Harry and William were born in 2011. Like the mothers of Arnold and his friends, Harry and William’s mothers are anonymous, lost to the industry like so many other dairy cows. They may still be alive, suffering through repeated artificial inseminations and pregnancies only to have their calves taken away within hours, or they may already have gone to slaughter, their bodies exhausted after only a few years of intensive milk production.
Harry and William were on a truck with nearly 100 other orphans of the dairy industry, en route to the slaughterhouse, when they were rescued by wildlife rehabilitators. Emaciated, hypothermic, and suffering dehydration as a result of severe diarrhea, they were so sick that the veterinarians did not expect them to live. It took some time and a lot of intensive care, but Harry and William pulled through.
The pair now lives at Farm Sanctuary’s Animal Acres in southern California. You can see a video of them enjoying their freedom here:
We can’t tell you about the mothers who gave birth to Arnold and his friends, but we know that they are only a few of the millions of dairy cows who are impregnated year after year only to lose their calves within hours of their birth so that we can drink their milk. These mothers may already be dead, having been sent to slaughter for cheap beef–a common fate of dairy cows whose bodies give out at 4 or 5 years of age, only a quarter of their lifespan. The average Canadian dairy cow gives 9,519 kilograms of milk a year, seven times more than she would naturally.
Conrad
Though many of the male calves born to these cows are raised for veal or slaughtered outright as a byproduct, others are sent to auction. Such was the fate of eleven calves, including Arnold, Tweed, Conrad, Milbank, and Orlando, in 2011. Just days old, the eleven babies were sold for a few dollars each to a farmer who planned to raise them for cheap beef. When the calves contracted pneumonia, he opted not to spend the $20 or so that it would have cost to provide proper treatment for all eleven, choosing instead to shoot them.
Millbank
Authorities intervened after the farmer had killed six calves, and he was arrested–not for animal cruelty, but for violating his probation by discharging a firearm. Rescuers from Farm Sanctuary stepped in and saved the remaining calves, who were extremely underweight and dehydrated, as well as unfed, as their milk replacer was mouldy. They were taken immediately to the Cornell University Hospital for Animals to be given antibiotics.
Orlando
The oldest and strongest calf, Arnold, recovered first and was released after one day, but his four friends were slower to heal and spent days in the hospital. In addition to pneumonia, they were suffering from ringworm, giardia, umbilical hernias, Bovine Papular Stomatitis, hypoglycemia, and sinus arrhythmia, among other conditions. Their intensive medical treatment continued even after all of them were released to Farm Sanctuary’s New York Shelter.
Tweed
In a safe environment, the calves finally began to flourish. Orlando, who at one point was the sickest of all, has revealed himself to be playful and goofy. His best friend, Conrad, the smallest calf, is also the sweetest. Millbank is very shy, as is Tweed–though he appears to be learning some bravery from Arnold! It’s hard to imagine that all five of them were almost just another casualty of the dairy industry, and now have the opportunity to live 20 to 25 years at Farm Sanctuary.
(Information about Arnold and his friends taken from Farm Sanctuary’s 2011 Featured Rescues.)
Sadie is from a typical dairy farm. She was impregnated four times and all of her babies were taken from her immediately after birth. Her male calves were sold as veal and her female calves were used to replace adult dairy cows sent to slaughter.
She lived with 6,000 other cows on a dry lot. She never ate grass or roamed free.
When she was 4 or 5, Sadie developed mastitis, a painful, swollen bacterial infection of the udder which reduces the quality of milk by increasing its somatic cell count. (That’s pus, by the way. Yum!) Mastitis is not unusual on dairy farms; in Quebec, one of the biggest milk producers in Canada, it is the second most common reason for culling. Like so many other dairy cows before her, Sadie was slated to be sent to slaughter at only a quarter of her lifespan.
Before that happened, however, a veterinary teaching hospital purchased her and used her body as a teaching tool. They did not treat her mastitis, though, and after 20 weeks she was en route to the slaughterhouse once more.
A vet student stepped in and saved her life. Sadie has lived at Animal Place since June of 2005.
A sled dog from Outdoor Adventures (Photo by the Vancouver Sun)
We’ve all heard by now about the 100 sled dogs slaughtered “execution-style” in Whistler. This horrifyingly brutal crime should not be considered an anomaly, however: it is yet another reminder of what happens when we treat animals as commodities rather than individuals capable of suffering.
The dogs were killed because of “a slow winter season”. The company, Outdoor Adventures, had purchased extra dogs to take advantage of the increased tourism that came with the Olympics; one year later, demand for sled dog tours had dropped and the dogs were costing the company more money than they were making. 100 of 300 dogs were slaughtered.
As shocking as it might seem, this is routine in many industries that use animals.
