this post was submitted on 28 May 2024
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Entire herd of cattle disappears from Quebec farm in suspected theft (globalnews.ca)
submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/weirdnews
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[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Releasing to the wild is a terrible idea, cattle aren’t really capable of surviving in the wild anymore. So seems right up the alley of some PETA idiot’s brain yeah.

I suppose you could find an unscrupulous butcher who would slaughter all these unreported but if they ever got caught.. I wouldn’t consider it worth the risk if I was an abattoir owner

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

cattle aren’t really capable of surviving in the wild anymore

I looked into this briefly, and it appears that it's possible that most livestock would be able to fair rather well on their own in the wild — ofc assuming that the animals are in a hospitable area:

Granted, these are just random forums — who knows how credible these answers are.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

They can’t breed without human assistance and are susceptible to a wide variety of common diseases they only survive through our medication and care.

They may be able to graze a while in the same fields we had for them but now lacking fences but there is no long term survival for the species

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

They can’t breed without human assistance

What do you mean by "human assistance"? Are you referring to artificial insemination? If so, it appears that artificial insemination is rather far from universal — the alternative being natural breeding — for example:

Almost 80% of dairy producers in North America use artificial insemination (AI) to breed cattle, compared to only 4% of beef producers. [source (archive)]

With pasture breeding, [...] a bull [can] sire more than 40 calves in a 6 to 8 week calving period. [source (archive)]

[They] are susceptible to a wide variety of common diseases they only survive through our medication and care.

Sure, but this doesn't necessarily mean that they are all certain to contract said diseases, nor is it certain that the transmission rate would be high enough for all cows to die off.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Thing is, the butchers near me at least are all backed up. You have to reserve your spot way ahead. It could be a farmer who reserved a spot and lost all their cattle for some reason. Could be someone doing the butchering themselves. If it were smaller animals like goats or ducks, that's a stronger possibility.

Any butcher or processor in a coupe hours have probably been made aware of the theft. They're going to report it.