Billions of animals are confined in factory farms every year.
To maximize production, these animals are treated as production machines, pushed way beyond their physical, mental and emotional limits.
Dairy cows are being pushed to a breaking point in order to produce more milk. The only thing that matters is their milk production levels. The cow itself is “a minor interference”. The problem is that this “minor interference” can suffer. And cows in the dairy industry suffer their entire lives.

273

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 are separated from day one.

The newborn is what is called a replacement heifer, a replacement for a dairy cow that her milk production dropped and so she is no longer economically valuable for the farmer.

She is confined in a very small crate with no companionship or her mother’s warmth, even though she is only a few-hours old infant.
The plastic tag that pierces her ear identifies her as number 273. From now on that is all she is, milk machine number 273.

Dehorning

To ease their control over the cows, humans dehorn them.
The horns contain nerve endings, so it is a very painful procedure, done without anesthesia.
The dehorning techniques are usually chemical - using caustic chemicals to destroy tissues, or physical - using a metal spoon to cut through and remove the horn-producing skin at the base of the horn bud. If the horns have already developed, they are being removed with a saw, a horn shears or a cutting wire.

273’s horns were already developed.
The farmers restrict her head in a stock, to prevent her from “disturbing” the procedure. Exhausted from the struggle, she cannot resist anymore, her body hurts, and her neck is injured. Now her head is tied in a deformed position. In this position, 273 can see her fellow cows being dehorned brutally. She is trying to escape, but her neck is stuck.
The farmers are coming towards her. She struggles to get out of the pillory but it only hurts more. It is hopeless. One human is holding her tight and the other one is sawing her horns.

Rape

Like every mammal, cows don’t produce milk all the time but during pregnancy and the lactation 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 beings, 273 would never fight back, but still she is being severely beaten.

It is time for 273 to 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, 273 gives birth, with a lot of tribulation and difficulties because she was bred too young.

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.

Claves

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 cry 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.
The less “fortunate” are kept in a very small crate all their lives, and at the age of 16 weeks are 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.

Milking

273 began her misery cycle of Artificial Insemination and enforced milking, which will end only when she is murdered.
After a few months only, she carries about 25 liters (6.5 gallons) of milk every single day.
The cows produce so much milk that they are milked 3 (in some places 4) times a day, almost 10 liters every time.
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.

Ketosis

Within 60 days of her calf's delivery, 273 is 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. Responding to the demands placed on it, her body diverts all its energy to produce milk. What makes things even harder for her exhausted body is that she is routinely milked during 7 out of the 9 months of pregnancy.

If 273 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.

Ketosis (Acetonemia) is a very common disease that occurs during early lactation and is due to the cow's metabolism being pushed too far in order to sustain high milk yield. The cows 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.

Mastitis

Laminitis

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 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 exacerbates the problem because the cows’ excrete more urine and wetter faeces, causing more problems of wet bedding and wet slurry in passageways.

One of the most common causes of distress to dairy cows is lameness caused by a painful damage to the foot. Cows today have an abnormally large udder which distorts the gait and posture of the cow's hind limbs. So the predisposition to foot damage, along with the fact that they are always standing on concrete, leads to lameness, which causes 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.

Downers

273 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 lay comfortably due to their giant udders. 273'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.

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

And when the “machine” no longer fits the industry standards… "She is going down"

Murder

The farmer violently loads her on a 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 she is filled with terror.

Then she is forced into the killing floor where 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 flow from her body. She tries to breathe with her throat open, until she finally dies.
She is quickly and efficiently skinned. Her skin will now be part of some human'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 273 is not unique.
Every day, millions of cows suffer because they are treated as production machines for milk and meat, with no regard for their emotional and physical needs, or dietary requirements.
And billions suffer in the rest of the exploitation industries.

Humans prove again and again that profits, taste preferences, convenience and amusement, 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.

As long as humans exist, all these exploitation systems will exist…