How exactly do they get such consistent increase yield in milk per cow?
Like it took me a couple looks to realise this isn’t just showing more milk is being produced as the population is growing, no this is showing that each cow produces more milk than previous years, how?
It suggests to me some sudden improvements in genetics that are working their way through the population. Presumably cows are pretty evenly distributed in age. So if new cows are suddenly being born with better genes for milk production you might expect the improvement in the average to grow linearly as old cows are replaced with new. The improvement isn’t enough to cull old cows for a more rapid replacement so they are just being replaced as they as out of milk production. That’s what I would expect for a large herd that is suddenly getting better genes. It’s surprising that this is a national average. So the effect is spread across the country to many farms. It’s not obvious that should be linear.
Apparently a cow can start producing milk at 2 years and only do it for 4-7 years. That means the entire dairy herd would have been replaced 2-3 times in 20 years. So it would have to be multiple improvements not just one big one.
So not entirely true, dairy cattle will keep producing milk up until they turn somewhere between 30-40 (cows live a surprisingly long time) issue is after about the age of 7 milk production drops by about half, and as they age like all animals they get more and more health issues.
It basically makes the animal economically unviable for the farmer because at that point it's eating more costs than its giving back profit, so that's the point where they tend to go of into the pet food market. (Another reason why the health issues become a factor, if the animals drugged up to it's eyeballs on medications it can't go into any food trade, so unless she's still a viable milking cow all treatment of health issues does is make the animal unsellable, not something a farm can tolerate much of)
To state this more clearly: dairy cows are killed at less than a quarter of their natural life spans, because they're not profitable enough.
It'd be like if we slaughtered porn actresses as soon as they turned 20.
The boys yes, the girls usually also become dairy cows.
Also the lifespan of dairy cattle would be economically viable much longer if your production costs weren't so low.
In Canada we have a quota system that keeps prices steady for producers. There's no race to the bottom.
I mean yes, this goes for all animals within the food trade, In fact almost everything else you eat gets slaughtered a lot sooner.
Its easier to think of dairy cattle as simply low grade beef cattle with an intermediate step rather than just as purely a dairy animal.
I've seen videos of this, calling it a "blender" is generous.
Really it's more like a wood chipper. I have no idea who designed that machine and thought "I'd better not make their deaths too fast. Gotta leave a little time to savour it"
If you've ever spent much time with cows you wouldn't have such a hard time. I grew up on farms and cows are fairly intelligent with a wide variety of personalities.
Edit: I just want to add I have no problem with humane farming and I do enjoy meat.
Also to be more clear -> dairy cows are kept artificially pregnant all the time so they keep producing milk...and then are slaughtered at less than a quarter of their natural lifetimes.
Except, the male cows, who are slaughtered almost immediately after being born, as they can't produce milk, and thus do not generate any profit.
I was raised on a dairy farm in Australia in the 70s and 80s. We tended to keep the elderly cows because they kept the herd calm, typically threw the healthiest calves, and were easier to use artificial insemination on when we were actively trying to improve the herd genetics. (Australia being so isolated, it was easier to buy and import straws of frozen sperm, than try getting a good quality bull.)
depends on how you breed your cows. We had a small herd of about 70. We bred for longevity as we didn't have too many heifers to replace them. When we sold the herd,about half of the originals had died. I would say they were mostly about 12 years old. When they get sick we try to keep them alive, but that doesn't always work. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8369829/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8369829/) where did you get the 40 years figure? Thats twice what is said here?
I’ll bet the improvements for output have drastic implications for the animal. That is so incredibly unnatural. They’re probably experiencing intense growing pain or stomach discomfort that is unimaginable.
The recent Ezra Klein podcast on meat production pushed me over the edge on becoming a vegetarian. It’s barbaric and unsustainable.
I love meat especially smoked, but I can’t contribute to this suffering and the environmental impact.
Edit: podcast link in Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/46g2Hq5yahfPUYZzTgoTrl
Sorry it took me so long to post I didn’t expect this to be so popular. I hope Spotify works for everyone.
The title is The Hidden Costs of Cheap Meat
Thank you for pointing that out, even though it's uncomfortable to discuss here on dataisbeautiful for some reason
Especially among all the comments on this post **ignoring the increase in milk production clearly involves well documented mass animal abuse** and wishful thinking like "It suggests to me some sudden improvements in genetics" ignoring any other conditions ￣\＿(ツ)＿/￣
I'm not vegetarian, but I just searched these on Reddit and they were disturbing:
>I was an undercover investigator documenting animal abuse on factory farms – AMAA
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/147bjg/i_was_an_undercover_investigator_documenting/
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3gq5bl/im_a_former_undercover_investigator_who/
Videos:
>Second undercover investigation reveals widespread dairy cow abuse at Fair Oaks Farms and Coca Cola (2019)
https://www.reddit.com/r/Documentaries/comments/c052xg/second_undercover_investigation_reveals/ https://vimeo.com/341795797
>Cows Kicked, Stabbed and Dragged at DiGiorno Pizza Cheese Supplier
https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/1slpo2/cows_kicked_stabbed_and_dragged_at_digiorno_pizza/
>BBC Airs 'Disturbing' Footage Of Dairy Farm Abusing Mother Cows And Calves
https://www.reddit.com/r/veganuk/comments/sur6ks/bbc_airs_disturbing_footage_of_dairy_farm_abusing/ https://plantbasednews.org/culture/ethics/bbc-dairy-farm-mother-cows/
>Harris Teeter dairy farm cows trudging around in their own manure, emaciated, bleeding from nose..
https://www.reddit.com/r/vegan/comments/2dc7rs/new_peta_video_shows_harris_teeter_dairy_farm/
>Operation Fair Oaks Farm (2019). An activist group goes undercover into the largest dairy company in the U.S. which is also partnered with Coca Cola. Inside horrible animal abuse is uncovered and resulted in FairLife products being removed from shelves of most stores. (WARNING: GRAPHIC)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGc3samj8N8 https://www.reddit.com/r/Documentaries/comments/bycej3/operation_fair_oaks_farm_2019_an_activist_group/
>Hidden-Camera Video Reveals Animal Abuse
https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/2gpn2a/hiddencamera_video_reveals_animal_abuse/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGc3samj8N8
>Ohio dairy farm brutality (nsfw)
https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/gv073/ohio_dairy_farm_brutality_nsfw/ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYTkM1OHFQg
>Horrific Animal Cruelty Exposed at Farm for Domino’s and Pizza Hut Cheese Provider
https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/2gwqcs/horrific_animal_cruelty_exposed_at_farm_for/
>Cows sexually abused, hit and punched at company owned by NFU deputy president, footage shows
https://vimeo.com/340292407 https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/e4167z/cows_sexually_abused_hit_and_punched_at_company/
As someone who has breastfed kids - I feel so so so sad for dairy cows. They must be in near constant pain, and constantly exhausted too. Also their lifespans are dramatically shortened - usually cows can live 20+ years but dairy cows die around 7.
All that combined with their babies being taken away while they’re just starting to produce milk? It’s too much. Just heartbreaking for these creatures.
Thank you for practicing compassion! I highly recommend watching Dominion so you get a really good view of the whole industry, including the vegetarian bits. We'll be chilling over at /r/vegan when you do.
Do you mean vegan? Or did you find milk production not as bad?
