A picture of a veal barnOriginally Posted by Mr. P
The alternative would be to terminate them after birth.
High Desert
A picture of a veal barn
The alternative would be to terminate them after birth.
Senior Member
My brother and I used to raise veal in the 1950's as kids to make money on the farm. Typically, a family farm didn't keep all the calves, even females because the life span of an adult milk producing cow is pretty long. As a result the female calves retained for replacement stock were from the farms highest milk producers so large number of male and female calves were used for feeding out as veals. The dairy had automated milking machines so after a day or two the calves were removed from the cows to allow the cow to be milked by machine or several calves would suckle from one cow... keep in mind these dairy cows were bred to produce milk and as a result they produce ten times the amount necessary for one calf. Anyway the milk from a newly freshened cow is not marketable, it is known as colostrum, very rich in minerals, vitamins and anti bodies to support calves start in life... it almost looks like it has blood mixed in the milk for perhaps eight or ten days...A picture of a veal barn
The alternative would be to terminate them after birth.
So the dairyman (dad) would save the colostrum milk for us and then we would buy powered milk to supplement it as the calves got larger. My father would drink colostrum from time to time to ward off colds sort of like an energy drink... I thought it sucked and couldn't stand it.
We always sold the veals at premium weight of about 200 pounds, larger caves would be considered not to be veal but beef because you can start feeding a calf grain and cheap hay after 200 pounds and they gain weight rapidly and cheaper than using the milk alone. Sometimes we would keep a couple of the bull calves to feed out so we would castrate all the male calves as soon as their nuts dropped because hormones start early in bulls and they loose weight running around after the heifers (we kept them in a single pen.) It only took six or eight weeks to have a market ready veal so perhaps times have changed but I'll bet you the money in my account a 200 pound veal taste better than a six month old milk fed calf.
the man
Like I said, I eat veal, I just try not to think about it too much. Just like I try not to think about the vein in a shrimp if I'm eating that.A picture of a veal barn
The alternative would be to terminate them after birth.
But, seeing a picture of one calf farm doesn't mean anything to me. I've seen pictures of one or two McDonald's factories, that doesn't mean that I don't think the ones that aren't open to the public are filthy and well beyond health standards.
Free the West Memphis 3.... http://www.wm3.org
Senior Member
This reminds me of a story about shopping with my boys when they were 7 & 8, we were at the meat counter and my oldest asked, daddy what is this? And, I answered a cow's tongue... and if you had seen the look on their face... then machine gun rate rapid fire questions... that must have hurt? How does the cow eat without a tongue? It must have bled a lot? What kind of people eat cows tongues? I was dumbfounded.
"The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers."
---Thomas Jefferson (or as Al Sharpton calls him: Grandpappy)
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