Dairy cattle are slaughtered at 4 years old or so, a quarter of their lifespan, when they stop giving enough milk to prove profitable. Egg-laying hens are treated the same way, killed at 1 or 2 years old (about a fifth of their lifespan) when they can no longer lay enough eggs to make money for the company. (This is typical procedure, whether conventional or “free range”.) Meanwhile, sheep raised for wool generally go to slaughter at around 7 years old, when their wool production begins to drop off, despite the fact that they can live as long as 15 years.
What can you do to help dogs in Whistler? Help get the sled dog tour industry banned! Write to:
Honourable Ben Stewart
Minister of Agriculture
PO Box 9043
Stn Prov Govt
Victoria, BC
V8W 9E2
What can you do to help dairy cows, egg-laying hens, sheep, and other animals suffering in exploitative industries? Reduce your consumption of animal products or better yet, go vegan!
Last week was Diwali, the Indian festival of lights. There were several events around Vancouver, culminating in a big celebration at the Roundhouse Centre in Yaletown on Sunday. This sounded like a good opportunity for some outreach to the people of the South Asian community, many of whom already have a great respect for cows. So Joanne and I took a bag of our dairy leaflets down to Davie & Pacific to hand out to the people coming in to the Roundhouse Centre. Later in the afternoon, Jason from the Humane South Asians would come by to help out, along with Lauchlan.
I can’t remember the last time I had such a good time leafletting. Aside from the beautiful weather (thank you, lack of rain), we had a very positive, and very receptive crowd. Just about all of the people I talked to seemed both surprised and upset by the systemic cruelty to animals involved in dairy. We finished the bag of leaflets well ahead of schedule–in fact, Joanne and I had to stop early for fear we’d run out before Jason and Lauchlan had a chance to get there!
Roger leafletting at Diwali
That was fine, of course: it gave us a chance to look around inside and see what the event was like. There was lots of food (long lines, though, so I didn’t find out what exactly was there (and vegan) except for some tasty samosas; maybe someone in comments can fill me in), lots of performers (see here for the full list), visual art, crafts, and generally what looked like a lot of fun.
We should definitely make sure we’re back for Diwali next year!
Save a cow! Visitors play to reunite a cow and her calf.
Liberation BC volunteers were out at Justice Rocks this past Sunday with information about dairy, veganism, and compassion for animals.
Justice Rocks is a festival of music and activism organized by Pivot Legal Society with help from several other nonprofits.
We had a tent with information, including our new Save the Cows game. The game had people answer questions about diary and non-dairy foods with the goal of reuniting a mother cow and her calf. A whole bunch of people played the game – and everyone who won got a free cow ribbon. People playing the game were able to learn about dairy ingredients like rennet and paneer.
It was a really great day. Thanks to Shelly, Paige, Willow, and Joanne who did a wonderful job of sharing information, including many personal stories about animals.
I think by now everyone has seen or at least heard about the 4 minute undercover investigation video released by Mercy for Animals earlier this week. Workers at Conklin Dairy Farms in Ohio engaged in sadistic abuse of the animals they are paid to care for. Calves having their heads stomped on, diary cows tied and then beaten in the head with crowbars, cows having their udders stabbed with pitch forks…
What industry allows employees to get away with this? Imagine an employee at a grocery store stomping on perfectly good tomatoes. They would be fired on the spot. But what if the tomatoes were too rotten to be sold? I suppose then, the employee might get away with it. Perhaps the manager would even join in on one particularly frustrating or boring day at work. I think this is precisely what happened at 4th generation, family-operated, Conklin Dairy Farms.
In the undercover video footage, you see Conklin employee Billy Gregg bragging to his new co-worker (the undercover investigator) about abusing a cow that was being sent to slaughter because her inflamed udders would not allow her to produce any more milk:
“we beat the fuck out of this cow, we stabbed her, I broke her tail in three place, kept stabbing her ass. Beat her. Next day Gary says, “we’re gonna send her to beef” Cuz she had mastitis and all. Couldn’t get her in the parlor. I drugged that cow. I beat that fucker until her face was like this big around”.
In an industry that treats sentient animals like production units and commodities, a dairy cow with mastitis is as good as a rotten tomato at a grocery store. And since there are about as many laws protecting a rotten tomato as a unproductive dairy cow, you can do whatever you like with them.
In the days following the release of the footage, the agriculture community in Ohio denounced the activities that had taken place at the farm and blamed it on one bad apple, Billy Gregg. He was charged with 12 counts of animal cruelty and has been jailed. Under current Ohio animal cruelty law, Billy will not be charged with any felonies, just misdemeanors. Before you start trashing the hillbilly Americans and their backwards law system, please note that Canadian animal cruelty laws are about the same – if not worse.
