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Comment by uppe | Hacker News Reader

Maybe don't impregnate them then. Cows don't magically produce milk, they are mammals and lactate because they had babies. They actually forcibly impregnate them and kill their babies if it's a male (veal) and keeps the loop going until the mother can't produce more babies and thus becomes unprofitable. That's funny to you? Sounds like torture and slavery to me.

edit: wow, what a surprise, downvoted to the bottom. I know it's deeply ingrained in our culture to participate in this and that makes it feel safe and normal. Scoffers and deniers, I dare you to go watch Cowspiracy or Dominion and then still stand by this practice.

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With the exception of industrial farming, everything that humans normally do to animals is much nicer than the way wild animals live and end their lives. So as long as you make sure to get your milk and meat from traditional farming, you're supporting practices that are much kinder to the animals then nature would be.

Animals in nature inevitably die violent or painful deaths, often being eaten alive by other animals while they slowly starve. They often live lives of subsistence, with periodic times where they are near starvation or freezing and barely survive. They are often in ruthless competition for food and mates with their own species. They will sometimes eat their own young when conditions are especially bad, or eat the young of others to improve their own chance at reproduction.

If we're talking in pre-industrial times, if I had to choose between the life of a Buffalo or a domestic cow, I would take my chances as the cow.

Now, industrial practices like factory farming are truly horrifying and on that side I agree that they should be stopped, despite the increase in cost that will represent to animal products.

I don't think it's a good ethical argument. We decide to birth these animals for our own well being, ergo we are responsible for their suffering. If we only rescued lost cows from the wilderness, giving them shelter and a good life until we decided to quickly end their life to get their meat you might have a point (and even then, I still think it would be a bit shaky IMO) but that's not how it's done.

If a cat is born in the wild and ends up dying of a curable disease then it sucks for it but that's life. If you have a cat as a pet and when it gets sick you decide to abandon it to fend for itself and die in the wild then you're a bad person. Same outcome, very different ethical implications.

>So as long as you make sure to get your milk and meat from traditional farming

That's another gotcha that I really dislike. Every time the problem of animal suffering comes up there's always this opposition between "those crazy vegoons" vs. "the pop and mom farm who love their animals and take good care of them".

If that were the case, I agree that the situation would be very different. It's not though, you can't just ignore the woes of industrial farming when that's the vast majority of the meat products that surround us. These animals are for the most part born into horrible living conditions. In that sense I suppose that killing them early when they stop producing enough might be one of the least worse things that happens to them.

It would be like responding to somebody lamenting the deforestation of the Amazonia by bringing up the story of a poor farmer tending to his two acres of land in order to sustain his family. That's a best missing the point, at worse a truly disingenuous argument.

> It's not though, you can't just ignore the woes of industrial farming when that's the vast majority of the meat products that surround us. These animals are for the most part born into horrible living conditions.

Reducing animal product consumption is important. But there is no reason to reduce it to 0, that is my main point. And note that you don't have to be extremely loving and caring with farm animals to be better than how nature treats them - it's not a high bar.

And purely from an argument point of view, the arguments against the extreme cruelty of industrial farming are far different from the arguments you presented, which would apply just as much to traditional farming as well (which, to be fair, is not always without its own horrors, especially where delicacies like foie Gras are concerned).

> If a cat is born in the wild and ends up dying of a curable disease then it sucks for it but that's life. If you have a cat as a pet and when it gets sick you decide to abandon it to fend for itself and die in the wild then you're a bad person. Same outcome, very different ethical implications.

To some extent that is true, but just as we don't judge the bear for killing salmon, I don't think it's right to judge a human for killing a cow to eat its flesh. The fact that we are farming it and not hunting it doesn't affect the morality of the situation in any way from my point of view. The cat example is immoral from a purely human and internal point of view: the human in question had entered into a caring relationship with a pet, so abandoning it in its hour of need is immoral.

> but just as we don't judge the bear for killing salmon, I don't think it's right to judge a human for killing a cow to eat its flesh

The difference is you, as a human, have a choice. You are capable of living a healthy, full life w/o eating the flesh or excretions of animals. The bear (or lion or tiger) has no such ability to choose.

The bear does as well - it is omnivorous and could survive entirely on berries. We could also decide to provide supplements for bears so that they find it easier to eat less salmon and deer, so I guess we are also morally responsible for every deer or salmon or bee that a bear kills (tigers and lions are a different matter, since they are indeed unable to survive on a non-meat diet).

