Daisy’s sons will be dragged away from her soon after birth as male calves have no use and little value in the dairy industry. Male calves are predominantly born to be killed as they are of simply no use in dairy production, and it’s often cheaper to kill them than rear them for cheap beef or veal. Dairy cows are physically different to cows bred specifically for beef, they are thinner and longer, beef cattle are more muscular and have a stouter shape and more flesh. Therefore, rearing them for beef is simply not profitable. Male dairy calves are surplus to requirement and need to be disposed of one way or another. Some are sold at auction for cheap meat, some are sent to brutal veal farms often involving live export but most are just killed soon after birth. Despite dairy bosses themselves admitting the killing of male calves is ‘an own goal’ and the dark side of dairy and there being huge public outrage after footage of the killing of male calves was aired on TV there is no kind, ethical or viable solution to this issue – dairy is a profit orientated business and male calves have no place in the model and are simply surplus to requirement.
Shooting Males calves
95,000 male calves in the UK alone are taken from their mothers at birth to filthy feedlots to await killing which is usually within a few days of birth. Their first and only few days on this planet are filled with horror and acute trauma. Often without adequate feeding or bedding, their cries for their mothers completely unanswered and moved around without any regard for their physical or emotional welfare. At the earliest convenience they are shot in the head usually in groups, so new-born male calves have to witness those calves shot before them. The shooting of male calves at birth is so dark that many dairy farmers themselves have admitted that they can’t bring themselves personally to do it and instead pay someone from a licensed farm animal killing business to do it for them.
There is no good way to do a bad thing.
Given we are 8 billion people on this planet and growing, dairy production is an industry that is based around large scale farming and has so many dark and wicked practices – all to keep the cheese, ice cream and butter flowing for human consumption.
Unwanted male calves in the UK if not shot soon after birth will be sold at auction for cheap beef or to be exported to the continent to be raised for veal.
Sold at Auction
Can you imagine the trauma for these vulnerable new born baby calves, torn from their mothers, treated like commodities, being carted around from place to place sometimes going hungry, paraded at auctions and marketplaces until they are sold, during their first few weeks in this world? Some can barely walk and helplessly cower before the onlookers.
The Veal Connection
Many of these calves will be destined for low welfare veal farms on the continent, and they will endure long distance journeys on ferries and lorries that can last for days and many calves don’t survive the journey or become very ill. To create the pale tender white veal flesh that is most popular on the continent calves are kept in confinement and darkness and often chained at the neck to ensure they don’t walk around in the hutch and make their muscles strong and fed low iron diets to make them anaemic before slaughter. They are fed milk replacer, which can be laced with antibiotics in order to control the diarrhoea that is caused by an inadequate diet. In addition to suffering from diarrhoea, pneumonia, and lameness as a result of this anaemia calves raised for veal are terrified and desperate for their mothers. They are slaughtered at four to five months of age. Calves can be so crippled from confinement that they have to be helped into the truck or trailer on the way to the slaughter plant.
Male Dairy Calves Around the World
France
Male dairy calves (literally new born babies) exported to France from Ireland, having endured a torturous journey in their first weeks on this Earth, are then beaten and abused.
New Zealand
Largely grass fed dairy cows, the fate for mother and baby calf is the same horror as everywhere in dairy – grass fed means nothing to a mother cow bellowing for her stolen new born calf or a vulnerable calf being denied its mother and her milk, man handled and electronically prodded to its death.
Australia
Farmworkers so desensitised that calling a new born calf a c..t and throwing them to their death is all part of a days work. Bludgeoning to death a new calf with a hammer is considered ‘humane’.
India
Unwanted male calves are killed by starvation and then stuffed and placed near the mother who can see her calf but not reach them in order to stimulate her milk production.
Bobby – a calf who has no monetary value to the dairy industry due to being the wrong sex, the wrong breed, or simply surplus to the needed numbers of animals. These innocent babies, who don’t ask to be born, are picked up by a truck at four days old and taken to their deaths. Bobby calves are animals who are quite literally born to die. The babies aren’t ‘needed,’ but their mothers are required to give birth to them so that they will produce milk for the farmer. Their babies are then killed at the earliest convenience.
― Jackie Scurr, ex dairy farmer turned vegan
Mother to Mother
Daisy barely gets to know the sex of her calf before it is stolen from her – she has no idea of the horrific fate of her male calf (her precious baby) whom she carried for nine months. Male calves are just like female calves, they are just new-born babies who need their mother’s nurture. Our dairy products are built upon this suffering, it has to be like this so long as we consume dairy products. Calves will be taken from mothers at birth and the male calves who are surplus to requirement will be dealt with.
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