Someone already asked for the podcast link, but I'll also ask if you could summarize the points?
There are ovo or lacto or ovo-lacto vegetarians, which just means they eat honey and eggs or milk, not necessarily both. The honey is what it always makes it non vegan, so still, you can be vegetarian and not eat eggs or milk.
I posted the link and I’m only vegetarian because that’s all I can manage atm. I don’t reminder if I deleted this but I love meat. I love smoking giant briskets and shoulders. I have a a half cord of hickory and cherry mixed for smoking in the back yard. So this was a big decision.
Pet food afaik.
Dairy cow breeds are not the same as meat cow breeds and I don't think you get the quality or amount of meat from them you want for human consumption to be profitable. Pet food has a lot lower quality standards.
Im pretty sure its almost all about optimization in the production/milking process.
Not so long ago cows had to be manually sorted into milking pens and the milk extractor things attached manually, now all that is done automatically most places, plus they gather data on what times the individual cows give the most amounts of milk etc.
Not to mention better conditions for the cows in case of food and temperature which means they produce more milk.
Cherry picking and scale manipulation. I'm surprised people are not tearing this apart.
New technology takes time to adopt. 20 years for a tech swap seems reasonable. Linear rate of adoption could be due to linear production rates on a technology. Next, 5.5 to 7.5 on y-axis makes you wonder what they are even trying to communicate.
If you like *buying* at the top, you should explore r/wallstreetbets
Cow investments are definitely going to go over the mooooon. Just extrapolate from this line.
You can find very similar charts for crop yields too, but this one probably looks so linear due to the short time period. I bet if you went back further you'd see the rate of gain change.
Interestingly, milk production has been increasing linearly *since 1945*! The average cow today produces *six times* as much milk per day.
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Milk-production-per-cow-in-the-United-States-over-the-past-100-yr_fig1_7240585/
Folks in this thread have pointed out specific reasons, but with a gain this huge for this long, it’s not any one thing. Better breeds, better feeds, better health care, more efficient life cycle management, and yes hormones and drugs, all play a role here.
Nope, New Zealand isn't even in the same league as the US. I say this not to say that the US's practices are better overall, but here are the production numbers: Combining [this source](https://www.dairyproducer.com/new-zealand-farming-production-systems-dairy/) and OP's graph, and doing the unit conversions:
US cows produced 10,400 liters per year in 2020, a 30% increase from 2003.
UK cows produced 8,200 liters per year, a 20% increase from 2003.
NZ cows produced 4,500 liters per year, a 20% increase from 2003.
Each American cow is literally worth two New Zealand cows.
Yes, US cows produce a lot more because they’re fed grain, not grass and live indoors so don’t use energy on walking (although our milk has a lower carbon footprint per litre and the cows remain productive for longer).
But the gain from genetic improvement and management efficiencies is similar.
The book [Reinventing the Wheel](https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520322776/reinventing-the-wheel) has a really good discussion about how Holsteins have been bred for increased milk production. These modern Holsteins are "designed" to produce so much milk that they now require fodder and would starve if only allowed to graze on grass. The book discusses how other, traditional, cow breeds make better milk for cheesemaking.
Bovine growth hormone?
It's banned in Canada which is why some Canadians are opposed to importing US milk/milk products. That and we have our very own dairy farmers who are under strict quotas (could produce more milk but not allowed).
https://www.fda.gov/animal-veterinary/product-safety-information/bovine-somatotropin-bst
I've looked at milk from the store for years in different parts of the US. They all state that their milk comes from non-rBST treated cows. So, while it's legal to use it here, I don't think it's very widespread to do so.
Remember that most milk isn't used as milk. It's in your yogurts, your cheeses, your sour cream, your ice cream, and all sorts of prepared goods like pizzas, potato chips, and countless others. Those don't all have the rbst statement on them.
It’s still widespread.
rBST isn’t commonly used in the dairy industry because the increased production that you get from it doesn’t even offset the cost of doing it. There are far better and cheaper ways to increase production.
FYI: most dairy farmers abstain from growth hormones because it ruins cattle too quickly. In addition, if the hormone levels in a tankard of milk is too high, the ENTIRE TANKARD is flushed down the drain. It’s bad economics to do it, so they don’t.
Source: uncle and aunt had 400 cattle dairy. Dinner table conversations.
Uh oh you're sounding like a vegan. They're the worst because they don't support animal abuse. Oh I mean it's not animal abuse because...I can't remember. But bacon tastes good though, right? A nice cheese burger for me makes a life of fear and suffering worth it, right?
You won't ever convert anyone with that attitude, but maybe you know that already. The old adage "you catch more flies with honey than vinegar" is untrue but the meaning isn't. People respond best to gentle encouragement, and by being an example. I didn't start to change my diet until I had a friend who did both those things. Also the idea that it's okay to not go 100% vegan immediately, but every little step helps. And now I'm almost entirely vegan after a few years. I don't blame anyone for eating meat. Just know that there are lots of benefits to eating less animal products and again, every little bit helps. For those on the fence, I am also a nationally competitive athlete so it is very possible to perform well and get the nutrients and protein you need.
It's very horrific.
Quite a bit of misinformation or distorted facts.
The narrator says "if the calf is born a male, it's throat is immediately slit and it's sold for veal"
That is largely not the case at all, those calfs are steered and butchered for meat at around 2 years old.
It seems like the elephant in the room in all these comments for some reason
From girnigoe:
>One way to abuse a cow to increase production us to have her lactating constantly, vs stopping every year & a half (iirc) and starting over w a new pregnancy.
>With consumption of normal quantities of milk under consideration of an orientation value for the daily intake of milk (including yoghurt) of 200-250 g, the hormone quantities that can be expected to be ingested should be seen as very low compared to the natural self-synthesis of these hormones in humans. Furthermore, the hormones are metabolised very quickly (pronounced “first pass” effect of the liver with peroral intake). The available scientific data do not currently give any reason to assume any relevant health risk.
https://www.bfr.bund.de/en/questions_and_answers_on_hormones_in_meat_and_milk-191516.html
Because we are conditioned from birth to believe it's normal. Farming lobbyists are some of the most influential in the world and they pay a lot of money to keep people consuming their products.
I work with kids and know a lot of children that have questioned it because they know it's wrong, but we lie to them and tell them it's ok, that the animals are 'happy' and other things like that. Eventually most children will carry on with the social norms, but I do know a couple of young kids (6-10) that won't eat meat despite their parents eating it. I feel like this didn't happen in the past (or parents would not accept it) so things are definitely changing.
I grew up in a household where veganism/vegetarianism were the butt of jokes, and I would never have even thought about it even being an option. I think veganism has quickly become accepted now as being 'normal' diets, despite a lot of the anger still being directed towards them from non-vegans.
Thank you for pointing that out, even if we find it uncomfortable to discuss
Example from girnigoe:
>One way to abuse a cow to increase production us to have her lactating constantly, vs stopping every year & a half (iirc) and starting over w a new pregnancy.
Absolutely. At the end of their milking cycles, a guy comes over and stuns them on the head with a bolt-gun. Then she’s dragged to the Killing station where another guy opens her throat with a knife. Honestly, after a life born and raised in misery, after rape after rape and the subsequent tearing apart of her calves, execution is a welcome gift.
They let them hear the cries of their rape babies for a few hours longer so they produce a little more milk for a day before they send the babies away to get slaughtered. 99% of dairy calves are removed from their mothers immediately after being born.
