[randomdata]

> Cows older than 4yo are an exception because we slaughter most of them before

Huh? A heifer generally won't have her first calf before two years of age. If you are only getting two productive years out of your typical cow, you're doing something horribly wrong.

[aziaziazi]

Right, it's more 4/5 years

Calf 3-5 months Heifer 8-10 months milk cow 4-5 years Bull 18-20 months

https://www.swissveg.ch/life-expectancy?language=en

Looks close to US ranch:

> Meat or beef cows live for 1.5-2 years in the commercial beef industry. However, the natural life of beef cattle is between 15-20 years. Heifers and cows (female cattle) often live for between 5-6 years as they breed to produce the next generation of beef cattle.

https://ohthatschelsey.com/how-long-does-a-cow-live/#:~:text....

Todays milk caws are bred for producing a LOT of milk (30/60L/day), in comparaison those not bred for that produce 4L/day. However this quantity does not keep vealing after vealing and they became unprofitable soon.

[randomdata]

Beef cows live for 1.5-2 years, while simultaneously also living for 5-6 years? The claims keep getting stranger and stranger.

[aziaziazi]

I think you misread. Beef caws (male) usually live 1.5-2 years, while milk caw (female) live 5-6 years.

> If you are only getting two productive years out of your typical cow, you're doing something horribly wrong.

What do you mean by wrong ? These are the figures of modern practice.

[randomdata]

> think you misread. Beef caws (male) usually live 1.5-2 years

I'll assume I misread "caw". But this apparent multi-sexed beef cattle beast you now speak of is even stranger still.

> What do you mean by wrong ? These are the figures of modern practice.

Under modern practices, the productive lifespan of a cow is usually around 4-5 years, as echoed by your links[1]. If you're only getting two out of your typical cow, something is afoot with the management of your herd. If you are culling them before their productivity has been exhausted, how are you squaring the resources you put into their unproductive early years? In other words, how the hell is your farm managing to stay profitable if you find a cow older than four to be abnormal?

[1] Which was strange in its own right. Can you not speak to the subject yourself?

[aziaziazi]

> is even stranger still.

Thanks to point that out, my English isn’t perfect and a quick search show me that a caw is a female :-)

> speak to the subject yourself

I wasn't explicit enough here neither: "we slaughter [...]" -> "Humans slaughter [...]". I'm not farmer, just some random guy.

For the profitability part : "The value of cull cows at slaughter represents a source of income for dairy farms."[1]

However the profitability incentives varies depending on the breed and lead to ...strange... practices: the male newborn are hardly profitable if from a diary-super-optimized breed and some farms culled them at birth [2]. It's now forbidden in UK but still a practice in Switzerland (yummy Toblerone).

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002203021...

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/mar/26/dairy-di...