That isn’t true, of you regularly milk a cow there is no reason to impregnate it again. The cow will continue producing milk as long as it’s regularly milked . It’s the same as human woman, that’s how you end up with some mothers breastfeeding for a creepily long time. Our own species behaves in the same exact way, why does this continue to get repeated.
nooch@lemmy.vg 3 days ago
Yes the dairy cycle is more complex I simplified it because I wanted to focus the impregnation part.
Milk production decreases greatly after the first 9-12 months. To make it profitable they do get impregnated repeatedly. The life of a dairy cow typically goes like this:
The cycle is then repeated. Since pregnancy and milk production is taxing on the body and milk production declines, most cows get slaughtered at 5 years old with an average of 2.5 pregancies (average lifespan is 20 years). This also makes sense because to maintain the herd you need to keep the number of females stable, which have a 50% chance of being born (male claves get slaughtered ofc).
Maybe some homesteads or subsistence farms keep milking them for years after one pregnancy, but otherwise even for free range grass fed whatever, if they sell milk to make a profit this is how it goes.
You can get all this info from industry sources.