A day old babies torn from their traumatized mothers, cows choosing between concrete and faeces as a standing ground, calves de-horned - live tissue sawed or melted, regularly beatings, milked three times a day, living with Laminitis, living with Mastitis, deprivation of fresh air, deprivation of natural diet and exercise, no freedom to forage, no developing natural social relationships, no walking, no roaming, no exploring, systematic rapes,
THE LIST GOES ON AND ON...

The animal rights movement is trying to expose the facts, to reveal the truth, to show what is going on in factory farms, we tell them again and again that milk is rape but we can never win, ice cream is much tastier than moral.

Millions of animals are reared behind the closed doors of factory farms. They are treated as production machines, as “Production units”, pushed to their physical, mental and emotional limits, to maximize production .

Genetic engineering puts these animal-machines into overdrive. By altering their genetic structure, animals will be made to grow even faster, bigger, or leaner if that will make them more profitable. Profit is the only goal. Everything else is just in the way. Animals are just a phase between grass and meat, eggs or milk. Dairy cows are being pushed to a breaking point in order to produce more milk. The only thing that matters is their udder. The cow herself is “a minor interference”. The problem is that this “minor interference” can suffer. And cows in the dairy industry suffer their entire lives.

A calf is born. Coal black female with snow-colored markings, she doesn’t know that from her first breath to her last, all she will endure is pain and suffering. The newborn calf struggles to her feet and wobbles to her mother to sip a few precious drops of milk. Very soon she will experience what is probably one of the most horrible experiences that anyone can go through. Within hours, the calf is torn away from her mother.
The screaming and crying don’t help. The calf will “disturb” the farmers to steal her mother’s milk, so they will be apart for the rest of their lives.
She is a replacement heifer, a replacement for a dairy cow that her milk production level dropped and she is no longer able to produce the quantity of milk which makes her economically valuable for the farmer.

She is fed artificial milk powder from a bucket, and kept in a small crate with no companionship or warmth from other calves and from her mother, even though she is only a few-hours old infant.
The plastic tag that pierces her ear identifies her as number 2609.
From now on that is all she is, Milk Machine Number 2609.

To ease humans’ control over the cows, they are made 'easier to handle' by dehorning them. The horns contain both blood and nerve endings, so it is a very painful procedure, done without anesthesia. The dehorning techniques range from genetic - using polled bulls’ semen for breeding, chemical - using caustic chemicals to destroy tissues and several physical methods like a metal spoon to cut through and remove the horn-producing skin at the base of the horn bud or blocking the nerve to the horn. If horns have already developed, they are being removed with a saw, a horn shears or a cutting wire.

2609's horns were already developed.
The farmers restrict her head in a stock in order to prevent her from “disturbing” the procedure. Exhausted from the struggle against the farmer, she cannot resist anymore, her body hurts, and her neck is injured.
She cannot move. She is defeated.

Now her head is tied in a deformed position. In this position, 2609 can see her fellow cows getting their horns brutally cut. She is trying to escape, but her neck is stuck. The farmers are coming towards her. She struggles to get out from this demolition pillory but it only hurts more. It is hopeless. One farmer is holding her tight and the other one is sawing her horns.

She is not the only one.
There are millions of cows and baby cows that go through this torture every day.
And billions of people legitimize it.

Like every mammal, cows don’t produce milk all the time but during pregnancy and the nursing period only.
Therefore, when cows reach puberty at the age of 12 months they are raped for the first time, but not the last.

The cows are raped in the barn. In order to move the cows from the shed into the barn as quickly as possible, farmers are shoving, kicking, pulling the cows from their tails and ears, electrifying them with an electric shocker. The idea is very simple, time is money, the stronger the kicks, the faster the cows get into the rape barn.
Cows are very gentle creatures, 2609 would never fight back, but still she is being severely beaten. She doesn’t understand. Do you?

