>>11873093>am I correct in thinking most of the calves are sent to slaughter anyway?...eventually.
calves = money
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dairy_cattle_breedshttp://afs.okstate.edu/breeds/cattlethere are other systems but I'm going to describe the pure dairy cow system because it's what I'm most familiar with specialised dairy breeds, namely, Jersey, Holstein, friesian, brown swiss, etc, etc go look on the oklahoma cow breed encyclopedia if you want more examples,
http://afs.okstate.edu/breeds/cattlesee the dairy system is run on the basis that you need a calf roughly once a year for the cow to keep milking, but for every hundred milking cows you only need about 15-25 replacements every year, so at least half of all calves are usually the product of a beef specialised breed being used as a crossing sire, eg charolais, limosin, hereford, belgian blue, etc, etc once again check the link. these are raised as beef cattle and in a few countries make up the majority of the beef trade.
now the ~40% of cows are put to a dairy breed, you can reduce the number further by using semen that has been screened and separated to be mostly female semen though it's less reliable and generally used on maiden(virgin) heifers because it costs more per straw.
so let's say best case scenario we've got 10-20/100cows pure dairy bull calves that aren't worth as much as heifer replacement or specialised beef crosses. that doesn't mean they aren't also raised as beef animals only that they aren't as valuable and go for a lower price. some systems will simply destroy these calves because it costs too much for them to be raised on but most don't, some will go to be raised as veal or raised on extensive systems with low overheads until they're fully grown and can be fattened as beef, (which is the system we used)
now there is an incentive here for people to maintain more beefy genes in their dairy cattle that increase the resale value of these bull calves.