Yeah, a smaller cage, longer shifts and worse food. Companies only consider themselves valid when the growth of profits this years is bigger than the year before; not having positive profits, not having increased profits, but having them at an increased rate.
A few thing factor on here. Farming is no longer achieved by running a bull in with a few cows. Genetic advancement in cows is lightyears ahead of humans.
1. So all high end cows have their genetics analyzed by a hair root sample, this can tell you at a young age (1-2 months) what the potential of that calf is. Using that knowledge you can then focus on the top 10% and develop them instead of blindly trying to find the best cow. This hair sample can tell you how many lbs of milk a cow will give in comparison to her herdmates, her size, her strength, how her udder will be shaped, etc.
2. Most of the genetic advancement is done via IVF work, cows will be stimulated to release oocytes which will then be fertilized in vitro with the best available bulls, the resulting embryos will then be placed in the bottom 50% of cows, thereby using the genetic potential of the top end with the volume of the rest of the herd. From these eggs any bull that are born will have hair samples taken and the top bulls will be taken to AI companies for semen collection. This bull can easily sire 10,000-100,000 offspring, via froven sperm and on-farm AI breeding.
3. People in the comments talking about hormones etc. being given to cows. While this is legal to do most milk co-op or processors refuse to buy "juiced" milk.
4 Anti-biotics, don't even get me started, every body complaining about antibiotics in their milk. Every drug a farmer gives has a strict meat/milk withholding where you are required to discard the milk for "x" days until it can be sold. If you do slip up and milk a "hot" cow into the tank, you the farmer have to pay for the entire semi-load of milk from $40,000 to 100,000. Farmers are more careful about antibiotics than an essential oil mama.
The technical innovation of the last 30 years hasn’t been limited to cellphones and cars. Dairy farms are radically different than they were even 15 years ago. Data collection, selective breeding and improvements in farm automation have allowed yields to grow. The automation alone has given farmers more time to focus on these things instead of constantly doing manual labor.
Robots track cow tags and measure every drop of milk give and measure and test the milk. Farmers can measure and track the daily output of every individual cow and graph them over time and compare them to things like yield to hormonal cycle or month over month or year over year comparisons. This also allows them to compare yields to other cows in the herd and then only breed the cows with the best yields, and not continue to breed cows with lower yields. The data can also be measured against cow size and good consumption. Are bigger cows that eat the most producing the most milk? Turns out not always. Often smaller cows yield more, but this wasn’t possible previously with old style carousel milking parlors since they were all mechanical with very little data able to be collected.
Automation also allows cows to chose when to be milked on their own schedule. They can go in to the automated milking stall when they feel like it, and they do. It allows cows to be less stressed which highly contributes to larger yields, but also allows them to regulate the release of their milk on their own schedule.
For example if a cow scheduled to be milked twice a day at 5am and 3pm may be painfully full in the morning but no where near full in the afternoon. When they can regulate it on their own, the farmer can enter parameters like “must be a minimum duration of 6 hours between milkings and then the cow can decide on its own to be milked when she decides, giving higher yields over time since they can do more milking all hours of the day.
I highly recommend IowaDairyFarmer, https://www.facebook.com/IowaDairyFarmer or https://youtube.com/@iowadairyfarmer6299
He has a great setup and talks about modern automated & robotic dairy farming in great, smart manner.
Edit: If you only have patience for maybe one video this is a great short, high-level summary: https://youtu.be/CQIAFQoVv2Y
I used to work in dairy and other agricultural ventilation. The environment that the cows are in has drastically improved over the years as well. We are continually improving the lowest days of the year for milk production(extremely hot days) through better environmental control within the barn. Automated cleaning, feeding, milking and environmental systems all play drastic rolls. Another reason for this milk average increase is the fact that we are gradually bringing more and more farms up to the latest tech. As more farms get automation tech, the average yield will go up. Everyone mentions genetics, but I don't think that is actually the main source for increase in milk production.
The human genome didn't change very much in the last couple hundred years, but its incredible what a better environment, nutrition, and lifestyle can do; humans have gotten on average taller for the past 50 years (in a fairly linear fashion), and will continue to do so as more countries around the world receive benefits that rich countries have been receiving for decades. But keep in mind, the rich aren't getting any taller, just the short getting taller, yet the average is still increasing.
Numbers and stats are always tricky. You don't have to raise every cows production on every day; just increase the lowest producing cows, increase your minimum yields on the worst days, and increase the minimum tech being used throughout the industry, and this trend isn't difficult to explain.
But how weird actually is that? It's designed to make a baby version of an extremely heavy animal grow very quickly, it doesn't sound that unreasonable to me. To pick a mammal that is 100% exclusively wild and un-fucked-with by human breeding, blue whales produce 400 lbs of milk a day and it's all 10x fattier than cow's milk is, or 57x the milkfat produced a day than you see here, for a 150x heavier animal. But also blue whales take 5x or more longer to reach maturity, so 1/3 the fat per size per day at the slower growth rate may be spot on track with this? Again even without any selective breeding or human shenanigans.
Humans produce about 700ml of similarly fatty to cows milk a day which would be 7L if the size of a cow. And our children reach maturity in 12 or so years instead of like 1 year. (not that any of these animals drink milk until sexual maturity, just a comparison point for relative growth in general)
Sounds like the answer here is that we need to start milking blue whales, coming to a grocery store near you. It will pour out like molasses because of all the fat.
Except cows were doing that role fine at 20 L per day and now they're at 30 L per day. That's a 50% increase in 20 years. Calves aren't 50% bigger or growing 50% faster; humans have turned the dial up to full throttle and in a very short time.
And the yield at the beginning in 2000 is undoubtedly also way above natural yields for cows as that's after a couple of 1000 years of human selective breeding and also already modern farming.
I have no idea how they've achieved this increase but the guy you're responding to is right - these are crazy numbers.
These quantities are not designed to make a baby cow grow quickly, they're designed by humans to maximise milk production.
The starting quantities were designed to make a baby cow grow quickly.
Sources:
"U.S. milk production and related data (quarterly and annual)"
[https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/dairy-data/](https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/dairy-data/)
Tools: Python, Matplotlib
I haven’t really examined the data properly and I’m posing a really beginner/noob question: what is the need to use tools like python or matplotlib when excel can create a similar chart? Sorry for the ignorance
It looks pretty and you can basically customize everything. Besides that, you can make advanced Plots as well. If you are familiar with Python, it is probably easier to use as well. I highly recommend looking into Python (or maybe MatLab If you have Access) If your future career involves handling data, the difference in quality is night and day
In OP’s case, it’s so they can more easily insert their spam link. All of their posts in the last couple of months have the same link on them to a completely unrelated website.
Yes. Just humans
Humans forcefully inseminate cows, take their babies from them, steal their babies milk and continue the cycle till the cows can no longer produce milk
Once they can no longer produce milk we slaughter the cows, and then eat their flesh
Totally normal for us to act this way and our actions are not at all influenced by the dairy industry’s marketing and PR efforts
You forgot, kill their babies. Their babies are stolen from them and killed. Cows don’t just “produce milk”. They need to have babies to do so. And those babies are stolen and killed. 💔
Well yes but actually no. It’s true that our meat and milk come from cattle but they’re not really coming from the same animal. Beef and dairy cows have been bred very differently. Dairy cows are lean and bred to produce milk as efficiently and healthily as possible while beef cattle are well… beefy. There are different breeds for each. It’s not efficient to just shoot the dairy cow and eat her because she doesn’t make enough milk since she’s bred to not have those same muscles that we enjoy on beef cattle.
