Male animals in the dairy industry

The aim of raising young stock is to find the best way to raise a healthy kid/calf so that they can be productive. This ideal has been problematic for male dairy animals. We’ll look at cows first as that’s where the biggest changes are.

We have bread cows to be either meat or dairy animals. Historically male calves have been considered unsuitable for beef production. As a result, many of the 482,000 born in the UK each year were either killed at or soon after birth or exported to continental veal farms where they may be kept in group rearing systems that do not meet UK welfare standards.

Unfortunately, killing male dairy cows is something that still happens on both conventional and organic dairy farms in the UK. The practice is discouraged but not banned. The Soil Association and RSPCA said it is something they might ban in the future and I could not find a mention about it in the OF&G or The Welsh Organics Scheme. The reason for this is it is cheaper to kill and dispose of a male calf than it is to rear them. On average it costs £25- £40 to rear a calf to a weight where they can be sold on for someone else to continue to rear while the cost for ‘disposal and incineration’ can be as low as £9. No matter what your thoughts are on eating animals (that is a topic for another Milk and Musings) it is clear that until viable markets are created for male dairy animals it will continue to be a hidden cost of milk production.

What is the industry doing about this? Campaigns by organisations like Compassion in World Farming has prompted the ban on the live export of animals (which is proposed for this year) which means that there is a greater drive to find UK markets for dairy calves. Widespread public disapproval of the practice of killing males at birth has led to retailers like Morrisons requiring farmers to rear the calves to a certain weight by 15- 40 days old, after this they will be sold to the beef-rearing company Buitelaar. They will go to one of the 4 calf collection centers in the UK and then be moved on to an indoor calf rearing unit. Other supermarkets like Sainsburys and Waitrose are looking at establishing similar contracts. The dairy company Arla and the Red Tractor scheme are requiring their farmers to stop killing calves under eight weeks old. If you are a farmer on one of those schemes I’d be interested in knowing how they plan to audit this as I couldn’t find a clear answer online.

These big industrial solutions are not the only options. Some farms are opting for selling meat boxes direct to their customers, the better price allows for farmers to make higher welfare choices. In operations where raising an additional herd of males to an older age is not feasible farmers are introducing Rose veal to the market. Unlike the crate raised veil we all associate with poor animal welfare, Rose veal is where the calves are allowed to have normal diets and access to pasture for about 8 months.

As with calf/kid at foot, the goat dairy industry is lagging behind. The estimate is that 50,000 male kids are slaughtered each year. In the UK we have a taste for goat dairy but not goat meat. There are a host of independent businesses trying to tackle this problem, but retailers, policy and certification bodies aren’t giving this issue a look in. For a positive example of a business attempting to rear male goats from the dairy industry I recommend checking out Just Kidding. If you’d like an example of a project where they produce dairy and have created their own markets for males check out Street Goat.

Being Calf/Kid at foot means we keep all our young with their mums until they naturally wean at about 9 months. With the male goats we’ve had for the past 5 years we have sold them as companions and conservation grazers. We’ve only had two male calves so far and they still live with the herd so we don’t have enough of a system set up to say for definite what our approach to this is. Whatever we choose they will be raised with care and respect.

I feel there is a lot more to explore here and it’s a topic I’m tempted to revisit when the industry changes come into force this year, there’s better information and the reality can be separated from the spin.

We’ll keep you posted on our thought processes for male calves as they develop.