• over_clox@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Selective breeding has been going on for thousands of years to get to the modern day cows and bulls we have today. How do you think they extract the bull semen for their selection process? There’s big money in it.

      They basically pick a quality bull which has favorable characteristics, bring him into their breeding barn, put their rubber gloves on, and mount the bull onto an artificial cow. Then the farmer has to convince him to start the deed and guide him into what basically adds up to a cow sized fleshlight.

      One quality load can fertilize hundreds of cows, so yeah there’s lots of money in it. Everything about cow farming is nasty, from start to finish.

      • frightful_hobgoblin@lemmy.ml
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        5 months ago

        Semen isn’t the limiting factor in breeding. You can get 1200 straws from a bull in a day.

        A thousand bulls could in theory breed our enitre national herd (about 7 million) (not recommended; just making the point that síol isn’t the bottleneck; it’s wombs as always)

        • Beaver@lemmy.ca
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          5 months ago

          Also makes us more susceptible to pandemics because there is less parent diversity