Life cycle of a dairy cow?

Answer 1

First they are concieved by a spermatozoa from a selected superior dairy sire and an ovum from their dam that they are inside of.

Once fertilization of the egg is achieved, the embryo starts to grow, turning into a fetus once characteristics start to form typical of every baby calf that grows in the womb of a cow.

Once 9 months or 285 days have passed, the dam goes into labour and pushes the baby calf out.

Since this is a little heifer calf we're talking about, the personel that are working as midwives at the calving area of the dairy farm see that the newborn calf is a heifer.

She is allowed to nurse her mother for a day or two to get the needed colostrum that every calf needs once birthed, then taken away to a separate calf housing facility where she is bottle fed milk replacer for up to 9 weeks.

She has been exposed to the different feeds she will eat in her lifetime as she is bottlefed.

Once she is 9 weeks of age she is weaned from the bottle and shipped to another area of the farm (or another farm all together) to be grown into a sexually-active heifer.

She reaches puberty at around 15 months of age and experiences the frustration of being in heat but having no bull to settle her, but only other heifers to ride her or to be ridden. This estrus period only lasts for 24 hours.

She has to go through two or three heat periods before she is bred to a bull either naturally or through artificial insemination.

She is kept in a heifer-maternaty ward type of thing for 9 months until she has her calf.

She gives birth to her calf the same way her mother did.

She starts to produce milk.

It takes her a few hours to figure out that this little thing that came out of her birth canal wants to and needs to suckle her udder for her colostrum.

Once her calf has suckled on her for a day or two, it is taken away from her just like she was when she was just born.

She is now producing milk just like all the other cows in the dairy barn, and is sent to the milking parlour twice a day (once every 12 hours) to be milked. She, as a heifer, needs a little training first before she realizes this is just normal everyday life and goes about it just like every other cow.

From then on she eats, sleeps, gets milked, and is bred once a year. She gets dried off two months before she calves so she can produce adequate colostrum for her newborn.

If she's lucky and a good hardy producer she will be able to live to a ripe old age of at least 20 years of age. If not, she will only be able to be a part of the milking herd until she is around 6 years of age.

Once she is no longer productive (due to mastitis, leg/foot injury, or just from being over-productive for too long), she is shipped to the slaughter plant where her life is ended by a sudden stunning shock of a cap-bolt gun to her head. There, now unknownst to her, she is hung and bled out, cleaned, skinned, her head, tail, and legs removed, and hung in the cold room to prime. Once her carcass has been primed, most of it is ground up to be made into hamburger or sausage for humans to eat.