However, the larger point is that the idea that it is immoral to kill to sustain yourself goes so far against the way nature is organized that I find it ridiculous. While it's true that morality often means going against natural tendencies, in this particular case I find it exceedingly opposed to the regular order.

So, I personally reject the very premise that it is in any way immoral to end the life of anything except members of your own species, as long as you don't do it out of cruelty or greed, and as long as you do not eradicate the entire species through your actions.

> ...the idea that it is immoral to kill to sustain yourself goes so far against the way nature is organized

This is an appeal to nature.

> ... as long as you don't do it out of... greed

How does "I like the taste of cows and milk" not meet your definition of greed?

> This is an appeal to nature.

A moral system that would consider the vast majority of natural life to be immoral is dubious to me. It's not simply an appeal to nature, it is a particular choice for the way I think a moral system should be evaluated.

> How does "I like the taste of cows and milk" not meet your definition of greed?

Greed always refers to excessive consumption. If you go on an all-beef-and-milk diet, and slaughter hundreds of animals a year just to feed yourself, you are probably being greedy. But eating well-raised beef, in quantities that do not encourage others to find the most efficient ways of raising as many cows as possible in as little space, doesn't fall under my idea of greed.

A single dairy cow, if well raised, can give enough milk for a family of 2 or 3. With two cows, one can have a constant supply of milk by essentially having each cow produce a calve each year. The calves can be raised for a while and then sold on to a bigger herd or slaughtered for food. When the animal is slaughtered, as much of its entire body should be used, not just a few of its muscles. The cows would be kept well fed, warm over the winter, clean and free of diseases. In the warm months, every day they would be taken out to pasture and returned home.

Of course, this means that cow meat would be something that people should expect to eat a few times a year, not daily or weekly. The same would apply to most or all other farm animals. Overall, adding some extra efficiency from larger herds as well, meat could probably be consumed something like once a month, while still raising animals in good conditions. Milk and eggs can be consumed almost daily without forcing others to keep animals in inhumane conditions.

This argument makes zero sense. If we didn't breed cows, they wouldn't exist. There are no wild cows.

Either you believe the only moral thing would be to treat cows like cats or dogs, you believe that eradicating the species would be preferable to the current situation, or you must accept that we should compare the condition of cows with similar wild animals in order to decide whether our practices are uniquely cruel. Cows are not so unique among mammals that comparisons with other wild animals to get a feel for what their life could be like if we somehow let the free make no sense.

And if we compare industrial practices, then I would agree with the GP, the life of a cow in a factory farm is unusually cruel if we compare it to the potential life of a hypothetical 'wild cow'. But if we look at the life of a cow in a traditional farm, I think the opposite becomes true.

> you believe that eradicating the species would be preferable to the current situation

Yup! Cows only exist so we may exploit them. Giving animals a "good life" while we exploit (or before we murder) them is not a preferential alternative to simple non-existence in the first place.

Perpetuating and expanding the species is such a basic goal of any living thing that it holds true for the entirety of the Philogenetic tree, with no exceptions, from prokaryotes to plants and vertebrates and humans. In the natural order, existence and proliferation are not just the most important value, but the only value for which an organism exists. Reproduction is often painful and scary, and many living things stop living as soon as they are certain they have successfuly reproduced.

So, by the only universal standard of value among living beings, cows are one of the most successful vertebrates in history - they have managed to breed to almost unprecedented numbers for vertebrates in general, nevermind for mammals.

Even if the only possible way of life for them was the physical suffering of cows in industrial farms, it would not outweighg this basic drive. To suggest that the imagined human concept of 'being exploited' would outweigh the value of existing and breeding is one of the most bizarre takes I've ever heard.

Even humans, who do feel the psychological damages of exploitation and being owned, in the worse conditions of slavery, have never chosen mass extinction over the simple drive of continued life.

Edit: I'd also add that if you value the abstract evil of 'being exploited' as worse than any concrete qualities of the life lead under exploitation, to the extent that non-existence is preferable to this, then you have no choice but to apply this same logic to all agricultural grown plants, especially those that cant even reproduce without our care like bananas or wheat, and to the many kinds of Bacteria we use to produce drugs. They are just as much the victims of exploitation as cows living on nice farms are.

Exploit: make full use of and derive benefit from a resource.

We breed cows so we can exploit them. There is no air quotes around exploit, that's exactly what cows are to us. Resources for our enrichment.