The owner Gary Conklin said in a statement, “The video shows animal care that is clearly inconsistent with the high standards we set for our farm and its workers, and we find the specific mistreatment shown on the video to be reprehensible and unacceptable”. Ironically, Gary Conklin was one of the guys shown kicking a downed cow in the video (at 1:26).
Everyone in the small Ohio farming community is putting on a fabulous display of outrage by vocally denouncing Billy Gregg’s actions and painting him as a psychologically disturbed criminal who acted alone. But no one else shown on the video has been charged with animal cruelty and the dairy farm has not been shut down.
It is clear that the community’s attempt at denouncing animal cruelty is disingenuous. If there really is a culture that rallied around good husbandry and condemned deliberate acts of abuse against the farm animals, why did Billy Gregg feel so comfortable bragging to a newly hired employee (the undercover investigator) about all the egregious acts of cruelty? If it wasn’t a socially accepted practice, why did he do it in front of his coworkers and why did the owner take part in the abuse? It is apparent that the precedent set by the culture around Billy Gregg is that abusing animals is tolerated, accepted and even celebrated.
Billy Gregg in court (AP Photo/Jay LaPrete)
What happened at Conklin Dairy Farms is not an isolated incident by any means. Every time an animal rights group hires an investigator to go to a randomly selected farm they come back with more than they set out to get. Even without any of the abuse shown in the 4 minute footage, Mercy for Animals would have obtained footage that documented the systematic abuse of dairy cows who are kept constantly pregnant, suffering from chronic mastitis and the killing or disposal of new born calves.
The animal agriculture industry is mostly self-regulated and it is obvious that this system is not working out. This November, people in Ohio will have the opportunity to vote for a ban on some of the worst practices in animal agriculture. It is true that the proposed law will not stop the abuses documented at Conklin Dairy Farms, but it will ensure that the animals on farms will have the bare minimum, such as the ability to turn around, stretch their limbs and spread their wings. It is not much too ask for, but even so, there is strong opposition from the farming community against the initiative to give farm animals just enough room to stretch their limbs. In fact, they are spending millions of dollars to make sure that this initiative does not pass. It really makes me wonder why anyone in animal agriculture would think Billy Gregg is a psychopath.
3 weeks ago the Mother’s Day Cow Ribbon campaign was launched. Since then we’ve mailed out ribbons to people all over Canada and the United States and as far away as the UK, Singapore, and Australia. People everywhere want to speak out for dairy cows this Mother’s Day.
And for good reason.
Dairy cows lose babies every year, one after the other, until the premature and horrible end of their life. Those babies never get to know their mothers. And their mothers never get to know their babies.
Wear your cow ribbon on Mother’s Day (May 9) and show your support for the mothers of the dairy industry. The goal is to have hundreds of people wearing ribbons on Mother’s Day and thousands of people getting ecards, reading messages on facebook, and more.
This mother’s day, wear your cow ribbon as a symbol of your concern for these suffering and abused mothers. Please take a stand and speak out for them. Every mother deserves to know and love her children, don’t you think?
The Cow Ribbon campaign has been written up in a few blogs you might want to check out:
Dairy cows give birth every year to a calf – their baby who is then taken from them.
Most of the female calves are raised to enter the cycle of birth and milking. The rest, which includes all of the male calves, are sold for slaughter. Some of them don’t even make it that far and just end up on a dead pile.
Can you imagine having each one of your children taken from you, year after year?
This year, we are launching the Mother’s Day Cow Ribbon campaign. We are making cow ribbons to be worn as a symbol of concern for these suffering and abused mothers.
I just read about a new project called “Teats and Tweets” where tweets are sent out “by” a cow as her RFID tags are read when she comes to be milked.
The cows don’t actually write the tweets themselves, of course. The people who set up the project created a set of tweets, and the data gets filled in from the information collected by the milking machine. The tweets are extra creepy. Here are some of the most recent ones:
Teat race! Front lefty loses again at 3:3 seconds.
Teat tweet: left front teat took 3:49 secs.”Drop milky udders”
Farmers feed cities. 13.1 kgs.
Laser guided robot milker found my teats. Gave 18.7.
“More copious soon the teat-pressed torrents flow”
I just squirted 12.1 kgs of milk out of my teats in 5:19 seconds. What did you do today?
Sound much like anthropomorphism? And “teat race?” Shudder.
I’ll bet that we won’t see tweets like “gave birth today and my baby was taken away from me,” “so sad I have all this milk and can’t feed my calf,” “some man came and stuck his arm up my ass and then impregnated me.” No, apparently all cows have to say (and apparently care about) is how much milk they “gave.”
This is part three in a series of stories about mother cows. Have you gotten your cow ribbon yet?
I just 
