Cows: More Freedom May Mean Less Milk

[☭proletarian☭]

'Free-stall', untied cattle in small herds produce less milk than cows tied to their stalls but have a higher reproductive performance and suffer less teat injuries and metabolic diseases. Researchers writing in BioMed Central's open access journal Acta Veterinaria Scandinavica compared performance and health within the two stall types in response to a ban on the construction of new tie-stalls.

Cows: More freedom may mean less milk


What if we tie the wetnurse to the bedpost?

 

[Annie]

I'm not certain of the implications of this, but caught the possibility that it may be different if they were in 'large herds?' (I hope I'm reading that right). Seems so far the option of larger herds hasn't been done much? Try it.

Wherever we can have less interference in natural, probably is a good idea. I feel the same about farming methods as I do about so called 'greening technologies'; in either case when a substitute with less impact, more natural may be implemented it should be. Not however at the cost of making the product so limited or expensive, (of course those go hand-in-hand), but real alternatives.

I don't think having animals force fed or hormone/anti-biotic injected feed or standing in a confined space is good for the animal and in the long run probably not good for the consumer. At the same time we need to look at production of agriculture, as well as costs. There is a world to feed and many places do not have the technologies and without our exports, especially in emergencies, there would be more starvation.

What was said about animals also applies to vegetables, on different level of course. We really don't know the unintended consequences of genetic manipulation, etc. Seems there should be some commonsense applied between a Luddite approach and Brave New World one.

We're never going back to the majority of land being used for food production, but some reasonableness should be applied.

As I said above, I think the same sorts of commonsense approach should be applied to greening products. Keep working on alternatives that would have lower impact on environment; find materials that work for packaging shelf life, but don't stay in landfills for centuries; develop engines that run efficiently, but cleaner; etc. But don't try to make what is currently available so expensive by taxes or banned outright. There will always be demand for products that work and provide the bonus of making the consumer believe they are doing the right thing in addition. Private markets thrive on just such.