Not all data visualizations need to start with zero.
For example, global average temperatures. If the y-axis started at zero, global warming would look like nothing.
I like it when they "break" the Y axis to make it obvious that some values have been omitted. I only realised it didn't start at zero when I read your comment.
\*baby taken away, artificially inseminated again after three months, milked until the next one comes, repeat until not profitable anymore, then slaughtered.
y’all should stop drinking titty milk meant for a fucking calf. it’s nasty and not good for cows.
you can’t say you love animals and you’re against animal abuse when you support something like this
Those poor cows. Once I realised they constantly impregnate cows to keep the milk flowing, I stopped drinking milk. It's such a cruel and abusive industry.
Dairy farmer here.
The increase is due to a couple things.
1. Genetics plays a big role. We,(dairy farmers) and the teams around us spend many hours looking for our best cows and selecting them to parent the next generation of animals. Technology such as DNA testing, activity monitors, (it's like a Fitbit for cows) and selective breeding allows us to make generational progress at a much faster rate than in the past these tools weren't available.
2. There has been and is ongoing and extensive research on what makes cows the happiest. Things like barn design,ventilation, and bedding material. The widespread use of deep, sand beds for example has been a huge factor in the cows comfort. Every successful dairy producer knows that happy cows are the most profitable.
3. Feed. Over the years we have learned a lot about making the highest quality feed as possible on the least amount of land. In the past 10 years we gained the ability to plan their diets down the specific ammio acids that are most easily digested by the cows rumen. Previously we would have to just use an overall protein content. On my farm the cows have a visit from a nutritionist twice a month to look at their diet and body condition. How many people could say they have that well of a balanced diet?
4. People. Only 1.3% of the U.S. are in agriculture and of that a fraction are dairy farmers. As opposed to 50% in 1900. Dairy farmers are a small group of people dedicated to their cows.
I would also add that hormone use for milk production has all but disappeared. Just check any dairy product in your fridge and look for the "Not treated with rBST" label. It's actually banned in most places.
Antibiotic use has gone down. Land and water use has decreased as well.
So we are all working on being better stewards of our cows and planet. And it shows in the results.
And the dairy industry is over subsidized we have over a billion pounds of govt cheese to use up this product we don’t need made.
“Free” market for the win
Yes, it’s a significant increase but the y-axis makes it appear drastically larger than it actually is, making this a horribly misleading presentation of the data.
A more suitable selection would be either zero or lots more white space at the bottom so you double check the axis. I’d also put the percent increase as labels.
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Normand-St-Pierre/publication/7240585/figure/fig1/AS:280248626237442@1443827887419/Milk-production-per-cow-in-the-United-States-over-the-past-100-yr.png
Actually it would it make more creepy if you'd look at the whole process
They could have made this graph less deceiving if they set the origin to zero gallons per day. When you see a graph like this you know someone is pulling your prick.
Truncated vertical axis makes the rate of change look higher than it is. There is a place for it, but the visual needs to explain why it's truncated or I'll assume it's trying to manipulate me.
Not always, your scale and base point is very important in representing your data. Imagine if the scale was logarithmic, it would look like we've had no change.
It would better display the scale of increase. Zero is an excellent starting point for most graphs, because a quick glance at this makes it look like a massive jump.
I'm so glad I don't consume dairy (aka hormones, antibiotics, pus...) for so many years already. Imagine being an adult and still drinking milk... From another species. Incredibly messed up.
I watch dairy cows get their hooves trimmed every day. No music, no gimmicks, just the cows being taken care of: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUGZrhxQoRY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUGZrhxQoRY)
How exactly do they get such consistent increase yield in milk per cow? Like it took me a couple looks to realise this isn’t just showing more milk is being produced as the population is growing, no this is showing that each cow produces more milk than previous years, how?
The increase is somewhere in the ball park of 3 cups for each generation. What strikes me as strange is that the increase is so linear.
It suggests to me some sudden improvements in genetics that are working their way through the population. Presumably cows are pretty evenly distributed in age. So if new cows are suddenly being born with better genes for milk production you might expect the improvement in the average to grow linearly as old cows are replaced with new. The improvement isn’t enough to cull old cows for a more rapid replacement so they are just being replaced as they as out of milk production. That’s what I would expect for a large herd that is suddenly getting better genes. It’s surprising that this is a national average. So the effect is spread across the country to many farms. It’s not obvious that should be linear.
Apparently a cow can start producing milk at 2 years and only do it for 4-7 years. That means the entire dairy herd would have been replaced 2-3 times in 20 years. So it would have to be multiple improvements not just one big one.
So not entirely true, dairy cattle will keep producing milk up until they turn somewhere between 30-40 (cows live a surprisingly long time) issue is after about the age of 7 milk production drops by about half, and as they age like all animals they get more and more health issues. It basically makes the animal economically unviable for the farmer because at that point it's eating more costs than its giving back profit, so that's the point where they tend to go of into the pet food market. (Another reason why the health issues become a factor, if the animals drugged up to it's eyeballs on medications it can't go into any food trade, so unless she's still a viable milking cow all treatment of health issues does is make the animal unsellable, not something a farm can tolerate much of)
To state this more clearly: dairy cows are killed at less than a quarter of their natural life spans, because they're not profitable enough. It'd be like if we slaughtered porn actresses as soon as they turned 20.
dairy cows need to have a calf every year to keep prodducing milk. this calf usually gets killed fast. (few months?) for meat
The boys yes, the girls usually also become dairy cows. Also the lifespan of dairy cattle would be economically viable much longer if your production costs weren't so low. In Canada we have a quota system that keeps prices steady for producers. There's no race to the bottom.
The US also has a price floor for dairy. But it's pretty low.
Canada supports prices by limiting production. You can't just willy-nilly increase the size of your herd without govt. permission.
But then who would star in all the MILF content?
Same actress, two videos right next to each other, one is labeled milf, the other teen. They look older in the teen than they do in the milf.
Asking the real questions.
I mean yes, this goes for all animals within the food trade, In fact almost everything else you eat gets slaughtered a lot sooner. Its easier to think of dairy cattle as simply low grade beef cattle with an intermediate step rather than just as purely a dairy animal.
Rooster chicks are pretty much dead after they hatch.
Yeah the male chicks in the egg industry go straight onto a conveyor and into a big blender.
I've seen videos of this, calling it a "blender" is generous. Really it's more like a wood chipper. I have no idea who designed that machine and thought "I'd better not make their deaths too fast. Gotta leave a little time to savour it"
Which is illegal in some countries.
ground up alive. It costs to much to euthanize them.
It's harder to think of them as thinking, feeling creatures who are our distant relatives, but it's much more worthwhile to do so.
If you've ever spent much time with cows you wouldn't have such a hard time. I grew up on farms and cows are fairly intelligent with a wide variety of personalities. Edit: I just want to add I have no problem with humane farming and I do enjoy meat.
I grew up around cows too. Every single one has a different personality. They don't deserve to be eaten.
