If Patrick Devlin (Letters, 8 March) thinks that cows have lost their grazing instinct, he’s welcome to come and see how ecstatically mine respond when I turn them out to grass next month. And if he believes that the problem of separating dairy cow and calf is insoluble, he could travel on a bit further west to the farm where the wonderful Cream o’ Galloway ice cream is made. Here they leave the calves with their mothers for half the time.
Also, if he’s unaware that indoor-kept dairy cattle only manage to stay on their feet and produce large amounts of milk through the administration of huge quantities of antibiotics for a ludicrously short productive life-span, he hasn’t been paying attention. He’s right, though, that we should guard against the possibility of post-Brexit imports of animal products from countries with even less livestock-friendly regimes (such as the US).
Richard Middleton
Castle Douglas, Dumfries and Galloway
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