Of course reproduction is the quintessential drive of all life. But cows are not reproducing in the wild so that point isn't even relevant. They're artificially inseminated to keep them lactating (in the case of dairy cows).

As to your edit, we're not talking about bacteria or plants which lack the physical ability for suffering as we know it. We're talking about bovines, huge mammals w/ a brain and central nervous system.

> We breed cows so we can exploit them. There is no air quotes around exploit, that's exactly what cows are to us. Resources for our enrichment.

Agreed, but it does not follow that the cows 'feel exploited'.

> Of course reproduction is the quintessential drive of all life. But cows are not reproducing in the wild so that point isn't even relevant. They're artificially inseminated to keep them lactating (in the case of dairy cows).

The fact that they reproduce at all in any conditions is the only value that truly matters in nature. Cows are dependent on humans for reproduction, just as most wild plants are dependant on pollinators.

> As to your edit, we're not talking about bacteria or plants which lack the physical ability for suffering as we know it. We're talking about bovines, huge mammals w/ a brain and central nervous system.

But you claimed the living conditions are irrelevant, as long as the animal is used as a resource it is immoral to keep it alive. That would mean you don't care what the animal actually feels, so the fact that it feels things at all is irrelevant. Hence, the same argument should apply to living things that don't feel anything either, such as bacteria or plants (or, the argument should not be applied at all).

> Maybe don't impregnate them then

> That's funny to you?

It happens every year to wild cows too that are impregnated by males because that's what bovines do.

they don't plan on parenting

Also calf mortality is correlated with the body weight of the mother when they are born, domesticates cows have almost zero calf mortality rate, contrary to what happens to wild cows.

They will also die due to predators, weaknesses, attacked by a bull or older males or for other natural causes, that they don't encounter when living in a farm

It's perfectly natural for a cow to see her calves die, it's part of their biological destiny.

> Sounds like torture and slavery to me.

To me as well, and yet you and I are in a small minority.

Also: farming involves actions up to a year in advance of consequences, so change is slow and rare.

You can't enslave an animal that lacks free will and intellect by nature. Whether such farming practices are cruel is dependent on the particular practices. Obviously, one ought not be cruel to animals whether they lack free will and intellect or not. However, much of the woolly and sentimental "animal rights" polemic is grounded in gross misapprehension and anthropomorphization of animals other than us. It is terribly unsophisticated.

> You can't enslave an animal that lacks free will and intellect by nature.

I challenge you to define “free will” in a way which is simultaneously testable, and also something humans have and other animals lack. I have yet to hear a single definition which is all three at the same time, despite my A-level in philosophy — every testable definition I’ve encountered has either been something animals and humans both have, or both lack; and more commonly the attempted definition turns out to be internally incoherent.

(Intellect is also notoriously difficult to define, but at least in this case humans and cows are obviously dissimilar).

> I challenge you to define “free will” in a way which is simultaneously testable, and also something humans have and other animals lack

every animal, except humans, lack the neurological structures to process the concept of "free will" which is entirely a human construct.

If they had free will, they would fight for it or at least some of them would.

One could argue that we still don't know the human brain, so how can we exclude that animals haven't what it takes to understand free will?

But it's the same thing of saying that God exists because we can't disprove it.

And if we assume that cows understand it, why exclude other animals, like fish, or some plant or fungi?

We assume they don't have it because they never showed to care about it.

Cattle can be incredibly aggressive too.

it is proven that regardless of age and environmental conditions, some individuals remain more aggressive than others. Aggression in cattle can arise from both genetic and environmental factors.

Aggression between cows is worse than that between bulls. Bulls with horns will bunt (push or strike with the horns) in which can cause more damage overall

interesting read from Dennet

https://lafavephilosophy.x10host.com/dennett_anim_csness.htm...

How is it possible to know that animals have or do not have "the required neurological structures to process the concept of free will", without a definition of free will?

because if you scan the brain of a cow with an MRI and start talking about free will to it, nothing lights up.

they respond to food, loud noises, other physical stimuli, but not to philosophy.

Also, if you open the gates of a farm, cows don't run.