It is time for 2609 to officially start the rape cycle.
The rapist (inseminator) has come to rape her and the other cows. The cows are arranged in rows with their head facing a wall and their back to the path. The rapist goes over every cow and violently invades her genitals. Nine to ten months later, she gives birth, with a lot of tribulation and difficulties because she was bred too young in the first place.

Now she will experience the tearing apart of a mother from her baby, from the mother’s point of view. This is her first time, but not the last…
A male calf is born. The farmer does not want to "waste" the mother’s milk on her calf, so the milk that was intended for him, is diverted into tanks for humans consumption so the farmer will be able to make a financial gain over her body and on the account of the calf's nutrition needs.

A separation between a mother and her baby is always a trauma. It is well known that there is a particularly strong bond between a cow and her calf. They moo and bellow for hours in agony over their loss.
This split is the beginning of the misery the young calf will experience. Because he is of no use to the dairy industry, there are only two possible destinies for him. The lucky ones will be murdered at just a few days old, to be sold as low grade 'bob' veal, for products like frozen TV dinners. The less “fortunate” are kept in a very small crate all their lives, and at the age of 16 weeks, will be slaughtered and sold as 'Veal'.

The dairy industry and the veal industry are inseparably linked.
Technically, calves are born because cows produce milk only after being impregnated.
And economically the claves reduce the milk prices and thus increase the milk consumption.

The females will substitute old dairy cows

              The males will be send to VEAL farms

“Milk-fed” veal calves are actually fed only a milk substitute mixture, which deliberately lacks essential nutrients such as iron, which causes the calves to be severely anemic.
This anemia combined with a complete lack of exercise (a calf cannot even turn around in his wooden crate) guarantees that the resulting meat is a tender pinkish-white, which is the desired quality of veal most appreciated by consumers.

2609 began her misery cycle of Artificial Insemination and enforced milking. A cycle of suffering that will end only when she is murdered.
After a few months only, she carries 40 liters of milk every single day. The cows produce so much milk that they are milked 3 (in some places 4) times a day, 10 liters every time.
The industry’s aim is to reach a standard of 6 milkings, these cows will produce 60 liters per day.
What a horrible dilemma, she wants to get rid of all the weight and the pressure but she doesn’t want to be milked again. It is hard and painful for her even to walk to the milking barn.

Within 60 days of her calf's delivery (or on some farms during her first estrus) 2609 will be raped again, so that she will produce milk again.
Generations of selective breeding, driven by the desire for higher financial gain, have deformed her body to produce milk in far greater quantities than she would require nourishing her young. Instinctively responding to the demands placed on it, her body diverts all its energy to produce this valuable, white liquid that is no longer needed to fulfill its biological purpose of feeding her offspring.

After her first birth, there will be a second and a third birth and so on. Moreover, she is milked during seven months of her nine-month pregnancy.

If 2609 was able to eat a normal diet which consists of grass, she would not produce milk at the abnormal levels that cows are forced to produce at modern dairies.
In order to guarantee the extreme levels of milk production, cows are stuffed with high-energy feeds.
The unnaturally rich diet causes metabolic disorders including Ketosis, which can be fatal.

Cow number 2609 is confined to a barren fenced lot with packed dirt floor, where she and all the other cows must endure all types of weather, including rain and extreme temperatures for 24 hours a day.

Ketosis (Acetonemia) is a very common disease that occurs during early lactation and is due to the cow's metabolism being pushed too hard in order to sustain high milk yield. The cows actually metabolize their own body fat to make milk!
Cows with Ketosis become progressively depressed and lethargic. In severe cases, cows lose weight, become dehydrated, and show nervous, agitated behaviour such as delirium, bellowing and walking in circles.

Milk is being extracted by a method known as Vacuum Pulsation, this method causes the tissue to weaken, thus more prone to infection. Being forced to produce large quantities of milk, day after day, wears the cow out very quickly, making her more susceptible to infections such as Mastitis and bloat.

