If we stopped farming cows would their population increase or decrease?
So a little back story I’m in a debate with someone that if we stopped farming cows their population would increase and she claims it would go down. beef cows live in the USA on average 5-6 years and average 2-4 calves in a life time. So my thinking is once we stop farming cows a lot of them will die off very...
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answers:
Paula say: They would decrease.

The USA and Canada used to support about 50 million bison.
The population now is about 150,000 with aboutb100 million cattle.

With no farming, the numbers would fall toward the 50 million mark.
Except the plains of USA and Canada are now fenced.
So the 50 million number could not be supported.
Perhaps half that number would.
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adrian say: They'd explode from having too much milk.
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Dobiegal say: bovine life expectancy is about 9-10 years
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random_man say: Cows are domestic animals. They don't live and reproduce in the wild. If we stopped farming and ranching, we would stop breeding cows, and their numbers would dwindle.
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Born Yesterday say: The debate is interesting.
Ruminant populations are influenced by forage availability,
predation, epizootics, climate, etc.
The irony is that urban wildlife (wild birds, squirrels, etc.)
are probably more successful as scavengers in predator
free environment than in a wilderness area.
The argument goes way beyond exponential population growth.

They would likely disappear even if we did too.
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rick29148 say: They don't exist in the wild ...........................................
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Abraham say: Oh god
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