The Honest Truth About Male Calves in the Dairy Industry

This means a dairy farm will usually do one of three things to the calves:

• Kill the calf on the farm shortly after he’s born.
• Send the calf to a slaughterhouse when he is still very young.
• Raise the calf for beef before slaughtering him.

For many farms, raising a male dairy calf for beef isn’t cost-effective so they kill the calf instead.

How are male calves killed?

Some male calves are killed on the farm when they are only a few days old. This is usually done using a captive-bolt gun. The bolt is fired into the calf’s head to destroy the brain. In 2025, 31,000 male calves were killed on farms before they were even two months old.

Other male calves are taken to a slaughterhouse. At the slaughterhouse, they will typically be stunned with an electrical device, hung upside down, and have their throat cut. If a male calf is raised for beef, he will ultimately be sent to the slaughterhouse and killed in the same way, just at an older age.

The meat industry considers the ‘optimum’ age for dairy calves to be slaughtered for beef to be 13-14 months. Cows have a natural lifespan of up to 25 years.

Why do cows on dairy farms have calves?

The main reason cows have calves on dairy farms is to produce milk.

Just like humans and other mammals, a cow can only produce milk after she gives birth. This milk is there to feed her calves but in the dairy industry, humans take the milk instead. That means dairy cows have to become pregnant again and again throughout their lives on a dairy farm.

A cow’s life on a dairy farm usually looks something like this:

1. A female calf is born.
2. She’s taken away from her mother.
3. She’s raised on a dairy farm.
4. The farmer impregnates her using bull semen.
5. She gives birth to a calf.
6. The farmer takes her calf away (so humans can consume the milk instead of the calf).
7. She is milked to produce milk for people.
8. She becomes pregnant again.
9. The cycle repeats until she is sent to slaughter.

This is why so many calves are born every year.

What happens to female calves?

Many female dairy calves will stay on the dairy farm and grow up to be used for milk. Purebred dairy cows are primarily raised for this purpose, while the dairy industry also breeds some dairy-beef cross females for beef.

Like their mothers, the replacement cows are impregnated so they can produce milk. Their calves are taken away shortly after birth and the cycle starts again.

Separation can be very distressing for both the mother and her calf. Cows have a strong bond with their calf and it’s common for a mother to call out for her calf - and the calf to their mother - after they’re separated.

Many dairy cows also develop painful health problems. One of the most common is lameness.

Dairy cows have been bred to produce much more milk than they naturally would. Producing all this milk puts a huge strain on their bodies and some cows become so lame that they struggle to walk.

Many also suffer from mastitis, a painful infection of the udder. Eventually, when the cow produces less milk, she’s sent to slaughter.

Can dairy be humane?

There is no completely humane way to use cows for milk. Animals, just like us, have lives that matter to them. Male calves don’t want to be shot. Mother cows don’t want to lose their babies. And neither wants to end up at a slaughterhouse. These are unavoidable parts of the dairy industry.

Thankfully, the number of male calves killed on farms has been falling in the UK with one factor being the introduction of sexed semen.

Sexed semen is bull semen that’s tested to find out if it will produce a male or female calf. Unfortunately, sexed semen is not 100% effective and not all farmers use it. Thousands of male calves are still killed on farms every year.

If you’re concerned about what happens to calves in the dairy industry, one of the best ways to help is to choose plant-based foods instead of dairy.

There are now more plant-based milks than ever before. They’re delicious and easy to find in supermarkets. Swapping dairy milk for oat or soy milk in your tea or coffee can make a difference.

Please also sign our End Factory Farming petition to help build a kinder food system for animals. By opting-in to receive our emails, you’ll receive updates on our campaigns as well as quick, easy actions you can take to protect animals.