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Therefore cows that are housed for long periods of time are more likely to develop mastitis than those kept at pasture.Ĭow infertility is a major productivity problem for farmers with high-yielding dairy cows. A cow’s udder can become infected with mastitis-causing bacteria due to contamination of milking equipment or bedding. In a herd of 100 cows in the UK, there could be as many as 70 cases of mastitis every year on average. Mastitis, inflammation of the udder, is the painful result of bacterial infection that is prevalent among dairy cows. These conditions can be caused by poor quality floors, ineffective foot trimming, poor nutrition and prolonged standing on concrete floors. Cows may go lame due to various conditions associated with bacterial infection, such as hoof lesions, sole ulcers, laminitis and digital dermatitis. Lameness is painful and a significant welfare problem for dairy cows worldwide. High-yielding dairy cows will typically be slaughtered after three or four lactations because their milk production drops and/or they are chronically lame or infertile. Given a natural healthy life, cows can live for twenty years or more. Dairy cows often become emaciated due to high milk yields The average yield in the US is even higher, at over 30 litres per day. An average of 22 litres per day is typical in the UK, with some cows producing up to 60 litres in a day during peak lactation. Milk production per cow has more than doubled in the past 40 years.
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The Holstein-Friesian, the most common type of dairy cow in the UK, Europe and the USA, has been bred to produce very high yields of milk. Over the last fifty years, dairy farming has become more intensive to increase the amount of milk produced by each cow. In intensive dairy farms, all three of these are compromised by periods of confinement in indoor housing, health problems due to higher milk yields and distress caused by early separation from their calves. Good animal welfare depends on three components: Intensive dairy farming results in an increasing number of welfare problems for dairy cows. Milk production is also on the increase in South-East Asia, including countries not traditionally noted for their milk consumption, such as China, which now has over 12 million cows producing milk. This compares with 10 million in North America and over 6 million in Australia and New Zealand.
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The European Union is the largest milk producer and has about 23 million dairy cows. There are over 270 million cows producing milk across the world. They are usually artificially inseminated within three months of giving birth.ĭairy cows can often only produce very high milk yields for an average of 3 years, after which they are slaughtered and the meat is normally used for beef. Dairy cows are bred specifically to produce large quantities of milk.ĭairy cows are required to give birth to one calf annually in order to produce milk for 10 months of the year. Dairy farming has been part of agriculture for thousands of years.