Quoting Dennet

Let us return to our vultures. Consider the hypothesis that for all I could ever know, rotting chicken carcass smells to a turkey vulture exactly the way roast turkey smells to me. Can science shed any light, pro or con, on this hypothesis? Yes, it can almost effortlessly refute it: since how roast turkey tastes to me is composed (and exhausted) by the huge set of reactive dispositions, memory effects, and so on, and so forth, that are detectable in principle in my brain and behavior, and since many of these are utterly beyond the machinery of any vulture's brain, it is flat impossible that anything could smell to a vulture the way roast turkey smells to me.

but let's suppose cows have some sort of free will concept.

if they can't explain it to us, how will we ever understand it? (because it's impossible they have the same free will concept we have)

and if we project our roast turkey smell (free will) concept to cows, how can we be sure that it's what they need or want, if they can't even communicate a yes/no to us?

All our philosophical concepts are based on millennia of history that's been transmitted to future generations that built new concepts on the old ones

They are not "natural"

if you take a child to a remote location and abandon him/her there they wouldn't even know about death or illness, let alone laws or rules or free will. Because nobody thaught them.

We are basically still stuck in a Solaris situation.

but the question still stands, so I propose another one: how do we know that dogs want to live in our homes?

modern neuroscience can explain a lot of things that philosophy still consider questions.

> If they had free will, they would fight for it or at least some of them would.

What would that look like? Running away? Because that behaviour pops up in news often enough.

Conversely, there’s learned helplessness — discovered by animal research and yet also demonstrated in humans. Do humans demonstrating this lack free will?

> One could argue that we still don't know the human brain, so how can we exclude that animals haven't what it takes to understand free will?

I’m not asking if animals understand free will, but if they have it — humans don’t seem to understand it even though we can talk about it (judging by the difficulty of nailing down a definition) so I would actually be very surprised if it turned out any non-human animal understood it.

I don’t understand the point you’re trying to make about bovine aggression?

> What would that look like? Running away? Because that behaviour pops up in news often enough.

Exactly.

As I've said if they can't explain to us what they are doing and why, it is completely useless to try to frame or define it.

it would simply be what we think it is, but not the real thing

> Conversely, there’s learned helplessness — discovered by animal research and yet also demonstrated in humans. Do humans demonstrating this lack free will?

difference being humans can explain why they ran and we can rationalize post facto and learn from each other

children don't run if they see a gun

do they lack free will, chose to not move, or lack the ability (and the knowledge) to process that information?

free will probably does not even exists as consciousness, they are poor terms to describe what we already don't have a solid explanation for

but since we are able to process context, something cows are not capable of, I understood that OP meant the most common meaning of free will: acting in a non predetermined way (however bad or inexact as a definition it is)

cows don't

because we have selected them in centuries and only kept the most docile, so it is expected that they won't run or act in expectedly, we literally engineered them to be what they are, we can rake it for granted, the same way we can be sure that a car with an empty tank won't start

asking for a satisfying definition of free will in this context completely misses the point

yes they could still have free will in the sense that they chose to walk or eat orm ove their tail, of course

but in that sense a plant chose to grow towards the light or not?

I actually believe free will does not exists and everything is pre-determined.

We are born and have to die, don't get to chose our parents, how we look, where we are born, our gender etc. etc.

We can however micromanage the time in between being born and dying, as every other living creature in the World, but we have far more sophisticated micro managing tools

we also have vastly superior tools in general, we are the only animal on the planet that can control fire and have an opposable thumb thus we are the only animal on the planet that could evolve to the level we have reached

which also gave us the ability to entertain ourselves with intellectual riddles such as free will

> I'm not asking if animals understand free will, but if they have it

as I've said I don't believe free will exists, but a cow lack the machinery to process the concept of free will, which also involves guilt, morality, responsibility and deliberation AKA being able to determine the consequences of different courses of actions.

If cows have it, it's not like ours, it must be something far simpler.

the point about aggression is that cows still have their own personalities, but that doesn't qualify as freedom of choice

many people see cows behaving differently and assume they chose to act that way, but it's not like that.

it's simply the result of some random combination of DNA and environment

> As I've said if they can't explain to us what they are doing and why, it is completely useless to try to frame or define it.

You’ve not said why it’s useless though. Or what “free will” is. I can make a chat bot which will insist that it has free will, but I doubt it would be saying anything correct about its mind; and I have every expectation that someone whose language I do not speak would pass and fail exactly the same tests as me if there was a test that didn’t depend on language.

> difference being humans can explain why they ran and we can rationalize post facto and learn from each other

Humans demonstrably make up any old rubbish to justify their actions after the fact — that much is testable. And animals copy each other, so it’s not like non-humans in general can’t learn from each other, though I don’t know about bovines in particular.

