[merpnderp]

I keep seeing people make this claim that cattle spend their entire lives on feed lots, but I've never seen this anywhere and I've been all over cattle country. Where do they do this? Because around here feedlots are only for finishing cattle and typically only spend about 2-3 months there after having very happy lives as calves on a ranch.

[throwup238]

> I keep seeing people make this claim that cattle spend their entire lives on feed lots, but I've never seen this anywhere and I've been all over cattle country. Where do they do this?

Nobody does that, it’d be way too expensive. People here on HN have absolutely zero knowledge of how industrial cattle farming operates and have some really bizarre beliefs about the process. Largely because their only experience with it is the supermarket meat section and passing those massive stinky feedlots along the CA I5.

For everyone else: After a calf is raised and weaned from their mother, they are sent to “background” on pasture and the last few months a cow spends packed in a feedlot is just to fatten it up for human consumption. These are usually steps done by different companies altogether. The whole point of beef is utilizing marginal land that can’t grow human food. It converts tons of grassland to usable farmland, and that pasture makes up 2/3 of the total agricultural land in the US.

[Sightline]

I agree with everything you said except:

>"The whole point of beef is utilizing marginal land that can’t grow human food."

FYI: 36% of corn is grown just to feed cattle/livestock. I'm trying to breed chickens that are less dependent on commercial foods, so I'm somewhat familiar with the topic.

Also if anybody is interested in reading about how cattle are raised just read the USDA's page on it: https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/animal-products/cattle-beef/...

[throwup238]

That's also very misleading because the vast majority of the corn we feed cows isn't fed to them fresh. It's distillers grains, an industrial waste from ethanol production: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distillers_grains

It's a cheap type of corn [1] only grown on marginal farmland that is one step above pasture land.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dent_corn

[adolph]

I'm not here to police tone, but it sounded like you were disagreeing with the parent comment but your factual claims do not appear to disagree.

>> typically only spend about 2-3 months there after having very happy lives as calves on a ranch.

> After a calf is raised and weaned from their mother, they are sent to “background” on pasture and the last few months a cow spends packed in a feedlot is just to fatten it up for human consumption.

The only difference is the introduction of "sent to “background” on pasture" which arguably is not different from "happy lives as calves on a ranch" given different interpretations of calf to distinguish between baby and adolescent cattle.

[throwup238]

Thanks, edited for clarity.