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.
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.
Maple View Dairy, located in Hillsborough, North Carolina, is a supplier to the Farm to Home Milk delivery service that delivers cow's milk to the people of Asheville. Farm to Home claims "All Milk is produced from happy cows." The reality is a far cry from happy.
Homeland Creamery is a family dairy farm in Julian, North Carolina. When you first begin their tour, they start by showing you a calf in a larger sized hutch. Although they display a clean hutch with space to move around, this is not truly how their calves live.
As on many other dairy farms, the male calves are disposable to the industry and are either slaughtered for veal, sold, or kept for breeding. The Cane Creek Creamery has been dissolved but the farm farm sells milk to Milkco who bottles it for Ingles.
After the female cows at Yellow Branch Cheese are forcibly impregnated though artificial insemination, they only get to spend 48 hours with their mothers before being taken away and separated for good. If they are female, they will endure the same traumatic cycle as their mothers and be required have a baby every 14-16 months who will also be forcibly taken away from them.
While Three Graces Dairy appears to have classic charm as a "humane" and small local business, what we saw when we visited was an entirely different story. While visiting the farm, we kept stumbling upon more and more babies. They were all separated from their mothers.
Asheville Dairy 