> but since we are able to process context, something cows are not capable of,

You recon? Given how much context current vision AI can get, and that current vision AI is about the level of an insect brain, I absolutely expect cows to get context.

> I understood that OP meant the most common meaning of free will: acting in a non predetermined way (however bad or inexact as a definition it is)

> cows don't

Quick internet search of teaching cows tricks says they can act in a non-predetermined way… unless you want to dismiss all behaviour as skinnier boxes and operant conditioning, which would leave humans open to the same criticism.

They are relatively docile, but there were loads in and around Cambridge when I lived there, and no, they were definitely not like cars with no petrol.

> asking for a satisfying definition of free will in this context completely misses the point

I take exception to this. I started by saying “I agree this looks like slavery and torture”, the reply said the concepts didn’t apply because they didn’t have free will. I’m rejecting that, and you’re definitely still describing a situation that sounds like multigenerational slavery to me.

> as I've said I don't believe free will exists

You don’t? That wasn’t clear, but sure — as I said, every testable definition I’ve encountered has either been something animals and humans both have, or both lack.

If you weren’t even trying to change my mind, congratulations on merely confusing me about your intention. :)

> free will, which also involves guilt, morality, responsibility and deliberation AKA being able to determine the consequences of different courses of actions.

Why would it involve those things, and why do you believe cows can’t forecast the consequences of actions? If they couldn’t predict actions having consequences, they’d get stuck as often as hard-coded robots. Given the live in muddy fields, this would make them self-destructively useless as livestock.

(And also, current insect-complexity neural nets can do that, so it would be really surprising if a mammal can’t).

> it's simply the result of some random combination of DNA and environment

Yeah, and that’s true for us, too.

But, as you say, you don’t believe in free will, so that’s fine. :)

> Or what “free will” is.

I did

poor terms to describe what we already don't have a solid explanation for

> whose language I do not speak would pass and fail exactly the same tests as me if there was a test that didn’t depend on language.

it doesn't matter, cows lack the tools to explain themselves, we don't

namely, in this case, a language (any language!)

> Quick internet search of teaching cows tricks says they can act in a non-predetermined way

can you prove it? :)

And how do you know it won't end up like the Libet experiment?

> And animals copy each other, so it’s not like non-humans in general can’t learn from each other, though I don’t know about bovines in particular

They don't have history books though, and schools and teachers

DNA does not help much if the knowledge dies with its creator

> If you weren’t even trying to change my mind, congratulations

I don't believe in free will the philosophical tool

I think we have machinery that we still do not understand that make us what we are and most of what we are is due superior processing power

It doesn't matter to me ifnI chose to move my arm, when I am driving and see an obstacle I don't have to think to use the brakes and I am thankful that training built up new neuro-paths to react that way

> Why would it involve those things, and why do you believe cows can’t forecast the consequences of actions?

because to forecast the consequences of every action you need to be able to judge the consequences

if you don't have a framework to judge the consequences, you can't forecast them or at best you can simply forecast an action-reaction scenario: this happens and then this happens, but if you cannot give them a score, all scenarios are equal

> namely, in this case, a language (any language!)

I assert verbal self-narrative is not necessary for free will. You assert otherwise? Why?

> can you prove it? :)

In principle, sure: Watch them demonstrate a learned skill. I have no reason to believe the videos are faked, but if they are, in principle I could observe IRL.

> And how do you know it won't end up like the Libet experiment?

The experiment which showed a human brain reaches a decision before conscious awareness of that decision? It’s evidence that humans don’t have free will, FSVO “free will”, so I’m expecting the same result, including the meta-result of people arguing about the result.

> They don't have history books though, and schools and teachers

> DNA does not help much if the knowledge dies with its creator

True for most of humanity, except for “teachers”, but cows can mentor each other too. So… we agree humans and non human animals pass and fail the same tests?

> because to forecast the consequences of every action you need to be able to judge the consequences

You can do that with any positive-negative reinforcement mechanism, doesn’t need morality etc.

> I assert verbal self-narrative is not necessary for free will. You assert otherwise? Why?

Why don't you?

If higher cognitive functions are not necessary, than a virus can have free will.

bovines don't lack self narrative, they lack the ability to create complex communication systems.