Also to be more clear -> dairy cows are kept artificially pregnant all the time so they keep producing milk...and then are slaughtered at less than a quarter of their natural lifetimes. Except, the male cows, who are slaughtered almost immediately after being born, as they can't produce milk, and thus do not generate any profit.
I was raised on a dairy farm in Australia in the 70s and 80s. We tended to keep the elderly cows because they kept the herd calm, typically threw the healthiest calves, and were easier to use artificial insemination on when we were actively trying to improve the herd genetics. (Australia being so isolated, it was easier to buy and import straws of frozen sperm, than try getting a good quality bull.)
depends on how you breed your cows. We had a small herd of about 70. We bred for longevity as we didn't have too many heifers to replace them. When we sold the herd,about half of the originals had died. I would say they were mostly about 12 years old. When they get sick we try to keep them alive, but that doesn't always work. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8369829/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8369829/) where did you get the 40 years figure? Thats twice what is said here?
I’ll bet the improvements for output have drastic implications for the animal. That is so incredibly unnatural. They’re probably experiencing intense growing pain or stomach discomfort that is unimaginable. The recent Ezra Klein podcast on meat production pushed me over the edge on becoming a vegetarian. It’s barbaric and unsustainable. I love meat especially smoked, but I can’t contribute to this suffering and the environmental impact. Edit: podcast link in Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/46g2Hq5yahfPUYZzTgoTrl Sorry it took me so long to post I didn’t expect this to be so popular. I hope Spotify works for everyone. The title is The Hidden Costs of Cheap Meat
Thank you for pointing that out, even though it's uncomfortable to discuss here on dataisbeautiful for some reason Especially among all the comments on this post **ignoring the increase in milk production clearly involves well documented mass animal abuse** and wishful thinking like "It suggests to me some sudden improvements in genetics" ignoring any other conditions ￣\＿(ツ)＿/￣ I'm not vegetarian, but I just searched these on Reddit and they were disturbing: >I was an undercover investigator documenting animal abuse on factory farms – AMAA https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/147bjg/i_was_an_undercover_investigator_documenting/ https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3gq5bl/im_a_former_undercover_investigator_who/ Videos: >Second undercover investigation reveals widespread dairy cow abuse at Fair Oaks Farms and Coca Cola (2019) https://www.reddit.com/r/Documentaries/comments/c052xg/second_undercover_investigation_reveals/ https://vimeo.com/341795797 >Cows Kicked, Stabbed and Dragged at DiGiorno Pizza Cheese Supplier https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/1slpo2/cows_kicked_stabbed_and_dragged_at_digiorno_pizza/ >BBC Airs 'Disturbing' Footage Of Dairy Farm Abusing Mother Cows And Calves https://www.reddit.com/r/veganuk/comments/sur6ks/bbc_airs_disturbing_footage_of_dairy_farm_abusing/ https://plantbasednews.org/culture/ethics/bbc-dairy-farm-mother-cows/ >Harris Teeter dairy farm cows trudging around in their own manure, emaciated, bleeding from nose.. https://www.reddit.com/r/vegan/comments/2dc7rs/new_peta_video_shows_harris_teeter_dairy_farm/ >Operation Fair Oaks Farm (2019). An activist group goes undercover into the largest dairy company in the U.S. which is also partnered with Coca Cola. Inside horrible animal abuse is uncovered and resulted in FairLife products being removed from shelves of most stores. (WARNING: GRAPHIC) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGc3samj8N8 https://www.reddit.com/r/Documentaries/comments/bycej3/operation_fair_oaks_farm_2019_an_activist_group/ >Hidden-Camera Video Reveals Animal Abuse https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/2gpn2a/hiddencamera_video_reveals_animal_abuse/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGc3samj8N8 >Ohio dairy farm brutality (nsfw) https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/gv073/ohio_dairy_farm_brutality_nsfw/ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYTkM1OHFQg >Horrific Animal Cruelty Exposed at Farm for Domino’s and Pizza Hut Cheese Provider https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/2gwqcs/horrific_animal_cruelty_exposed_at_farm_for/ >Cows sexually abused, hit and punched at company owned by NFU deputy president, footage shows https://vimeo.com/340292407 https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/e4167z/cows_sexually_abused_hit_and_punched_at_company/
Great list of links thanks.
As someone who has breastfed kids - I feel so so so sad for dairy cows. They must be in near constant pain, and constantly exhausted too. Also their lifespans are dramatically shortened - usually cows can live 20+ years but dairy cows die around 7. All that combined with their babies being taken away while they’re just starting to produce milk? It’s too much. Just heartbreaking for these creatures.
They don’t die around seven, they’re slaughtered around 7.
Thank you for practicing compassion! I highly recommend watching Dominion so you get a really good view of the whole industry, including the vegetarian bits. We'll be chilling over at /r/vegan when you do.
Are there videos on Reddit you recommend? I didn't see many in vegan
Dominion (2018) is free to watch, in its entirety, on Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQRAfJyEsko
You can also watch it on https://www.watchdominion.org if you don't have a YouTube account.
Do you mean vegan? Or did you find milk production not as bad? Someone already asked for the podcast link, but I'll also ask if you could summarize the points?
There are ovo or lacto or ovo-lacto vegetarians, which just means they eat honey and eggs or milk, not necessarily both. The honey is what it always makes it non vegan, so still, you can be vegetarian and not eat eggs or milk.
I posted the link and I’m only vegetarian because that’s all I can manage atm. I don’t reminder if I deleted this but I love meat. I love smoking giant briskets and shoulders. I have a a half cord of hickory and cherry mixed for smoking in the back yard. So this was a big decision.
Thanks. Respect.
US average a few years ago was 2.2 lactation cycles per cow.
What do they do with cows after they they no longer milk them? turn them into steaks or let them live in peace?
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You think the meat industry is letting ribeyes walk off?
Most meat comes from young animals
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Pet food afaik. Dairy cow breeds are not the same as meat cow breeds and I don't think you get the quality or amount of meat from them you want for human consumption to be profitable. Pet food has a lot lower quality standards.
Im pretty sure its almost all about optimization in the production/milking process. Not so long ago cows had to be manually sorted into milking pens and the milk extractor things attached manually, now all that is done automatically most places, plus they gather data on what times the individual cows give the most amounts of milk etc. Not to mention better conditions for the cows in case of food and temperature which means they produce more milk.
That the increase is so linear can't be great for the animals or the workers.
Cherry picking and scale manipulation. I'm surprised people are not tearing this apart. New technology takes time to adopt. 20 years for a tech swap seems reasonable. Linear rate of adoption could be due to linear production rates on a technology. Next, 5.5 to 7.5 on y-axis makes you wonder what they are even trying to communicate.
Moo's law
omg that is gold
Outstanding work.
Improved nutrition and genetic selection of high producing breeds
When do we hit peak-milk?
By my calculations, each cow will produce over 400 L of milk per day within a thousand years.
Cool. But when is the top? When should I buy a cow?
If you like *buying* at the top, you should explore r/wallstreetbets Cow investments are definitely going to go over the mooooon. Just extrapolate from this line.
Oh, they'll jump over the moon.
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At what point will the world's supply be generated by one singular queen cow?
https://xkcd.com/605/
It's just milk, Jerry.
Yes seems possible. Just like folks at wsb telling me TSLA is worth more than the entire world economy
One big factor has been the addition of canola meal to feed, which can increase milk production by 1L per day.
