirited to walk; undercover investigators have repeatedly documented downed animals who are kicked, beaten, pushed with bulldozers, and dragged from transport trucks with ropes or a chain, though they are fully conscious, in pain, and bellowing pitifully. Cows exploited in the dairy industry, because they are older and their bodies have been exhausted by perpetual pregnancy, birthing, and milking, are among the most pathetic when they arrive at slaughter.
― Lisa Kemmerer, Speaking Up for Animals: An Anthology of Womens voices
Mother to Mother
Daisy’s life was one of relentless pain from birth until death. As if her lonely and motherless start in life was not traumatic enough she then faced torture on a level hard to describe for the rest of her life. We made her pregnant only to steal her babies so we could take her milk, the milk meant for her babies.
Daisy was an individual whose life was enslaved from birth and she was denied everything natural to her; her life was a fate worse than death and although her death was untimely, five years old at most, for Daisy perhaps death couldn’t have come soon enough. A mothers instinct is to protect her young at all cost, Daisy never had the chance, quite possibly even pregnant at her slaughter. Daisy my heart bleeds for you and I urge people to see beyond their cheeseboard, milkshake, ice cream or milk chocolate easter egg to see Daisy and her suffering.