dairyisntscary:

goldenhearted-rose:

dairyisntscary:

goldenhearted-rose:

keeperofthehens:

dairyisntscary:

Cow hobbles
Been seeing a lot of stupid stuff lately about cow hobbles.
Hobbles in the dairy industry are meant to keep weak cows from falling and doing the splits after a difficult calving or on slippery surfaces. They aren’t a “punishment” (lmfao). They’re a therapeutic tool used until we know the animal isn’t going to fall and further injure themselves. That’s it.

We use hobbles in chickens and other fowl in order to fix spay legs too!
People don’t blink at it because it’s typically done on cute little chicks with obviously DIY hobbles. Often times it’s made with medical tape and cardboard so it looks medical unlike with cattle hobbles. Hobbles are such an important part of animal welfare to prevent broken and deformed body parts which prevents an animal from being put down.

Description from a store that sells them: “This is a hobble type device which prevents your cows from kicking during the milking process”
https://www.homesteadersupply.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=73_222&products_id=1681
so it’s not cute and helpful as it’s made out to be in this post. cows kick during the milking process because they are unhappy, a device meant to prevent cows from expressing discomfort is cruel

It can be used for that, usually on homestead farms which hand milk and don’t have parlors. On commercial dairies, however, they are not. No farm is going to have a hobble per cow, just a few to prevent injury like mentioned.

Cows may be startled when something touches their udder that they can’t see, but being milked is generally a positive experience for them. If they have mastitis it may be painful and they may kick but in that case it’s important they get milked out completely.

these cows wouldn’t have mastitis if we didn’t force them to get pregnant and give birth. I don’t think we’re going to agree on the moral aspects of dairy, just from glancing at your blog username, but you can’t make a post about the uses of equipment and be dishonest about its uses.

They’ll still get pregnant left to their own devices. As long as they get pregnant, which cows instinctually try to every time they’re in heat, they’ll get mastitis. Beef cows that raise their calves out on the range get mastitis. All mammals that lactate do. Dairy cows just get to have theirs milked out all the way while wild critters just have to stand around with a painful udder while their young go for the good teats only.

I’ve honestly, genuinely never been on a commercial dairy that uses them to keep from kicking. It’s not a common practice, although it technically would work. It’s too much of a hassle to put one on every cow. I’ve never seen them used as anything but something to help the cow stay standing. But yes, ok, someone could technically use them for keeping a cow from kicking. It’s just not what the industry at large usually uses them for.

I’m not trying to claim that they only get mastitis because of humans! we do, however, artificially impregnate these animals in order to get milk. without being pregnant and lactating they wouldn’t have mastitis. there would be fewer animals with mastitis, fewer animals experiencing pain, if we didn’t force them to be milked.