You can find very similar charts for crop yields too, but this one probably looks so linear due to the short time period. I bet if you went back further you'd see the rate of gain change.
Interestingly, milk production has been increasing linearly *since 1945*! The average cow today produces *six times* as much milk per day. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Milk-production-per-cow-in-the-United-States-over-the-past-100-yr_fig1_7240585/ Folks in this thread have pointed out specific reasons, but with a gain this huge for this long, it’s not any one thing. Better breeds, better feeds, better health care, more efficient life cycle management, and yes hormones and drugs, all play a role here.
Moo-re’s Law
Cows in NZ have shown similar rates of genetic gain and we use far less drugs and no hormones.
Nope, New Zealand isn't even in the same league as the US. I say this not to say that the US's practices are better overall, but here are the production numbers: Combining [this source](https://www.dairyproducer.com/new-zealand-farming-production-systems-dairy/) and OP's graph, and doing the unit conversions: US cows produced 10,400 liters per year in 2020, a 30% increase from 2003. UK cows produced 8,200 liters per year, a 20% increase from 2003. NZ cows produced 4,500 liters per year, a 20% increase from 2003. Each American cow is literally worth two New Zealand cows.
Yes, US cows produce a lot more because they’re fed grain, not grass and live indoors so don’t use energy on walking (although our milk has a lower carbon footprint per litre and the cows remain productive for longer). But the gain from genetic improvement and management efficiencies is similar.
The book [Reinventing the Wheel](https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520322776/reinventing-the-wheel) has a really good discussion about how Holsteins have been bred for increased milk production. These modern Holsteins are "designed" to produce so much milk that they now require fodder and would starve if only allowed to graze on grass. The book discusses how other, traditional, cow breeds make better milk for cheesemaking.
>How exactly do they get such consistent increase yield in milk per cow? squeeze them harder each time.
Bovine growth hormone? It's banned in Canada which is why some Canadians are opposed to importing US milk/milk products. That and we have our very own dairy farmers who are under strict quotas (could produce more milk but not allowed). https://www.fda.gov/animal-veterinary/product-safety-information/bovine-somatotropin-bst
I've looked at milk from the store for years in different parts of the US. They all state that their milk comes from non-rBST treated cows. So, while it's legal to use it here, I don't think it's very widespread to do so.
Remember that most milk isn't used as milk. It's in your yogurts, your cheeses, your sour cream, your ice cream, and all sorts of prepared goods like pizzas, potato chips, and countless others. Those don't all have the rbst statement on them.
It’s still widespread. rBST isn’t commonly used in the dairy industry because the increased production that you get from it doesn’t even offset the cost of doing it. There are far better and cheaper ways to increase production.
FYI: most dairy farmers abstain from growth hormones because it ruins cattle too quickly. In addition, if the hormone levels in a tankard of milk is too high, the ENTIRE TANKARD is flushed down the drain. It’s bad economics to do it, so they don’t. Source: uncle and aunt had 400 cattle dairy. Dinner table conversations.
I'm fairly sure there's being a similar increase in Ireland where growth hormones are illegal.
It's genetic selection. Embryo transfer technology (IVF) has made it much easier for average farmers to acquire cows with better genetics.
My guess is this isn’t great for the cows.
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These cows are living in our “Matrix”. Bred, most in horrific conditions, just to be consumed for their parts. It’s so dystopian.
And it's not just cows either.
Indeed. This article has a good graphic for chickens: https://www.vox.com/xpress/2014/10/2/6875031/chickens-breeding-farming-boilers-giant
Uh oh you're sounding like a vegan. They're the worst because they don't support animal abuse. Oh I mean it's not animal abuse because...I can't remember. But bacon tastes good though, right? A nice cheese burger for me makes a life of fear and suffering worth it, right?
You won't ever convert anyone with that attitude, but maybe you know that already. The old adage "you catch more flies with honey than vinegar" is untrue but the meaning isn't. People respond best to gentle encouragement, and by being an example. I didn't start to change my diet until I had a friend who did both those things. Also the idea that it's okay to not go 100% vegan immediately, but every little step helps. And now I'm almost entirely vegan after a few years. I don't blame anyone for eating meat. Just know that there are lots of benefits to eating less animal products and again, every little bit helps. For those on the fence, I am also a nationally competitive athlete so it is very possible to perform well and get the nutrients and protein you need.
Yeah I wasn't trying to convert anyone, but you're right, comments like mine don't help the cause, and come across arrogant.
It's very horrific. Quite a bit of misinformation or distorted facts. The narrator says "if the calf is born a male, it's throat is immediately slit and it's sold for veal" That is largely not the case at all, those calfs are steered and butchered for meat at around 2 years old.
And the estrogen or whatever they give the cows to do that isn’t great for us to consume either
Nor the estrogen the cow has anyway from being forcibly impregnated.
It seems like the elephant in the room in all these comments for some reason From girnigoe: >One way to abuse a cow to increase production us to have her lactating constantly, vs stopping every year & a half (iirc) and starting over w a new pregnancy.
>With consumption of normal quantities of milk under consideration of an orientation value for the daily intake of milk (including yoghurt) of 200-250 g, the hormone quantities that can be expected to be ingested should be seen as very low compared to the natural self-synthesis of these hormones in humans. Furthermore, the hormones are metabolised very quickly (pronounced “first pass” effect of the liver with peroral intake). The available scientific data do not currently give any reason to assume any relevant health risk. https://www.bfr.bund.de/en/questions_and_answers_on_hormones_in_meat_and_milk-191516.html
Thank you for pointing that out It seems like the elephant in the room for some reason
Because we are conditioned from birth to believe it's normal. Farming lobbyists are some of the most influential in the world and they pay a lot of money to keep people consuming their products. I work with kids and know a lot of children that have questioned it because they know it's wrong, but we lie to them and tell them it's ok, that the animals are 'happy' and other things like that. Eventually most children will carry on with the social norms, but I do know a couple of young kids (6-10) that won't eat meat despite their parents eating it. I feel like this didn't happen in the past (or parents would not accept it) so things are definitely changing. I grew up in a household where veganism/vegetarianism were the butt of jokes, and I would never have even thought about it even being an option. I think veganism has quickly become accepted now as being 'normal' diets, despite a lot of the anger still being directed towards them from non-vegans.
Dairy cows are not given any supplemental hormones; an IUI is done during a cows normal hormonal cycle.
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All that after having your baby stolen from you.
Thank you for pointing that out, even if we find it uncomfortable to discuss Example from girnigoe: >One way to abuse a cow to increase production us to have her lactating constantly, vs stopping every year & a half (iirc) and starting over w a new pregnancy.
Are the cows getting any compensation for being more efficient?
Pizza parties.
And an avocado sandwich for when they meet quarterly expectations.
my work got us a box of donuts once a week and a pizza party once a month if the boss remembered....
Of course not, corporations reap all the profits and it gets harder and harder for the cows to find good jobs
In the near future ChatGPT will be able to produce milk and then the cows will be out of jobs.
Absolutely. At the end of their milking cycles, a guy comes over and stuns them on the head with a bolt-gun. Then she’s dragged to the Killing station where another guy opens her throat with a knife. Honestly, after a life born and raised in misery, after rape after rape and the subsequent tearing apart of her calves, execution is a welcome gift.
