Comment on and we thought our thing with beans was bad
davidagain@lemmy.world 4 days agoAt least 50% of them are killed - very, very few males make it to adulthood.
Comment on and we thought our thing with beans was bad
davidagain@lemmy.world 4 days agoAt least 50% of them are killed - very, very few males make it to adulthood.
commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 days ago
this is incorrect
davidagain@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Not this time, I don’t think. The internet says that male calves are typically killed for meat at 18 months old, but would reach adulthood at 4 years of age. One male breeder adult is rented out to other farmers for a fixed period to impregnate the whole (female) herd. All the other males are killed. So few males make it to adulthood that it’s not normally even one per herd. Cows are usually killed if they don’t get pregnant after a number of tries. There’s no sense farmers spending a lot of money keeping an animal alive to not even get any milk from it, and there’s not a lot of profit in farming in my country for them to sentimentally keep animals alive.
commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 days ago
18 months is full weight
ikidd@lemmy.world 4 days ago
I have 320 beef cows, and about that many steers/heifers waiting for market.
18 months on a steer is about 1200lbs, pasture fed then grain finished before slaughter. A non-castrated male can get to 2200lbs after 4-5 years. I’d call that an adult bull. They can breed successfully at damn near any age after 12 months, but I wouldn’t call them developed until about 30.
davidagain@lemmy.world 4 days ago
It’s not not adulthood, and it’s certainly not a full life, because cows and bulls would love to over 15 if we let them.