Farm animals

[Chad32]

I imagine that life expectancy is higher, but quality of life is likely lower for farm animals.

The QOL of an animal untreated for infections and broken limbs, scrounging a shrinking forest floor for whatever is left of food, hoping like hell to dodge every living thing that wants them dead?  

The solution being let them be as free as possible, while still keeping tabs on them and harvesting them when the time comes. Nobody wants to live their life in a cage.

That's what the Bundys do with their cattle........

In any case, the notion that no one wants to live their life in a cage is betrayed by many of our posters...and if we're using it we'd better be certain that the animals in question would actually prefer to live in the wild.  Otherwise we're just talking about cages of varying sizes.

That's not every day in the life of an animal that gets to roam a large territory, and climb and dig everywhere they want. There are downsides to every life, but at least a wild animal doesn't spend its life in a cramped cage, being unable to roam far, until it's eaten.

Not that every farm animal is kept like that, but I do think an animal is generally happier when it can roam and dig and climb and stuff. We can find pictures of miserable mangy wild animals just as easily as miserable farm animals, but in general the wild animal has really lived.

And we're not going to talk about diseases without mentioning stuff like mad cow disease, where farmers mixed in cow meat and other products into the food, which made the cows turn on each other. Farm animals aren't always disease free, and while they typically get food every day, it isn't always what's really healthiest for them.

Of course I'm also aware that certain species have been domesticated to the point where they can't live in the wild, so I'm not saying let all the cows loose in the woods, but I do believe the quality of life for a cape buffalo is in general better than the qol of a farm cow.