they might have not owned a bull but rented one when needed.
But, if they killed and eate 0.5 young males per cow per year, that would make the meat available once per year per cow. They could dry it or make sausage or whatever, but that does not make it a lot.
But really, at least based on what my grandmother said, meat was luxury item once a week thing. Cooked in away that uses it to the max. They were relatively well off small farm family, they were not poor. The traditional food I read about when I read about historical lifestyles was also largely non-meat. (Not to be confused with vegetarian, like bacon etc was part of it)
The eat meat everyday thing we have going on was not a thing in the past. It requires huge amount of animals being raised and killed, meat to be stored in freezers and so on.
Milking cows need to be having calves regularly so they keep producing milk.
Not owning a bull doesn’t make that problem go away.
It appears you may be right to some extent, but a bit of reading indicates dairy farmers to to have their cows birth a calf every one year to 400 days.
Older practices may vary, haven’t looked in to that.