Day 113 - 03 Apr 95 - Page 18
1 what you have said about dropped udders so far.
2 A. I think the main problems are that the cow is being
3 forced to this production, and everything you do, all the
4 other systems, metabolic disease, are all related to it.
5 You would have just the same if you tried to do this with a
6 woman and expected her to yield, what, two gallons of milk
7 a day. You would be feeding her enormous amounts of feed
8 and her metabolism would be deranged.
9
10 So, these productions diseases are all associated with it.
11 With the cow, you have the extra strain that she is both
12 pregnant and lactating simultaneously. With many other
13 animals, for instance, the sow, then they are sequential.
14 The animal has not to do both -- has not to maintain both
15 forms of production simultaneously.
16
17 MS. STEEL: You mentioned about the cows kicking their udders
18 and problems with lameness. If the cow kicks the udder, is
19 that something that is painful to the cow?
20 A. Yes, in fact, it actually causes injury.
21
22 MR. JUSTICE BELL: As I understood what you were saying, in
23 order to try to avoid kicking the udder, you were not so
24 much looking at it from pain in the udder, but the animal
25 walks in an unnatural way and that causes lameness which
26 causes pain?
27 A. Yes.
28
29 Q. Were you saying more than that to me?
30 A. Yes. I would say that in the cubicle system where we
31 are now and just finishing, there is a common complaint
32 called trampled udder, where the cow has this enormous
33 udder to raise and, in getting up, actually tramples on her
34 own teats. This may mean that the teat is torn off or
35 there is a substantial injury to the udder, and that is a
36 cause of great distress.
37
38 That can be overcome to some extent by improving the
39 housing so that the animal has more room and also, of
40 course, if you can have milking, say, three times a day
41 instead of twice so the udder does not get so engorged, but
42 that is not common.
43
44 MR. MORRIS: You said that cattle can live up to 25 years or you
45 have actually some cattle that are 25 years old and they
46 are still alive. How often would calving naturally take
47 place or should it take place?
48 A. Calving would not take place as regularly. I mean, it
49 is terribly difficult to look back to cows as to what they
50 are naturally. They would have a smaller rate of
51 reproduction but, of course, this is a completely
52 artificial thing because you use artificial insemination
53 anyway. They are not in a herd in the normal way with a
54 bull where the bulls will spend a lot of their time
55 competing for mates and competing for territory.
56
57 I think, to answer your question, the best comparison we
58 can make is one I have mentioned already comparing a
59 suckler cow who produces, say, three litres of milk for a
60 calf -- that is what the calf needs -- compared with a
