dairyisntscary:

Animals can be bad mothers

• When pursued by a predator, kangaroos will jettison their pouch young behind them to be eaten instead. After all, they usually have a replacement embryo in diapause.
• White tail deer will aggressively chase away nursing fawns if conditions aren’t ideal. They’re often hesitant to defend fawns from predators, resulting in high fawn mortality.
• Many, many species will kill and eat their young under stress. It’s been reported in everything from rodents to dogs.
• Foxes will kill cubs with the cross fox color morph.
• 20-30% of Merino ewes will give birth and walk away. The breed is notoriously neglectful with their lambs.

Which brings us to dairy cows. Dairy cows were not selected with maternal instincts in mind. Even beef cows reject their calves from time to time, especially in the case of twins or weak calves.

I’ve seen cows lick their calves and walk away without looking back. I’ve seen /many/ cows kick calves that tried to nurse away. Some cows don’t even look at their calves at all. Every single cow I’ve seen calves immediately returns to their food bunk, eating and ruminating as if nothing happened.

In on case, I went to go get some vaccines for a newborn heifer, just to turn around and see that her mother was kicking the snot out of her and stomping on her. I was able to get her away safely (but terrified), and I’m just thankful her loving mom missed her head.

The “separating mothers from their calves is abuse” nonsense is purely based in emotion, not logic based on knowledge of cattle behavior. While raising calves on their mothers has its benefits, there are damn good reasons for separating the two from a welfare standpoint. Dairy cow maternal instinct is not as reliable as the humans who take over for the cow, and people need to understand that.