> Watch them demonstrate a learned skill

and how do you know it's not merely imitation?

btw, insects can learn too

> The experiment which showed a human brain reaches a decision before conscious awareness of that decision?

the experiment that showed a lag between cerebral activity and actual action that was labeled as "brain takes a decision before we do" even though Libet never said it, but has been disproved 40 years later (the effect exists, but it doesn't show lack of free will at all)

> we agree humans and non human animals pass and fail the same tests?

not until their mentoring will include notions of ancient past civilazations that are long dead but transmitted their knowledge

also, not until they will be able to reconstruct their past history and of the entire universe by observing and studying remains, without any prior knowledge of what they are

see, if you look from afar a soapbox car and a real car look very similar

but if you look them closer, they are nothing alike

> You can do that with any positive-negative reinforcement mechanism, doesn’t need morality etc.

where's the freedom if the reactions have been engineered through training?

None of this is refuting to my core claim, that the concept of free will is always either (1) too poorly defined to be arguable, or (2) that humans are indistinguishable from other animals.

You are alternating between both of these problems, sometimes with references to higher cognitive function (itself poorly defined) other times by suggesting things where human and non human animals are passing and failing the same tests.

In particular:

> Why don't you?

Language seems neither necessary nor sufficient. If it was sufficient, computers would have it. If it was necessary, it would be denied to anyone who grew up alone in the wild, which happens occasionally.

For extra weirdness, given that language is notoriously difficult to pick up as an adult (both for such Wildermensch and for everyone else) if language learning structures was the test of free will, adults would necessarily have less free will than children.

> If higher cognitive functions are not necessary, than a virus can have free will.

There are many layers of cognition between these two things. Cognition is not Boolean.

> and how do you know it's not merely imitation? btw, insects can learn too

This demonstrates my point. All learned behaviour does. In fact, I would go further and say that the ability to copy another entity implies a mind has a model of itself as a separate entity within the world, and of the same category of entity as whatever it is copying. Certainly a limited model, and yet, again, this is no different from humans as we do not have perfect models of each other or ourselves.

> (the effect exists, but it doesn't show lack of free will at all)

Because the concept is too poorly defined to be testable, perchance? Because people keep trying to go “Well actually humans are special so that’s not what I meant” after the tests are done?

> also, not until they will be able to reconstruct their past history and of the entire universe by observing and studying remains, without any prior knowledge of what they are

Any single human would fail this test. Humanity collectively only just about passes, except for all the gaps in our history and the fact QM and GR are inconsistent with each other.

> where's the freedom if the reactions have been engineered through training?

Identical to humans. We have demonstrable biases towards the society — nation, religion, sports teams, languages, political parties, laws, cultural norms — that we grow up with. We have school precisely because we don’t spontaneously invent everything from scratch, and our instincts can be bad and need to be trained out. We are incapable of overriding other things, e.g. sexuality, and we don’t really even understand when and how sexuality becomes concrete.

I don't believe that the idea of "free will" can exist in a form that excludes non human mammals but still includes humans. As soon as you have a classical mammal brain there cannot be a magic difference like that.

If we were to entertain such an idea that you can still lack "free will" despite possessing a mammalian brain then we don't even know whether all humans have free will. There would be two factors, either genetics or education. There are obvious historic reasons for why basing the existence of free will on genetics is bad. Basing the existence of free will on education is even worse because education is completely arbitrary and you could teach animals free will to some extent.

Going by the education criteria: If you could get human slaves and let them give birth then the child would lack the necessary education and we can enslave the child as well.

Do you have any personal experience working with dairy cows?

My father worked with dairy cows as a side job during college. He said they were often very friendly (except for Holsteins, they can be mean). They get used to and expect the daily routine - milking in the morning, pasture for the day, milking in the evening, pasture for the night.

When milking time came, they'd all be crowded up near the gate waiting for him to open it so they could walk to the milking building. They didn't need to be coaxed.

He said the saddest thing was the practice of de-horning calves at a certain age. Prior to that, a group of calves would be friendly, unafraid, almost like pets. But afterwards (my dad wasn't personally there for the actual de-horning) they would all crowd together at the opposite end of the yard in fear when he approached. He said it was heartbreaking...

As far as I know, not all farmers practice de-horning.

Edit: I have no idea whether they used pain killers, but given the calves' response my guess is no.

I raise goats and I get my kids disbudded every year when they're under a week old. They scream for about 5 seconds, and it breaks my heart, but then they almost immediately go back to their old selves like nothing happened and are back playing with us. In my case, I choose to do it to prevent the chance of future injuries for the goat, other goats, and humans.

There are polled stock you can use - no need for dehorning.

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