Inside a dairy factory farm

The Children of Dairy

The first thing I noticed upon entering was the smell: A putrid mix of mud, feed and days-old feces. Evidently the result of the automated “sanitisation” procedure that failed to adequately remove the muck, these washings merely aerosolised the stench. I looked upon the rows of pens, filled with rows of mother cows, and considered what it would be like for them, to be forced to live with this smell every day. Does the brain eventually learn to block the smell out? Would their lives really be made any better, even if it did?

The place was dreadfully cold. Not just in temperature, but in feel. Every surface was either steel or concrete, aside from the aforementioned filth that covered the floor of every pen. As I walked down the concrete aisles, many of those mothers didn’t even bother to look up at me. They looked abject and resigned to their fate. Others however, uncomfortably and fearfully shifted about, kicking up their feet in what little space their pens gave them to move. As their hooves came down on the hardened, shit covered ground, I winced in recognition of how firm the ground was for them - how they had to stand and sleep on this every day.

Eventually, I came upon a different pen. Unlike the others which contained mothers without their children, this one contained children without their mothers. Several little calves laid about, curled up in the cold. While evidently more fragile than their mothers, these little ones were given the same conditions to live in – the one paltry luxury of difference they had been afforded was a thin layer of hay covering the hardened ground of their pen. They were all very young. I could tell as they hadn’t been tagged yet, but it was easy to tell otherwise too: Their coats were soft and matted, their noses bright pink and wet, and unlike their mothers they looked up at me with curiosity instead of fear or submission. 

One little calf sat a small distance away from the rest. While none were old, this one appeared even younger than everyone else, and mustn’t have had even 48 hours on this earth. I approached them carefully, expecting them to recoil or move away, but they did not - they let me sit by their side as I gently stroked their fur. This little one trusted me with an innocence too precious and fragile for the life they had been born into. While I knew I had to move on to get the footage we needed, I couldn’t help but sit with them for a while. I figured this may be the last instance of physical affection they would ever receive. If there’s one thing I remember about them clearly, it was their eyes. They looked up at me and around their pen with the most adorable, deep and beautiful eyes. I knew it wasn’t me they were looking for though, it was their mother.

Despite how incredibly young they were, there was a very probable likelihood that I had met this calf at the midpoint of their life. A couple of days after their birth, a couple of days before their death. 

As I stood back up I was immediately reminded of the conditions around me. The smell, the cold, the filth. That little calf had, for a moment, reduced my thoughts to nothing more than wonder; at the pure beauty of so innocent a life. Standing back up only half a meter had given me the bends, taken straight from awe to hopeless disgust. No mother would ever wish this existence upon their children. Given the chance, every one of them would have given their lives to stop their children from being harmed, not that it would have made a difference anyway. How abhorrent that this beautiful little calf ever had to know such a life. 

As I write this in retrospect, I must acknowledge a fact about that little calf I met - they are dead now. Or perhaps at the very least, they have been permitted a few years of slavery, where she will be forcibly inseminated at too young an age, her children will be taken from her, and the cycle will repeat. I’m not sure which fate is worse.