Comment on and we thought our thing with beans was bad
davidagain@lemmy.world 4 days agoNot 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.
commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 days ago
you know that, whether they are male or female, they are at full weight for slaughter around 18 months.
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.
commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 days ago
if we didn’t provide veterinary care and feed and water and shelter and protection from predators, I doubt any would live so long.
davidagain@lemmy.world 4 days ago
15-20 years is the natural life span of cattle. Google it if you like.
In my country, all the wolves got wiped out and cattle are too big for foxes to take on.
Cattle get fewer diseases if they’re not kept inside in cramped conditions eating unnatural bulking food like corn. and are instead allowed to graze grassland freely. Not all of them would live to 20 by a long shot, but a big proportion would make it past 15.
Cows don’t naturally eat corn. It gives them really bad digestion problems, but makes them put on so much fat that it gets stored in little pockets in muscle tissue. The result is meat which has what’s called “marbling” and is seen as a sign of quality and tastiness in the USA. This unnatural feed has health issues for the cattle and it’s common in the USA to give low dosage antibiotics so that fewer animals get sick and have to be put down.
(This is the perfect bedding ground for antibiotic resistant bacteria, and more and more bacteria are evolving antibiotic resistance which means when humans get an infection, they usually die rather than usually live, risking bacterial infection survival rates going back to nearer 19th century levels, when a random cut might just lead to your death. We’re working hard on new antibiotics, but they’re far more expensive than penecillin, and at the moment drug resistance is growing faster than me antibiotics are.)
In my country, only about 5% of cattle are kept inside all year, and they’re almost all grass fed and meat is much leaner, and lean meat like (lean) fillet steak is seen as the highest quality.