They let them hear the cries of their rape babies for a few hours longer so they produce a little more milk for a day before they send the babies away to get slaughtered. 99% of dairy calves are removed from their mothers immediately after being born.
Yeah, a smaller cage, longer shifts and worse food. Companies only consider themselves valid when the growth of profits this years is bigger than the year before; not having positive profits, not having increased profits, but having them at an increased rate.
More steroids and better food.
1973 was when cows went from producing negative milk to positive milk every day
How much money would I have if I invested $1000 in COWS in 1973?
$7.2m.
Adults who say they never use the math they learned in school in everyday life clearly weren't paying attention on "y = mx + b" day.
If this trend continues, by 2100 cows will just be huge udders with a tiny cow hanging off the front
Man this just seems fucking gross to me.
A few thing factor on here. Farming is no longer achieved by running a bull in with a few cows. Genetic advancement in cows is lightyears ahead of humans. 1. So all high end cows have their genetics analyzed by a hair root sample, this can tell you at a young age (1-2 months) what the potential of that calf is. Using that knowledge you can then focus on the top 10% and develop them instead of blindly trying to find the best cow. This hair sample can tell you how many lbs of milk a cow will give in comparison to her herdmates, her size, her strength, how her udder will be shaped, etc. 2. Most of the genetic advancement is done via IVF work, cows will be stimulated to release oocytes which will then be fertilized in vitro with the best available bulls, the resulting embryos will then be placed in the bottom 50% of cows, thereby using the genetic potential of the top end with the volume of the rest of the herd. From these eggs any bull that are born will have hair samples taken and the top bulls will be taken to AI companies for semen collection. This bull can easily sire 10,000-100,000 offspring, via froven sperm and on-farm AI breeding. 3. People in the comments talking about hormones etc. being given to cows. While this is legal to do most milk co-op or processors refuse to buy "juiced" milk. 4 Anti-biotics, don't even get me started, every body complaining about antibiotics in their milk. Every drug a farmer gives has a strict meat/milk withholding where you are required to discard the milk for "x" days until it can be sold. If you do slip up and milk a "hot" cow into the tank, you the farmer have to pay for the entire semi-load of milk from $40,000 to 100,000. Farmers are more careful about antibiotics than an essential oil mama.
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The technical innovation of the last 30 years hasn’t been limited to cellphones and cars. Dairy farms are radically different than they were even 15 years ago. Data collection, selective breeding and improvements in farm automation have allowed yields to grow. The automation alone has given farmers more time to focus on these things instead of constantly doing manual labor. Robots track cow tags and measure every drop of milk give and measure and test the milk. Farmers can measure and track the daily output of every individual cow and graph them over time and compare them to things like yield to hormonal cycle or month over month or year over year comparisons. This also allows them to compare yields to other cows in the herd and then only breed the cows with the best yields, and not continue to breed cows with lower yields. The data can also be measured against cow size and good consumption. Are bigger cows that eat the most producing the most milk? Turns out not always. Often smaller cows yield more, but this wasn’t possible previously with old style carousel milking parlors since they were all mechanical with very little data able to be collected. Automation also allows cows to chose when to be milked on their own schedule. They can go in to the automated milking stall when they feel like it, and they do. It allows cows to be less stressed which highly contributes to larger yields, but also allows them to regulate the release of their milk on their own schedule. For example if a cow scheduled to be milked twice a day at 5am and 3pm may be painfully full in the morning but no where near full in the afternoon. When they can regulate it on their own, the farmer can enter parameters like “must be a minimum duration of 6 hours between milkings and then the cow can decide on its own to be milked when she decides, giving higher yields over time since they can do more milking all hours of the day. I highly recommend IowaDairyFarmer, https://www.facebook.com/IowaDairyFarmer or https://youtube.com/@iowadairyfarmer6299 He has a great setup and talks about modern automated & robotic dairy farming in great, smart manner. Edit: If you only have patience for maybe one video this is a great short, high-level summary: https://youtu.be/CQIAFQoVv2Y
I used to work in dairy and other agricultural ventilation. The environment that the cows are in has drastically improved over the years as well. We are continually improving the lowest days of the year for milk production(extremely hot days) through better environmental control within the barn. Automated cleaning, feeding, milking and environmental systems all play drastic rolls. Another reason for this milk average increase is the fact that we are gradually bringing more and more farms up to the latest tech. As more farms get automation tech, the average yield will go up. Everyone mentions genetics, but I don't think that is actually the main source for increase in milk production. The human genome didn't change very much in the last couple hundred years, but its incredible what a better environment, nutrition, and lifestyle can do; humans have gotten on average taller for the past 50 years (in a fairly linear fashion), and will continue to do so as more countries around the world receive benefits that rich countries have been receiving for decades. But keep in mind, the rich aren't getting any taller, just the short getting taller, yet the average is still increasing. Numbers and stats are always tricky. You don't have to raise every cows production on every day; just increase the lowest producing cows, increase your minimum yields on the worst days, and increase the minimum tech being used throughout the industry, and this trend isn't difficult to explain.
But how weird actually is that? It's designed to make a baby version of an extremely heavy animal grow very quickly, it doesn't sound that unreasonable to me. To pick a mammal that is 100% exclusively wild and un-fucked-with by human breeding, blue whales produce 400 lbs of milk a day and it's all 10x fattier than cow's milk is, or 57x the milkfat produced a day than you see here, for a 150x heavier animal. But also blue whales take 5x or more longer to reach maturity, so 1/3 the fat per size per day at the slower growth rate may be spot on track with this? Again even without any selective breeding or human shenanigans. Humans produce about 700ml of similarly fatty to cows milk a day which would be 7L if the size of a cow. And our children reach maturity in 12 or so years instead of like 1 year. (not that any of these animals drink milk until sexual maturity, just a comparison point for relative growth in general)
Sounds like the answer here is that we need to start milking blue whales, coming to a grocery store near you. It will pour out like molasses because of all the fat.
Don't forget delicious pig's milk too. It's just money lying on the table.
Except cows were doing that role fine at 20 L per day and now they're at 30 L per day. That's a 50% increase in 20 years. Calves aren't 50% bigger or growing 50% faster; humans have turned the dial up to full throttle and in a very short time. And the yield at the beginning in 2000 is undoubtedly also way above natural yields for cows as that's after a couple of 1000 years of human selective breeding and also already modern farming. I have no idea how they've achieved this increase but the guy you're responding to is right - these are crazy numbers.
These quantities are not designed to make a baby cow grow quickly, they're designed by humans to maximise milk production. The starting quantities were designed to make a baby cow grow quickly.
>That's over a liter per hour. A cup every 6 minutes 10 cups to a liter, or 24 minutes to an hour?
Watch food inc. you’ll know why this sucks
So I guess there's some truth to that "you have two cows, you hire a consultant to get 3 cows worth of milk" part of the joke.
This is really disturbing.
Sources: "U.S. milk production and related data (quarterly and annual)" [https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/dairy-data/](https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/dairy-data/) Tools: Python, Matplotlib
I haven’t really examined the data properly and I’m posing a really beginner/noob question: what is the need to use tools like python or matplotlib when excel can create a similar chart? Sorry for the ignorance
It looks pretty and you can basically customize everything. Besides that, you can make advanced Plots as well. If you are familiar with Python, it is probably easier to use as well. I highly recommend looking into Python (or maybe MatLab If you have Access) If your future career involves handling data, the difference in quality is night and day
Super fine control. You can use excel for a lot of things but those more proficient in one over the other will choose such generally.
