Dairy cow
As a dairy cow you would spend a third of your day chewing food you have already swallowed once – and much of the rest producing milk for someone else.
A walking fermentation tank
Cattle were domesticated from the aurochs, a wild ox, around 10,000 years ago in the Near East and separately in South Asia. A modern Holstein-Friesian, the black-and-white breed that dominates dairy farming in Poland and much of the world, weighs about 600–700 kg. Your stomach has four chambers. In the largest, the rumen, microbes ferment grass, hay and silage; you bring the food back up as cud and chew it again, often for seven or more hours a day.
You have nearly panoramic vision with a blind spot directly behind you, and you are a herd animal: cows form friendships, groom one another and become stressed when isolated.
A dairy routine
Like every mammal, a cow only gives milk after giving birth. You would first calve at around two years old, and then usually once a year. Calves on most dairy farms are separated from their mothers soon after birth and raised on milk replacers – a practice that is increasingly debated on animal welfare grounds. Milking happens two or three times a day, by machine in a milking parlour or, on a growing number of farms, by a robot you visit when you choose.
A high-yielding cow can produce over 30 litres of milk a day at peak and roughly 8,000–10,000 litres or more per year. Your day alternates between eating, ruminating, resting – lying down 10–14 hours – and milking.
How the story usually ends
A cow’s natural lifespan can reach about 20 years, but most dairy cows leave the herd after three to four lactations, often at around five or six years old, when milk yield falls or fertility, lameness or udder infections become problems. They are then usually sent to slaughter for beef. On pasture-based and organic farms you would spend more time grazing outside in summer, which most cows clearly seek out when given the choice.