Most of the cows are still milked in cubicles built 20 to 30 years ago even though today's dairy cows are larger, due to the artificial selection. They are forced to stand during the milking, suffering from the incompatibility of the cubicles.

Standing with their hind feet in the passageway where manure collects, softens the cow's hooves and encourages infections.
The use of silage instead of hay in the winter exacerbate the problem because the cows’ excrete more urine and wetter faeces, causing more problems with wet bedding and wet slurry in passageways.

The most common cause of distress to dairy cows is lameness caused by a painful damage to the foot. Cows today have an abnormal large udder. This distorts the gait and posture of the cow's hind limbs, so predisposing to foot damage and together with the fact that they are always standing on concrete subsequent in lameness, which cause Laminitis (a very painful foot disorder). In fact, inspections of the feet of cows at slaughter reveal evidence of past or present foot damage in nearly all the cows.

In order to understand the pain of Laminitis imagine crushing all your fingers in the door then standing on your fingertips.

Bovine Growth Hormone (BGH) is given to dairy cows to increase milk production. This creates many diseases, some of which can cause lameness, birth defects, low-level shock, the enlargement of internal organs, and death.

The reason that farmers continue to inject these hormones is simple - MONEY.
The modern scientifically bred and fed dairy cow, can yield 30 – 40 liters of milk per day - about ten times more milk than her calf would need.

2609 is sick. She went through 4 births already. Her body is old but she is not even 5 years old. She has Mastitis, which is a very painful bacterial infection of the udder that causes inflammation and swelling.

Farmers have transformed cows from strong wild animals, who could run away from predators, to a huge milk machine, which cannot even sit due to their giant udders. 2609's udders are dragged on the filthy concrete, full of urine and feces.

The milking machine renders the cows more vulnerable to infections.
The cows’ front teats may be subjected to vacuum pulsing for up to two minutes after they have been emptied because the hind teats are still yielding.

Her body is very weak and has little energy. Her stomach is in constant pain.
Her legs ache from the constant standing on concrete.
Everything was “milked” out of her.

When she is almost six years old, the farmer violently loads her on the trailer and takes her to the auction yard. She is sick with fever from the Mastitis and frightened of all the loud noises.
The driver aggressively drags her down from the truck into a pen with other sick, tired, and dying cows known as "cull" or "downers".
She can see and smell their fear. She is pushed into the arena with dozens of people staring at her. She is sick. She is weak. She is scared. She shakes when she walks. There is a loud yelling and someone is twisting her tail to make her hurry, but she is too ill and too tired to care.
She is sold for 33 cents a pound and brutally loaded onto a huge truck, full of "used up" dairy cows like herself.

She is transported to the slaughterhouse, where the smell of death fills her nostrils and her heart fills with terror.
Then she is forced into a chute and cannot move while a man places an instrument against her forehead. The instrument feels unnaturally cold, and she trembles with fear as the captive bullet, explodes from the gun, tearing through hot flesh and solid bone to rupture her brain. This was aimed to stun her.
The slaughterer cuts her throat. Huge amounts of blood flows from her body. She tries to breathe with her throat open. She dies.
She is quickly and efficiently skinned. Her skin will now be part of someone's coat, couch or shoes. Her flesh is butchered into parts and pieces to be sold as a commodity.

For all her life, she was exploited by Humans. She has endured a life of production with no consideration to her own needs. She was used in order to produce milk, butter, yogurt, ice cream, and cheese. Now she will be used as hamburger meat. Flesh for the flesh-eaters.

The story of 2609 is not unique. Daily, millions of dairy cattle suffer because they are treated only as production machines for milk and meat, with no regard for their emotional and physical needs, or dietary requirements.

Humans prove again and again that profits, taste preferences, convenience, amusement etc, are much more important to them than anything else.
Most of them are not even willing to hear the facts and listen to the arguments, not to mention to stop financing animal abuse.

No one deserves to live like that.
As long as humans exist, all these exploitation systems and other torturing methods will exist...