Not everyone’s happy about the ‘happy cow’ label

Warning – this column uses the word happy a lot. The subject of happy cows is a cheerful topic that should make people happy but often causes people to become quite unhappy.

The Ben & Jerry’s icecream company is unhappy because it is being sued by James Ehlers, who is unhappy with Ben & Jerry’s ‘‘happy cow’’ claims, which say its milk is produced by ‘‘happy cows’’ in Vermont under their ‘‘caring dairy’’ programme, but Ehlers reckons fewer than 50 per cent of Ben & Jerry’s milk actually comes from these ‘‘happy cows’’. He says the rest is sourced from ‘‘factorystyle, mass-production’’ dairy farms that have unhappy cows. Ehlers is not the only one unhappy at happy cow claims. Vegans get unhappy that dairy farmers describe their cows as happy. Because, to them, cows can’t be happy if dairy farmers are happy to have their cows impregnated every year and remove their calves at birth.

I am happy to say they may have a point: I believe the removal of the calf from its mother at birth is a rather unhappy experience.

We have always happily left our calves with their mothers. This made our customers happy because to them it showed we actually did have happy cows. Based on this , I challenged a local agency to come up with a name for my milk company because I was unhappy with the one we had.

They happily accepted the challenge and came up with The Happy Cow Milk Company.

I was happy with the name but some dairy farmers were not happy. These farmers were unhappy because they thought I was saying their cows were not as happy as my cows (which I kind of was). Nevertheless, I was a bit unhappy they were unhappy.

These unhappy dairy farmers challenged me to prove leaving calves with their mothers did make for a happier cow and calf. I was happy to accept the challenge because I had just met a woman with a PhD in happy sheep and cows. She was happy to point me to research on animal happiness.

I happily pointed out that a happy animal is one that is allowed to live as it naturally would in nature. And a cow happily feeding its calf is what happy cows do in nature.

Dairy farmers were unhappy with that answer and suggested that a calf in a warm barn was happier than one in the cold paddock. I was happy to point out that we should not be having calves born in the three-month period when it is very cold because that is an unhappy experience for all. These unhappy farmers were quickly becoming my arch-nemeses. They said it was a less unhappy experience for a cow if farmers remove her calf at birth than at 12 weeks of age, after they had bonded.

I was unhappy to admit that they might actually be right. I had seen how unhappy my cows were when we separated their weaned calf into another paddock. These cows did not look very happy.

It was about this time that an Australian woman sent me all the research that existed in the world on cow and calf separation and bonding. I was happy to find that I had been doing it all wrong.

There are many happy farmers around the world who have developed techniques and methods of gradually separating happy cows and their happy calves in a totally stress-free manner as would happen naturally in nature.

This makes me happy; I am also happy more farmers are open to adopting our happy-cow-andcalf system.

We know it is a bit of a change, so we happily developed a happycow-and-calf system for robotic milkers, mobile milkers, small bucket milkers and even traditional cowsheds, too.

Where there is a happy cow will, there is a happy cow way.

We have always happily left all our calves with their mothers.