• KalciferOP
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    5 months ago

    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.

    • JJROKCZ@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      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

      • KalciferOP
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        5 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.