In order for English Farmstead Cheese to have lactating mothers, cows are forcibly impregnated through artificial insemination year after year at English Farmstead Cheese, and cows as young as 2 years old are subject to having a human insert their arm into their rectum and inject sperm into their uterus.
The male goats at Spinning Spider are sold as "breeding stock" to buyers across the United Sates or Brazil. They've also been sold and shipped to Venezuela, Mexico, Nepal, Puerto Rico, and Trinidad. While they takes pride in this, we know that the journeys are long and taxing for the goats who are forced to make the trip. If bucks aren't good enough "breeding stock" they're sold to the local 4-H program where they will be slaughtered for their flesh.
At Gladheart Farm it is standard practice to take kids (baby goats) from their mothers at birth. All of the kids are housed separately from their mothers, with little space to move around, cramped in a stuffy pen inside a barn. Instead of drinking their mother's breastmilk like nature intended they are forced to bottle feed instead.
Despite the owners of Lane in the Woods being parents themselves, they separate mother cows and their calves after just three days. They said that they've "played around" with different lengths of time, but if they allow the mother and child to spend more time together, they bond more and and it is harder to separate them in the long run.
Just like Farm to Home's former supplier Maple View— and like virtually all dairy farms— Wholesome Country Creamery takes babies away from their mothers shortly after birth and confines them in lonely hutches where they cannot play, run, or ever receive the maternal nurturing they so instinctively crave.
The Once Upon a Cow Website highlights that they have "well-treated cows" and that they practice "non-violent farming." Forcing females to give birth, stealing away their babies, and slaughtering young calves in no way demonstrates a commitment to good treatment or non-violence.
Grassroots Farm & Dairy is well known for being a "sustainable" family farm, which often pulls people in by displaying photos of newborn babies on their website, as well as their own children running around the farm. Nothing humane happens there.
The Plow & Flute, a "vedic eco-farm" and homesteading project outside of Asheville, NC, is an example of the kinds of abuse even self-professed animal lovers will inflict on animals they see as resources to be exploited.
Male goats born at Round Mountain are often sold off within their first 24 hours of life through eBay, Craigslist, or at livestock auctions. The other kids that stay on the farm will bottle feed for three months, separated from their mothers as soon as they are born, without ever nursing. One worker said, "If we allow them to nurse it will create a bond. Once that bond is created and we take her babies away, she'll mourn for weeks."
We learned that at Underwood Family Farm, newborn calves usually only get to stay with their mothers from 21 to 24 hours. After that they are separated and live with other calves their age for one to two weeks while being bottle fed by the farmers. The male claves are raised for beef and veal, as they are of no use to the dairy industry, lacking the female reproductive system which would allow them to be impregnated and then lactate.
Asheville Dairy 