Benny wrote:Artchic528 wrote: Hence why they are the breed of choice for most dairy farmers.
There! We did eventually loop back to the selective breeding! Although this one is not a faulty one.
Yup. Holstein cows have been selectively bred to produce way more milk than say Angus cows who are bred exclusively for meat production. In fact, holstiens can produce so much milk that without regular milking the buildup will cause infections, mastitis, and if it goes untreated will certainly lead to the cow's death.
So yes, to answer an earlier query, we humans have selectively bred certain animals to yield higher quantities of byproduct to the point where they are dependenant upon us to survive. This is actually an interesting process. The cows and bulls are both graded in certain attributes. Cows are graded on their udder size and shape, milk yields, and health and number of previous calves birthed while the bulls are graded on size of their testicles, sperm count and number of calves they've made. Then the farmer matches bulls to cows according to the grading they've gotten, IVF is done and if all goes well, a new calf is born a little over 9 months later.
Well, this is to an extent. So long as we regularly induce pregnancy on dairy cows, they'll lactate. That's the whole point of dairy farming. So we make them dependant on us in more ways than one.
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