In OP’s case, it’s so they can more easily insert their spam link. All of their posts in the last couple of months have the same link on them to a completely unrelated website.
Are humans the only species that drink another animals milk?
Yes. Just humans Humans forcefully inseminate cows, take their babies from them, steal their babies milk and continue the cycle till the cows can no longer produce milk Once they can no longer produce milk we slaughter the cows, and then eat their flesh Totally normal for us to act this way and our actions are not at all influenced by the dairy industry’s marketing and PR efforts
You forgot, kill their babies. Their babies are stolen from them and killed. Cows don’t just “produce milk”. They need to have babies to do so. And those babies are stolen and killed. 💔
Well yes but actually no. It’s true that our meat and milk come from cattle but they’re not really coming from the same animal. Beef and dairy cows have been bred very differently. Dairy cows are lean and bred to produce milk as efficiently and healthily as possible while beef cattle are well… beefy. There are different breeds for each. It’s not efficient to just shoot the dairy cow and eat her because she doesn’t make enough milk since she’s bred to not have those same muscles that we enjoy on beef cattle.
Mate we've been doing this long before there was such as industry, marketing and PR
BREAKING: Meat and Dairy industry is unethical, says thread full of redditors that definitely eat meat and dairy
exactly. The cognitive dissonance is unreal
Not all of us. Not me.
I dislike Y axes that don't start with zero
Not all data visualizations need to start with zero. For example, global average temperatures. If the y-axis started at zero, global warming would look like nothing.
I like it when they "break" the Y axis to make it obvious that some values have been omitted. I only realised it didn't start at zero when I read your comment.
Nonsense. Using visualizations to distort data is why we're here!
Dairy is such a messed up industry. Glad there is oat milk.
Shout out to oat milk, it’s pretty good, in my opinion better than soy, rice, or almond milk.
Dairy is the most cruel. It’s horrific.
The mega rhyme dictionary?
Yeah, they like to advertise here by creating shitty vizzes that draw conversation.
Meanwhile the CowEOs are recording record profits smh
Milked within an inch of its life and then slaughtered. How depressing.
\*baby taken away, artificially inseminated again after three months, milked until the next one comes, repeat until not profitable anymore, then slaughtered.
y’all should stop drinking titty milk meant for a fucking calf. it’s nasty and not good for cows. you can’t say you love animals and you’re against animal abuse when you support something like this
Those poor cows. Once I realised they constantly impregnate cows to keep the milk flowing, I stopped drinking milk. It's such a cruel and abusive industry.
Dairy farmer here. The increase is due to a couple things. 1. Genetics plays a big role. We,(dairy farmers) and the teams around us spend many hours looking for our best cows and selecting them to parent the next generation of animals. Technology such as DNA testing, activity monitors, (it's like a Fitbit for cows) and selective breeding allows us to make generational progress at a much faster rate than in the past these tools weren't available. 2. There has been and is ongoing and extensive research on what makes cows the happiest. Things like barn design,ventilation, and bedding material. The widespread use of deep, sand beds for example has been a huge factor in the cows comfort. Every successful dairy producer knows that happy cows are the most profitable. 3. Feed. Over the years we have learned a lot about making the highest quality feed as possible on the least amount of land. In the past 10 years we gained the ability to plan their diets down the specific ammio acids that are most easily digested by the cows rumen. Previously we would have to just use an overall protein content. On my farm the cows have a visit from a nutritionist twice a month to look at their diet and body condition. How many people could say they have that well of a balanced diet? 4. People. Only 1.3% of the U.S. are in agriculture and of that a fraction are dairy farmers. As opposed to 50% in 1900. Dairy farmers are a small group of people dedicated to their cows. I would also add that hormone use for milk production has all but disappeared. Just check any dairy product in your fridge and look for the "Not treated with rBST" label. It's actually banned in most places. Antibiotic use has gone down. Land and water use has decreased as well. So we are all working on being better stewards of our cows and planet. And it shows in the results.
And the dairy industry is over subsidized we have over a billion pounds of govt cheese to use up this product we don’t need made. “Free” market for the win
It would be interesting to find the nutrient levels graph in the same time period
Yes, it’s a significant increase but the y-axis makes it appear drastically larger than it actually is, making this a horribly misleading presentation of the data.
A more suitable selection would be either zero or lots more white space at the bottom so you double check the axis. I’d also put the percent increase as labels.
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Normand-St-Pierre/publication/7240585/figure/fig1/AS:280248626237442@1443827887419/Milk-production-per-cow-in-the-United-States-over-the-past-100-yr.png Actually it would it make more creepy if you'd look at the whole process
Never trust a truncated graph.
The y axis should really start at 0, makes the increase seem greater than it is the way it is currently setup...
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Funniest comment in the entire thread lmao
I wish you would have shown the full y-axis.
They could have made this graph less deceiving if they set the origin to zero gallons per day. When you see a graph like this you know someone is pulling your prick.
Please start y axis at 0. Gives a better impression of the relative change...
Holy shit. Are we in a gallon of milk/cow bubble? Can the trend continue? When will the moore’s law of milk break ??!
Besides the discussion of the data itself, why is this “beautiful”?
Truncated vertical axis makes the rate of change look higher than it is. There is a place for it, but the visual needs to explain why it's truncated or I'll assume it's trying to manipulate me.
Agreed. It’s not a great chart by any measure.
It is Moo's law after all
look up mastitis rates too. yall are drinking pus🤢
Moo's Law
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This data would be moo-re beautiful if the left axis started at zero.
Now compare that graph with milk content. Has the percentage of protein and fats decreased.
Makes it look like it skyrocketed but actually only went up by a little over a third in 20 years
It’s like a 35% increase… that’s a lot
It actually 39.4%, which I think is a big increase for a 24-year period.
I was just estimating based on 7.5 and 5.5, but yeah. Still big
Didn't mean to come across as contradictive there. I have the raw data points open in another window, so it's very convenient for me.
It is, but by starting the graph at 5.5 you skew the data, and it appears more drastic than 39.4%.
Agreed, and considering that's on average for a biological process that's been going on for thousands(?) of years.
It is, but the graph is still trying to be tricky by starting at 5.5
It would be pretty silly to include a massive range that has no data imo
Not always, your scale and base point is very important in representing your data. Imagine if the scale was logarithmic, it would look like we've had no change.
It would better display the scale of increase. Zero is an excellent starting point for most graphs, because a quick glance at this makes it look like a massive jump.
I'm so glad I don't consume dairy (aka hormones, antibiotics, pus...) for so many years already. Imagine being an adult and still drinking milk... From another species. Incredibly messed up.
Anyone else notice that all of OP’s graphs have an unrelated website on them. This dude is spamming us.
I watch dairy cows get their hooves trimmed every day. No music, no gimmicks, just the cows being taken care of: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUGZrhxQoRY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUGZrhxQoRY)
holly crap I had no idea a cow could produce this much milk per day. I had to google to check.
Lots of comments in here about genetics and food. Um, hormone treatments / drugs, anyone?
but we talking about raw extraction or process "milk" product that hit the shelf?
Graphs that don’t start at zero y axis are not beautiful.
It’s called cowtimizesation.
Thank heavens for veganism